Joan Faber McAlister

Joan Faber McAlister is an American rhetorician, associate professor and researcher of women's studies in communication. Her research primarily focuses on how images and space communicate messages in public culture through perceptions of beauty and critical theory.

Education and career Joan Faber McAlister attended Boise State University, from which she received a B.A. in anthropology

From 2014 until 2017, McAlister served as the editor-in-chief of the journal Women's Studies in Communication. In 2023 she was a member of the Editorial Board.

As of 2022, she is an associate professor of communication at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Scholarly work McAlister's research focuses primarily on how images and space communicate messages in public culture through perceptions of beauty and critical theory. Her research uses critical theory to confront ideological, societal, and structural binds found in culture and literature. McAlister focuses on analyzing topics including Congressional hearings, popular films, national news coverage, magazine advertisements, reality television, urban planning, and architecture. She approaches these documents with a focus on the relationship between social location and rhetoric, i.e.: how different individuals are placed in power and how the factors of class, gender, race, and sexuality impact these individuals. McAlister has stated that home is "about relationships between you and your environment [...] between your desires and your limitations [...and] associations between regional identities and cultures." The Women's Jail is now a site that rests on the grounds of a former racially segregated prison that was in use from 1910 to 1983, during which apartheid laws sought to assure the dominance of white people. Those who resisted often faced repercussions, drawing a parallel between the Women's Jail and a Nazi regime. The Women's Jail holds visible memories of former inmates, directing the tourists' gaze through haunting collections of personal items such as newspaper clippings. Benjamin's collection often included very personal items such as wedding photographs, shoes, and quotes that were placed where women had once lived and worked, to present more depth into their personal experiences. It discusses the idea that women are torn between achieving academically, as in McAlister's situation, and keeping reproductive "expiration dates" to themselves. The article says that, if women pay too much attention to their biological clocks in order to begin a family, they will seemingly struggle to stay at the same pace as their male colleagues. McAlister discusses her fear that bringing children into her life would cause her to be viewed as feminine and motherly which would contradict her outward professional persona as a scholar.