Select Research Articles
“‘It’s very Isolating:’ Discourse of Conservative Student Groups on a Liberal University Campus
Highlighting the discursive strategies (contrastive essentialism, appropriation of liberal discourse, and memeing), this ethnographic engagement discusses internal and external dynamics of young conservative in a liberal campus context.
What All Black College Students Deserve to Know About Linguistics (And The Rest of Y’all Should Know Too).
Co-authored with many scholars participating in the NSF funded Talking College Project, we engage with the need for more linguistic information to reach Black students as a critical equity issue in higher education, such that they have agency in their own linguistic and cultural destinies and also can impact the empowerment of other Black students.
Virtue Signaling and the Linguistic Repertoire of Anti-Blackness: or, “I Would Have Voted for Obama for a Third Term”
This piece is co-authored with deandre miles-hercules. Increasing commodification of progressive language in public discourse over the past four decades has resulted in users’ indexical alignment with anti-racist politics becoming unmoored from expectations of legitimate action toward dismantling white supremacy. In this essay, we describe how this process is enacted through virtue signaling—highlighting one’s morality through the use of language and other signs that invoke progressive sociopolitical values—and the ways it mobilizes the linguistic repertoire of anti-Blackness. Theorizing this behavior provides a framework to locate and confront the mechanisms that maintain white supremacy and the actors who align themselves with it.
You have never lived a day outside of your body: or, Engaging Positionality in Ethnographic Research. (under review)
This work highlights the importance of engaging with positionality in research and the methodological implications of occupying a subject position that is precariously situated within sociopolitical and institutional power dynamics.
The Importance of Undergraduate Research and Graduate Students in English Studies in the new Minority Serving Research Institution.
Co-authored with many scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, we present a model that engages graduate students in English studies in undergraduate research mentorship positions that are mutually beneficial for graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty. We show how our model can be adapted across the range of English studies disciplines and share examples of the different types of research that the authors have engaged in for linguistics, literary archival studies, creative writing, and writing pedagogy.
Empowering African-American Student Voices in College. In Reconceptualizing the Role of Critical Dialogue
Co-authored with Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Erin L. Berry-McCrea, this chapter contributes to research that seeks to create more socially just and equitable environments in higher edu- cation, particularly for African-American students as a highly underrepresented population, especially at elite universities.
Conversation in the classroom.
Co-authored with CSU San Jose Education Professor Carrie Holmberg, we discusses on of the dynamics of classroom participation, and some strategies to create a more equitable classroom environment.
