On Testimony, Bridges, and Rhetoric

On Testimony, Bridges, and Rhetoric

Peitho Volume 23 Issue 4, Summer 2021

Author(s): La-Toya Scott, Kimberly Williams, Andrea N. Baldwin, and Laura Gonzales

La-Toya Scott is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at the University of Florida. Her research interests are African American literature, Black narratives, ethnic and cultural studies, Womanism, and the intersectionality of race and gender.

Kimberly Williams is an incoming third-year doctoral student in the English Department at the University of Florida where her work encompasses Black nonbeing, Black healing, and sound studies across curatorial and literature work. You can find her theoretical work published or upcoming in Sounding Out!, Constellations: A Cultural Rhetoric Publishing Space, and Journal of the Society for American Music.

Andrea N. Baldwin is an Assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech.  She is an attorney-at-law who also holds a MSc. in International trade policy and a PhD in Gender and Development Studies. She has several publications including her most recent co-edited volume Standpoints: Black Feminist Knowledges published in 2019 (Virginia Tech Publishing), and her forthcoming monograph; A Decolonial Black Feminist Theory of Reading and Shade: Feeling the University (2022, Routledge).  Dr. Baldwin was born and raised on the small Caribbean island state of Barbados and considers herself an all-around Caribbean woman and loves everything coconut and soca.

Laura Gonzales is an Assistant Professor of Digital Writing and Cultural Rhetorics in the Department of English at the University of Florida. She researches and teaches courses on the intersections of language diversity, community engagement, and technology design. She is the author of Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach Us About Digital Writing and Rhetoric (University of Michigan Press, 2018).

Abstract: This webtext leverages the potential of digital writing to illustrate how the authors define, navigate, and practice rhetorical feminism in the academy. Four different voices layer together experiences, letters to feminist mentors, and examples of teaching in the pandemic to demonstrate how a feminism grounded in Black and Latinx praxis provides space for reflection, joy, and survivance in white supremacist academic institutions.

Tags: coalition, community, intersectional feminism, pedagogy of love