This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the campaign communication during the Carter-Ford television debates; (2) apprehensiveness and performance in public speaking; (3) a history and criticism of the Vietnam antiwar movement; (4) a case study of institutional rhetoric and radical change (the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in America); (5) synthesizing methodologies used in the study of political communication during the 1976 United States presidential election campaign; (6) the audience effects of apologetic discourse; (7) rhetorical vision and black social reality; (8) a case study of organizational apologia (the American Federation of Labor, 1945-1956); and rhetorical analyses of the speeches/discourses of (9) Dorothy Day for the Catholic Worker movement, (10) British Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, (11) Charles Betts Galloway, (12) Carl Schurz, (13) Cleveland mayoral Candidate Arnold Pinkney, (14) Richard Nixon on Vietnam, (15) United States Senator Wayne Morse on Vietnam, (16) Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on the First Amendment, (17) U. S. presidential candidate George McGovern, (18) Hu Shih on the Chinese Literary revolution (1915-1920), (19) selected women speakers during 1850-1860, and (20) the American conservation movement, 1865-1913. (RL)