Constance Bailey is an Assistant Professor of English at Georgia State University, where she specializes in Folklore and African American Literature. Dr. Bailey attended Alcorn State University for her B.A. and the University of Missouri for her M.A. and Ph.D respectively. Dr. Bailey’s research interests include Black speculative fiction, Black popular culture, and African American comedy and humor more specifically. She is a member of the American Folklore Society, American Humor Studies Association, College Language Association, the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, and the Modern Language Association. Dr. Bailey's recent publications include “Signifying Sistas: Black Women’s Humor and Intersectional Poetics” and “Keeping the Civil Rights Movement Alive: The Legacy of Black Spring Break.” She is currently working on her first manuscript, Predicament: The Black Collegian in Popular Culture. Twitter: creneebailey | IG: constancetheeakademic
Moya Bailey is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on marginalized groups' use of digital media to promote social justice and she is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She is the digital alchemist for the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network and the Board President of Allied Media Projects, a Detroit-based movement media organization that supports an ever growing network of activists and organizers. She is a co-author of #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press, 2020) and is the author of Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance (New York University Press, 2021).
Sharieka Botex is a PhD Candidate in the Rhetoric and Writing Program in the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures Department at Michigan State University. She is a community-engaged scholar and educator, writing teacher and writing center professional. Her research interests include African American Rhetoric and Composition Scholarship, African American literacy practices and histories, First Year Writing, influence, Black history, legacies and experiences, feedback, stories, Hip Hop, leadership, graduate student experiences, leadership, community-engaged work and writing centers. She is committed to helping people acknowledge and apply the writing and communication skills they possess, while supporting them in working towards their goals to acquire and hone writing and literacy practices they can use in their personal, academic, and professional lives, and to enhance their communities and society. She is the oldest child and only daughter of Cynthia and Gary McCray with two younger brothers, Gary and Garrick. She is married to Stacy Botex. She is a writer, reader, runner, learner, thinker, doer, and a work in progress who believes progress is a process. She is committed to progressing and supporting other people in ways that help them progress and prosper.
Dr. Robin M. Boylorn is the inaugural Holle Endowed Chair of Communication Arts and the founding director of the forthcoming Holle Center for Communication Arts in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She is also a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies where her work is centered on issues of social identity and diversity, primarily the lived experiences of Black women in the U.S. American South. She is an award-winning author, autoethnographer, teacher, scholar and commentator who blends critical and creative qualitative work with public intellectual commentary to make claims and arguments toward a more socially just and socially conscious society. She is the author of Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience, co-editor of Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life and co-editor and co-writer of The Crunk Feminist Collection. She is also the editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, a commentator for Alabama Public Radio, and a member of the Crunk Feminist Collective.
Ronisha Browdy, Assistant Professor, holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing from Michigan State University, a M.A. in English from the University of South Florida, and a B.A. in English from the University of Florida. Her primary research focuses on Black women’s and Black feminist rhetorical practices, histories, and experiences. The Black feminist practice of “self-definition” (see Patricia Hill Collins) is a major point of inquiry within her scholarship. Specifically, Browdy interrogates how self-definition functions rhetorically as a means of asserting and affirming one’s ethos within Black women and Black feminist stories, images, and representations of Black womanhood. Her scholarship on this subject matter ranges from the rhetorics of everyday Black women within private spaces to interpreting the rhetorical stories and naming practices of Black women public figures like Michelle Obama, Patrisse Cullors, and Issa Rae. Dr. Browdy’s work has been published in Peitho Journal, Prose Studies: History, Theory, and Criticism, Reflections Journal, Women & Language, and Reflections: Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning, and edited collections. Her secondary research is on Global Black Rhetorics with Dr. Esther Milu at the University of Central Florida. They recently published a special issue on the subject in Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Twitter: @RonishaBrowdy Facebook: Ronisha Browdy
Ruth Nicole Brown is Professor and the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Brown grew up in Park Forest and Chicago Heights, IL nurtured by bold and determined practices of collective possibility. She continues to activate home truths and bring other’s to futures of radical creative power and praxis through Saving Our Lives, Hearing Our Truths (SOLHOT), a collective Brown founded in 2006 to celebrate Black girlhood by meeting Black girls face to face and heart to heart. Nicknamed “Dr. B” by the homegirls of SOLHOT, she has published two books, Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood (University of Illinois Press, 2013) and Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward A Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy (Peter Lang, 2009). You can find Dr. Brown doing the healing work of connecting with those who have resisted their own destruction since the beginning of time. You can find her laughing with Black girls as they create knowledge about Black girlhood in the same halls where they are routinely shushed. You can find Dr. Brown outdoors, at work on her current project on Black girlhood and nature, lending her dandelion spores to the wind.
Durell M. Callier is an artist-scholar, who employs Black feminist and queer methodologies to explore the interconnectivity of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. Callier’s research documents, analyzes, and interrogates the lived experience of Black youth and their communities. His research analyzes the racialized queer dynamics of power within educative spaces and practices and illuminates the role art can play in responding to anti-Black and anti-queer violence. Callier is co-founder of Hill L. Waters (HLW), an arts-based research collaborative that enacts Black queer world making as embodied pedagogy. HLW performs compelling narratives, conducts workshops, and writes works dedicated to Black liberation. He is co-author of two books, Who look at me?!: Shifting the Gaze of Education Through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body(Brill, 2019), as well as Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet: Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture (Routledge, 2022). Dr. Durell M. Callier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership with affiliation in the Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Miami University. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Educational Policy Studies with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies, and cognate in Qualitative Research Methods.
Tamika L. Carey is an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher whose work focuses on African American Rhetorics and Literacies, Feminist Rhetorics, Black Women's Writing and Intellectual Traditions, and the memoir.
She is the author of Rhetorical Healing: The Reeducation of Contemporary Black Womanhood(SUNY 2016), a project that earned her the 2019 Inaugural Book Series Scholar Award by DBLAC. Her essays appear in venues such as Rhetoric Review, Enculturation, Signs,and Rhetoric Society Quarterly.
She is currently an Associate Professor of English and a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia. Social Media: @prof_tlcarey
Suzanne C. Carothers has been in the field of education for more than four decades as a teacher of the youngest of learners to: those who do the teaching, those who are school leaders, and those who inform policy affecting children and their families. Recently retired from her fulltime position as a Professor of Early Childhood Education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development in the Department of Teaching and Learning, she remains committed to the field of practice by continuing to do meaningful work in it. At NYU, she served as Director of the Undergraduate Childhood/Childhood Special Education Program and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Prior to assuming her position at NYU, Dr. Carothers was a Professor of Elementary Education at The City College of The City University of New York in the Department of Education. Formerly, as the Adult Literacy Program Director in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York during the Ed Koch Administration, she coordinated the New York City Adult Literacy Initiative. At that time, it was a groundbreaking effort which was in the forefront of the movement to provide literacy instruction and services for adults with limited reading, writing, and English speaking skills. Having been an early childhood teacher, Dr. Carothers was the teacher of three-year-olds at the Bank Street School for Children. A graduate of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, she received her Masters Degree from Bank Street College of Education, and her Ph.D. from New York University. In 2001, Bank Street College of Education awarded her an honorary doctorate for outstanding achievement as a teacher, leader in education, and mentor.
Angeline Dean is a May, 2022 Ph.D. graduate of Rowan University. She serves as an activist/organizer examining colonial plantation frameworks, both economic and pedagogical, their existence in today's systems, and how their intentional and predatory nature foster new methods of enslavement. Her dissertation study titled, ‘The Whiteness of Akkkademia and the Making of a Slave: A Nontraditional Blackgirl’s Journey of the Plantation as She Screams-I was NEVER Down with OPP, The Oppression Plantation Paradigm that Sought to Equate My Black Body to Other Peoples Property.’ Her plantation model outlines components of the "slave creation" process. In her work, Angeline showcases her experiences with not only white supremacy delusion and whiteness as property, but also how hard white injected oppressors (those suffering from internalized racism) fought to serve their ‘massers’-all under the guises of social justice, inclusion, and access. She shares her story of trauma and witnessing sharecropping and plantation politics while posing the question: “How does Blackness show up as whiteness?” Her goal is to train others on systems operations, foster identity, heal communities of color, and dismantle whiteness coupled with the hegemonic structures that exacerbate historical trauma while hiding behind buzz-words such as justice, equity, and access. FB: Angeline Angie Dean | Twitter:Angeline Dean-Intersystemz | @unheardvoicesnj
Alexis De Veaux, PhD, is a black queer feminist writer and visualist who works in multiple genres. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, De Veaux’s work appears on several recordings; in numerous anthologies and publications; is published in six languages–English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, and Serbo-Croatian; and marks her among a stellar list of American writers highlighted by LIT CITY, a public initiative of banners bearing their names and images in downtown Buffalo, New York. She is the author of several books including Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde(2004). The first biography of the pioneering lesbian poet, Warrior Poet won several prestigious awards including the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award, Nonfiction (2005), the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award (2004), and the Lambda Literary Foundation Literary Award for Biography (2005). Her novel, Yabo (2014), was awarded the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. As an artist and lecturer Alexis De Veaux has traveled extensively throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan, and Europe. She was a tenured member of the faculty of the University at Buffalo, Buffalo NY, 1992 - 2013. At present Alexis De Veaux serves on the board of the Roadwork Center for Cultures in Disputed Territory and is co-founder (with Amy Horowitz) of The Enclave Habitat, an emergent network of artists and activists. Her latest work, JesusDevil, The Parables, is slated for publication in Spring, 2023 (AK Press). Further information is available on her author website, alexisdeveaux.com.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is cherished by a wide range of communities as an oracle and a vessel of love. Drawing on over 25 years of experience as a writer and facilitator, her inclusive practice finds us and brings us into the ceremonies we have always needed. Her books include: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press 2020), Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke Press, 2020), M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke Press 2018), Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (Duke Press, 2016) and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016). Alexis was honored with a Whiting Award in non-fiction in 2022 and lauded for creating "modern fables that offer new methods of feeling." Alexis is also a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. In 2020-2021 Alexis was awarded a National Humanities Center Fellowship to work on her forthcoming biography The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. Alexis has been honored to co-facilitate Guardian Dead, a series of retreats for ancestor accountable intellectuals, with Dr. Eric Darnell Pritchard as part of her Brilliance Remastered initiative. Alexis has taught in many settings including as Winton Chair of the Humanities at University of Minnesota, Evans Chair at Evergreen State University, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Africana Studies at Barnard College. Alexis and her partner Sangodare have received many honors, including an Advocate 40 under 40 feature for their decade of work to create an intergenerational living library of Black LGBTQ brilliance called Mobile Homecoming. Alexis lives in Durham, North Carolina where she nurtures and is nurtured by a visionary creative community while scheming towards her dream of being your favorite cousin.
Marcelle Haddix is Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives and Distinguished Dean’s Professor of Literacy, Race, and Justice at Syracuse University. She is an affiliated faculty member in the Departments of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Composition and Rhetorical Studies. She holds courtesy appointments in the Departments of Nutrition and Food Studies and Cultural Foundations of Education. She chaired the Department of Reading and Language Arts in the School of Education from 2015 to 2021. She is a founding co-director of the Lender Center for Social Justice. Haddix’s scholarly interests focus on the experiences of students of color in literacy and English teaching and teacher education and the importance of centering Blackness in educational practices and community spaces. Her work is featured in Research in the Teaching of English, Linguistics and Education, and Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Her book, Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me, received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Haddix facilitates literacy and wellness programs for adolescent and adult communities in Syracuse, including the Writing Our Lives project for urban youth writers and a Black women’s literary club and free library project. She is co-founder of the Sankofa Reproductive Health & Healing Center and a founding member of Cafe Sankofa Cooperative in Syracuse's Southside community. In 2021 she received the Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy Advocacy from the Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research. She is also past president of the Literacy Research Association.
Constance M. Haywood is an assistant professor in the Department of English at East Carolina University. Her background is in digital writing and rhetoric, Black feminist studies, and professional communication. Dr. Haywood’s current work lives at the intersection of Black feminist theory and digital research ethics, emphasizing the need for digital research methodologies that develop out of Black women’s knowledge practices and are embedded in social justice. Largely, her scholarship is purposed with embracing, honoring, and utilizing the written and lived experiences of Black women in ways that forward resistance and amplify alternative methods of navigating a number of cultural, political, and institutional contexts. Dr. Haywood has authored pieces for the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative and WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. She is also a member of the Black Technical and Professional Task Force, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the CCCC Black Caucus. Twitter: @RhetoriConnie
Dominique C. Hill, PhD, is a scholar-creative whose written and performed scholarship interrogates twenty-first century Black girlhood with a focus on embodiment. In Hill’s scholarship, the body functions as a central way of knowing and site of unlearning and retooling. Raised by three generations of women who know the power of prayer and libations, Hill’s living, art, and research is grounded in collectivity and imagination. Hill continues this intergenerational and spiritual work as a homegirl of Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), a core collective member of Street Dance Activism, the divine guide of the 28 Day Global Dance Meditation, and as co-visionary of Hill L. Waters (HLW). An arts-based research collaborative that enacts Black queer world making as embodied pedagogy, HLW conducts workshops and uses performance ethnography to write and narrate works dedicated to Black liberation. Hill is co-author of the recently published Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet (Routledge, 2022) and Who look at me?!: Shifting the Gaze of Education Through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body (Brill|Sense, 2019). Through research, pedagogy, and praxis, Hill extends the field of Black Girlhood Studies as an assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Colgate University. IG & Twitter: @Drhillgroove
Brittany S. Hull, Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary scholar from Chester, Pennsylvania, whose work centers Black women’s language and Black girl literacies. She holds a PhD in composition and applied linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Brittany is a 2017 CCCC Chair’s Memorial Scholar and a recipient of the 2018 CCCC Scholars for the Dream award. Currently, her research examines the scholarly identity development of Black language speaking Black women teachers of English as they enter and navigate academia (specifically, the field of composition and rhetoric). She is a proud HBCU alumna of The Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. When not teaching, she's typically reading, listening to new music, or hanging with her friends. She is committed in her teaching and research to honoring Black language. Moreover, she's motivated to help students bring more of their whole selves to their writing.
Francis Issah is a second year PhD student and a graduate teaching assistant in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program at Wayne State University (WSU), in Detroit, Michigan. At WSU, he teaches ENG 1020: Introductory College Composition. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English both from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. Before coming to WSU, he was a high school teacher in English and an assistant lecturer at Valley View University (VVU) for a combined total of twelve years. At VVU, he taught Language and Writing Skills, Communication Skills and Syntax of English to sandwich and distance students. His research interests include how the African restorative justice philosophy of Ubuntu can be practiced in the composition classroom, civil society rhetoric and how it affects government decisions in a fledgling democracy like Ghana, first year composition, and African feminism. When not teaching or reading, he likes to cook, travel, and spend time with his family. He is married to Gifty, with whom they have two adorable daughters, Abigail and Zipporah. Twitter: @FHIssah
Zainab Khadijah Karim is an Assistant Professor of English at National-Louis University and a published writer. She's written for Ebony/Jet Magazine, MadameNoire, Revelist, and other online writing platforms.
During the summer of 2021, she created and edited a series called Shape of Pleasure, which featured personal essays and poetry that explored how Black women centered pleasure in their lives. This anthology was influenced by Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown.
She is grateful to be community taught by other black women writers and welcomes all supportive feedback that will help her grow as a writer and academic.
Heidi R. Lewis is Associate Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies Program and Coordinator of Early Career Faculty Development Programs at Colorado College. Her areas of specialization are Feminist Theory, Politics, and Discourse (particularly Black Feminism), Rap Culture and Discourse, and Critical Media Studies. She has published in The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, and Indivisible: Alliances against Racism. She is also the author of forthcoming essays examining FX’s The Shield, VH1’s Love & Hip Hop, Bravo’s Married to Medicine, and “expertise” in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has contributed to Mark Anthony Neal’s NewBlackMan, NPR, and Bitch Media, and has given talks at Vanderbilt, the U.S. Olympic Committee, and other organizations and institutions. Her book, In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk in Berlin, co-edited with Dana Asbury and Jazlyn Andrews, was recently published in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Witnessed, an English-language series featuring Black authors who have lived in Germany. In Audre’s Footsteps amplifies the resistive and generative experiences of Black and women of color educators, artists, activists, and scholars in the U.S. and Germany, focusing especially on the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity. Twitter: @TheRealPhDMommy and @AudresFootsteps IG: @PhDMommy and @AudresFootsteps Facebook: @PhDMommy and @AudresFootsteps
Sequoia Maner is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College where she teaches classes related to African American literature and culture. She serves on the Board of Directors for TORCH Literary Arts, a nonprofit organization for Black women writers. She is author of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly(33 1/3 series, Bloomsbury), the prize-winning chapbook Little Girl Blue: Poems(2021), and she is co-editor of the book Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (2020).
Her poem “upon reading the autopsy of Sandra Bland” was a finalist for the 2017 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and her essays, poems, and reviews can be found in venues such as Meridians, Obsidian, The Langston Hughes Review, The Feminist Wire, Auburn Avenue, and elsewhere. She is at work on a poetic memoir about the foster care system in Los Angeles.
Courtney Marshall believes that Black feminism belongs in the gym, on the playing fields, in the pool, and everywhere else people are moving. She currently teaches Zumba and aquatic exercise classes in New Hampshire. Her training diaries are filled with quotes by Black feminists.
These days she’s meditating on Toni Cade Bambara's wise quote, “Not all speed is movement.” Courtney also teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy.IG: courtmars Twitter: darkydamsel Peloton: Sifkitz
Alexis McGee is an Assistant Professor of Research at the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. (with two certificates of concentration in linguistics as well as rhetoric & composition) from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Her research interests include Black feminist (rhetorical) theory; Black rhetorics; language and literacies; sound studies as well as rhetoric and composition theory and history. She is the past recipient of NCTE’s Early Educator of Color Leadership and Cultivating New Voices awards. Her work has been published in a number of journals. Her most recently publication, “Rereading Sor Juana’s Rhetorics: The Intersectional, Cultural Rhetorician” was published in Rhetoric Review.
She is currently working on her monograph From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetoricsforthcoming with SUNY Press.
Melissa McHenry is an educator who believes that Students of Color, Multilingual Learners, LGBTQI+ students, Students with Disabilities and other students whose brilliance and ways of knowing have been othered by the ideological state apparatus deserve to be taught by folks committed to disrupting inequity. She began teaching in 2004 and has facilitated learning for students in grades 7-12, teachers, school and district leaders, and university-based teacher educators. A native of Far Rockaway, NY, and a perpetual beach baby, Melissa honors her ancestors along the shores of the Atlantic. She is a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who was also initiated to Oshun in the Afro-Brazilian tradition of Candomblé-Ketu, and consecrated as an Iyalorixa in 2014. Melissa holds a BA in English from Queens College, CUNY; a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University; and is pursuing a Master of Divinity in Social Justice Advocacy with a concentration in Africana and African American Religion at Drew Theological School. Her focus on Afro-Diasporic religiosity explores interfaith expressions of worship in Black cultures separated by space and time. You can learn more about Candomblé and Afro-religiosity in general at Melissa’s website.
Nathan Alexander Moore is a Black transfemme writer, scholar, and educator. Currently she is the Assistant Professor of Black Trans and Queer Studies in the Department of Women & Gender Studies at CU Boulder. She holds a PhD in African and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. They are an interdisciplinary scholar who is interested in critical and creative methods to explore the nuances of Blackness, queerness, and temporality. Her research and writing interests include Black transfemininity, Black speculative arts practices, Black temporalities, and Black visual art and literature. She is currently writing a collection of speculative short fiction called The Rupture Files centering Black queer and trans subjects navigating disaster. A second project, entitled The Osmosis Manual, is equal parts theory, poetry, and memoir charts the connections between Black transfemininity, water, language, and temporality. Their work has previously been published in Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando fromDamaged Goods Press, P-QUEUE, ode to Queer,and Peauxdunque Review. Her essay, “Transliminality: Black Transfemmes and the Limit of Visibility Politics” is published in the TransNarratives:Scholarly and Creative Works on Transgender Experiencecollected anthology. Their poetry chapbook, small colossus, was published by above/ground press in 2021.Twitter: @writing_moor IG: @butchqueenofwakanda
Beverly J. Moss is an associate professor of English at The Ohio State University where she specializes in composition and literacy studies. Professor Moss earned her B.A. in English from Spelman College, her M.A. in English with a specialization in rhetoric and composition from Carnegie-Mellon, and her Ph.D. in English with a specialization in rhetoric, composition, and literacy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her scholarly and pedagogical interests include examining literacy in African American community spaces, composition theory and pedagogy, and writing center theory and practice. She is the author of A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and A Literacy Tradition in African American Churches, co-author of Everyone’s an Author (composition textbook), editor of Literacy Across Communities, and co-editor of Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom and The Best of the Independent Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2012. Professor Moss has served on the editorial boards of College Composition and Communication and the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series and currently is on the editorial board of the Community Literacy Journal. She also serves on the advisory board of the Coalition for Community Writing and as director of Second-Year Writing at The Ohio State University. Beverly is currently writing a book on the literacy practices of Phenomenal Women Incorporated, an African American women’s service and social club. A long-time faculty member of the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English, Professor Moss is now the director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), a professional development network of current and former Bread Loaf teachers who teach primarily in public schools in rural and urban settings. Professor Moss was awarded the 2021 College Composition and Communication Exemplar Award and the 2021 Coalition for Community Writing Engaged Distinguished Scholar Award.
Gwendolyn D. Pough is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. She is the author of Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere as well as numerous essays and articles on black feminism, hip-hop, critical pedagogy and black public culture. She has co-edited several special journal issues and the critically acclaimed Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip-Hop Feminism Anthology. She is the President-Elect of the Rhetoric Society of America. And she is Past Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She writes romance fiction under the pen name Gwyneth Bolton. She has twelve novels and a novella published to date. She has won several awards for her novels.
Dr. Shamari Reid (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. As a scholar, Dr. Reid’s work explores how Black trans and queer youth and their communities sustain themselves amidst oppression, as well as how we can collaborate with these communities to better transform schools into sites of equitable opportunities for Black LGBTQ+ youth. In addition to working with Black LGBTQ+ communities to reimagine schools, Dr. Reid’s work examines radical love as a moral imperative in social justice education, and as a path toward culturally sustaining school communities. Twitter:@shamarikreid
Sherita V. Roundtree is an Assistant Professor of English at Towson University in Maryland's Baltimore-metropolitan area. Her research lies at the intersections of Composition Studies, Black feminist theories and pedagogies, community literacy, and writing program administration. Roundtree’s work recognizes graduate and early-career Black women writing educators teaching efficacy, pedagogical approaches, and "noise" in writing classrooms. More specifically, noise reflects Black women writing educators’ multivocal ways of cultivating belonging while challenging legacies of mislabeling, dehumanizing, and silencing in the spaces they both learn and teach. Roundtree also explores the complex networks of support that Black women writing educators lean on to sustain themselves and their pedagogies inside and outside of their academic institutions. Some of her work can be found in Community Literacy Journal, Writers: Craft & Context, and other forthcoming edited collections. To keep up with Roundtree’s latest work, feel free to follow her work on Twitter (@svroundtree).
Jacqueline Jones Royster is former Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology (2010- 2019); and Professor Emerita at both The Ohio State University and Georgia Tech. Herresearch focuses at the intersections of the history of rhetoric, feminist studies, and cultural studies, with interests in the connections between human and civil rights, as well as in the digital humanities. Her book publications include: Double-Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters (co-edited, 1991); Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti- Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1997; 2nd edition 2016), Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women (2000), Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003 (2003); Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture (co-edited, 2005); Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies (co-authored, 2012); one college textbook and two school textbook series. She has also authored numerous articles in rhetorical studies, literacy studies, and women’s studies. Over her career, Dr. Royster has received several prestigious awards, among them: The Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize and the Frances Andrew March Award from the Modern Language Association; the Braddock Award and the Exemplar Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication; the Winifred Bryan Horner Award from the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. She has also been named a Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America. Currently, using the lenses of rhetorical studies, cultural studies, and women’s studies, she continues to engage in research and scholarship on the socio-political work of African American women during the 19th and the 20th centuries; on the ways in which the lives and contributions of this cohort of women provide insight for the ongoing practice and evolution of democracy as a noble experiment in governance; and on the importance of local knowledge and activism in urban development and sustainability. Forthcoming in 2023 is her most recent book project: Making the World a Better Place: African American Women Advocates, Activists, and Leaders,1773-1900.
Khirsten L. Scott, PhD is an assistant professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. She is currently working on her first book, Black on the Edge: HBCU Survival Rhetorics. Using Tougaloo College as an ethnographic institutional case study, Black on the Edge engages the tools of critical discourse analysis and archival methods, with a commitment to Black feminist thought, to contribute to conversations about critical race education studies and Black rhetorical studies; it asks questions about HBCU literacies, critical narrative annotation, and the institutional narrative genre to make an argument about the ways we tell, share, and engage with HBCU stories. Dr. Scott is also Director of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and co-founder and director of DBLAC, Digital Black Literacies/Literatures and Composition, and director HYPE Media (Homewood Youth-Powered and Engaged Media), a critical literacies program for Black girls in Pittsburgh, PA.
Ṣangodare is a sweet space for transformation. Ṣangodare comes from a thick legacy of Black Baptist preachers and church leaders and activates Black Feminist sermonics. As co-founder of Mobile Homecoming, a national experiential archive project created with Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ṣangodare amplifies generations of Black LGBTQ brilliance by every generative means including using multimedia and building intergenerational family of choice across time and space. Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library & Archive is an outgrowth of Mobile Homecoming to sustain the lives and legacies of Black feminist and Mobile Homecoming elders, their legacy bearers and caregivers. Currently Sangodare is an entrepreneur in residence with ideas42 Ventures creating a technology based tool to support QTPOC community to share their gifts with the world. Ṣangodare is a retreat organizer, filmmaker, composer and entrepreneur. As co-founder of Black Feminist Film School, for more than 10yrs Ṣangodare has brought a black feminist approach to filmmaking and creative practice. Ṣangodare has been honored and featured in national press including being named one of Colorlines 10 LGBTQ Leaders building a new politics in 2012, in The Advocate magazines Top 40 under 40 and named a Southern Healing Star awardee by BEAM and Lipton in 2020/2021 (BEAM - Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective). Ṣangodare’s writing appears in a number of books and journals including Lambda literary Award nominated Mouths of Rain - Anew, No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies - Something Else To Be : Generations Of Black Queer Brilliance And The Mobile Homecoming Experiential Archive,Are the Women Still All White - Black Feminist Calculus Meets Nothing to Prove: A Mobile Homecoming Project Ritual Towards the PostDigital, to name a sampling. Ṣangodare earned an undergraduate degree in Multimedia Computer Science from UNC Asheville, a Masters in Divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology and has completed three years of coursework toward a Masters in Film Production at Georgia State University culminating in a MFA degree in Film and Media from Black Feminist Film School. Websites:sangodare.com | mobilehomecoming.org IG: sangodarejroxwallaceTwitter: @sangodarejulia Facebook: Sangodare Julia Roxanne Wallace Linked In: Sangodare Julia Wallace Vimeo:vimeo.com/sangodarefilms
Marlas Yvonne Whitley is a graduate student, currently completing her Master’s degree in English at North Carolina State University. Whitley’s research interests include visual rhetoric, aesthetics, Black Women’s Studies and American Studies, with emphasis placed on Black feminist thought, and 19th and 20th century American mass media. Her thesis, tentatively titled “A Black Woman’s Color Theory,” contemplates the importance of purple in Black women’s media, and argues that color theory can be constructed as an analytical tool for exploring the nuances, embodiments and commodifications of Black womanhood in American visual and material media. When not using her “Grad-student-brain,” as she would call it, Whitley writes nonfiction, poetry, and the occasional play. Her public work can be found on Medium.com, and her poetry is published in the Taj Mahal Review, The Windhover and The Wake Review. In addition to working on her thesis, Whitley teaches academic writing and research, is applying to PhD programs, and is self-caring herself through it all.
Anna Zeemont is an Assistant Professor of English in composition-rhetoric at SUNY Buffalo State College. She recently earned her PhD in English with a certificate in American Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Across CUNY, Anna served as a composition instructor, Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow, writing center consultant, and Teaching and Learning Center Fellow. She is passionate about student-centered, anti-oppressive, and multimodal pedagogies in practice and as tenants of her research.More broadly, Anna’s interdisciplinary scholarship draws on queer-feminist, anti-colonial, and abolitionist frameworks to interrogate the politics of literacy across educational institutions and urban geographies. Other interests include higher education activism, archival methodologies, and science and technology studies. Her publications appear in Community Literacy Journal,Kairos, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and more; she’s also Assistant Editor at the Journal of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture. She was recently awarded the Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award for work in queer and feminist studies from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Prior to starting her PhD, Anna worked in secondary education in the Bay Area, where she grew up.