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Associate Prof. Rebecca Townsend Publishes Two Articles

June 06, 2022
Submitted By: Rebecca M. Townsend

Rebecca M. Townsend, associate professor of communication in Hillyer College, published two essays about New England town meeting this spring. 

One essay, in a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, was co-authored with communication scholar Trudy Milburn. The essay focuses on verbal play that occurs in town meeting deliberations as means of developing rhetorical identification across difference. 

The second essay is co-authored by attorney Carmin C. Reiss, and it is part of a special issue of the Journal of Deliberative Democracy. The essay examines the contemporary legal framework that enables town meetings, deliberative systems in the majority of Massachusetts' municipal governments. 

Townsend, R. M., & Milburn, T. (2022). New England Town Meeting and the Cultivation of Deliberative Play. Special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on Deliberative Play. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221093588 

Townsend, R. M., & Reiss, C. (2022). An Enduring System of Local, Deliberative Democracy: The 21st Century Legal and Normative Structure of Massachusetts Town Meeting. Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 18(1) 1-10. Special Issue on Legal Aspects of Deliberative Systems. https://delibdemjournal.org/article/id/1136/.