I study the intersection of rhetoric, race, and religion. Grounded in a multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary understanding of scholarship, I study African American public address and rhetorical criticism, prophetic rhetoric, and rhetorical theology along with political rhetoric, critical race theory, and religious and hip-hop studies.
Below is a list of my current and former graduate students who have joined me on this journey.
#COMMStudyWithUs
Current Ph.D.Students (Advisor)
Natonya Listach
Natonya is an instructor of communication at Middle Tennessee State University. Her interests lie in rhetoric, gender, and instructional communication with a focus on the rhetoric and pedagogy of African American women.
I am interested in focusing on the influence and impact of various African American women (Hallie Quinn Brown, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Juanita Williamson) on African American rhetoric. I am particularly interested not only in their impact on their own contemporary rhetors and speakers but how they impacted African American rhetoric as a whole while remaining largely unknown and rarely included in discussions. I will use information from their textbooks, papers, and speeches to complete a rhetorical memory project that shows their impact on rhetoric and society.
Publications:
(with Andre E. Johnson) "Women, step forward!" Doing Rhetorical Historiography by Exploring Womanist Leadership in the AME Church. In Annette Madlock Gatison (ed). Womanist Ethical Rhetoric: A Call for Liberation and Social Justice in Turbulent Times. Lexington Books, 2020)
Natonya is an instructor of communication at Middle Tennessee State University. Her interests lie in rhetoric, gender, and instructional communication with a focus on the rhetoric and pedagogy of African American women.
RESEARCH AGENDA:
I am interested in focusing on the influence and impact of various African American women (Hallie Quinn Brown, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Juanita Williamson) on African American rhetoric. I am particularly interested not only in their impact on their own contemporary rhetors and speakers but how they impacted African American rhetoric as a whole while remaining largely unknown and rarely included in discussions. I will use information from their textbooks, papers, and speeches to complete a rhetorical memory project that shows their impact on rhetoric and society.
Publications:
(with Andre E. Johnson) "Women, step forward!" Doing Rhetorical Historiography by Exploring Womanist Leadership in the AME Church. In Annette Madlock Gatison (ed). Womanist Ethical Rhetoric: A Call for Liberation and Social Justice in Turbulent Times. Lexington Books, 2020)
Celnisha L. Dangerfield
C.L. Dangerfield is an award-winning educator with nearly 20 years of experience in the classroom. Her research aligns at the intersection of race, identity, and rhetoric–with an occasional homage to hip-hop culture. Expanding her scholarship to include more prominent considerations of gender, faith, and digital media, she seeks to interrogate spaces of oppression to offer “voice,” visibility, and a renewed sense of authority to those that might otherwise be dismissed.
Dangerfield has earned degrees in Speech Communication from Clark Atlanta University and Penn State, as well as a graduate certificate in Writing and Digital Communication from Agnes Scott College. She is now in the Ph.D. program in Communication Studies at the University of Memphis.
Publications:
Lauryn Hill as Lyricist and Womanist. In Ronald Jackson, II & Elaine Richardson (eds). Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations. New York, NY; Routledge; 2003, pp. 209-221
C.L. Dangerfield is an award-winning educator with nearly 20 years of experience in the classroom. Her research aligns at the intersection of race, identity, and rhetoric–with an occasional homage to hip-hop culture. Expanding her scholarship to include more prominent considerations of gender, faith, and digital media, she seeks to interrogate spaces of oppression to offer “voice,” visibility, and a renewed sense of authority to those that might otherwise be dismissed.
Dangerfield has earned degrees in Speech Communication from Clark Atlanta University and Penn State, as well as a graduate certificate in Writing and Digital Communication from Agnes Scott College. She is now in the Ph.D. program in Communication Studies at the University of Memphis.
Publications:
Lauryn Hill as Lyricist and Womanist. In Ronald Jackson, II & Elaine Richardson (eds). Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations. New York, NY; Routledge; 2003, pp. 209-221
(with Ronald L. Jackson II) "Defining Black Masculinity as Cultural Property: Toward an Identity Negotiation Paradigm." In Ronald L. Jackson (ed). African American Communication & Identities: Essential Readings, 2004, pp. 197-208.
Lionnell Smith, affectionately known as Badu, is a 2018 Fulbright-Hays Fellows, recipient of the 2018 Monica Pombo Early Career Teaching Award, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Memphis. His research centers on critical intercultural communication studies with particular emphasis on language and identity and critical communication pedagogy. He is a member of the Carolinas Communication Association, the Southern States Communication Association, and the National Communication Association.
RESEARCH AGENDA:
My research interests focus on two sub-disciplinary areas: 1) critical intercultural communication studies, and 2) critical [communication] pedagogy. My interests within the former area center on African American Communication and Culture with particular emphasis on language, culture/race, and identity. Within the latter area, I am interested in the instructional discourses inherent in critical pedagogies, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, and liberatory education practices. For clarity, I bracket communication as I prefer to situate myself and my scholarship within the broader conversation on critical pedagogy. In this way, I am able to deposit to and withdraw from that conversation as a communication scholar to facilitate my research agenda. Essentially, I am interested in understanding the ways through which pedagogy and instructional discourse can be weaponized to respond to the socio-politics of cultural and linguistic hegemony in education.
My research brings communicationists, ethno/racio/sociolinguists, and educationists into conversation with each other to explore the role language play in expressing and sustaining African American culture, particularly (but not limited to) within the educational context. Currently, my language focus is African American Language (AAL) which has been defined as a “language form with a unique and logical syntax, semantic system, and grammar (Hecht, Jackson, and Ribeau, 2003, p. 144). As Piller (2011) notes, language “offers us concepts for experiencing the world around us–and different languages sometimes offer different concepts for perceiving and experiencing the world around us” (p. 37). The problem, as I see it, is that many minoritized languages—such as AAL—are endangered as the struggle for their survival continues on the inequitable terrain of whiteness and western thought. I aim to challenge linguistic hegemony in education by advocating for the legitimacy and cultural capital of African American languages and literacies. Given this, I hope to establish as a research agenda the development of a pedagogical framework founded on African American communication and rhetoric.
For my dissertation, I am interested in developing an Afrocultural pedagogy that I call mission-oriented pedagogy. This framework draws on what Johnson (2012) calls the African American prophetic tradition. Johnson (2012) defines mission-oriented prophecy as a “constitutive rhetoric that calls a people to participate in a divine mission by reconstituting the people from their perceived identities” (p. 13). A mission-oriented prophecy finds the constructed identities [of a people] problematic and offers and new vision or identity for the people. In the same respect, mission-oriented pedagogy is indeed a constitutive rhetoric, or [instructional] discourse, that invites students to participate in the divine mission of a liberatory, emancipatory education which affirms cultural identities through critical literacy and community. Like Johnson, I am not interested in focusing on educators as “prophets” as much as I am interested in the ways in which instruction functions as a prophetic discourse. By implementing a mission-oriented pedagogy, educators take on a prophetic persona to facilitate education as a practice of freedom (hooks, 1994).
Pierre is a native of Jackson, MS, was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, and is a licensed attorney who entered the legal profession as a judicial law clerk in the New Jersey Superior Court and was later a trial attorney in Philadelphia, PA, for 17 years. After teaching at night while practicing law by day, Pierre decided to teach, because teachers build people up and lawyers cut them down which was antithetical to his spirit. He has sat on the faculties of Community College of Philadelphia, Temple University, Delaware County Community College, DE, and he is currently an Instructor of Speech Communication at Middle TN State University for 14 years. He holds a Juris Doctor from Syracuse U. College of Law, an M.A. in Speech Communication from Syracuse U., an M.P.A. from Golden Gate U., and B.A. in English/French from Howard University.
RESEARCH AGENDA:
His research interest centers on the examination of the Black eulogy.
Jason Mikel began his doctoral studies at the University of Memphis's Department of Communication and Film in the fall of 2020. He is an ordained and full-time pastor in the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination and is the founder of the Nashville Burrito Ministry, a weekly meal with Nashville's unhoused where dignity and community are emphasized. In addition, he serves on the Board of Trustees of Memphis Theological Seminary. Jason is married to Suzanne, a psychiatric RN, and they have four boys between them, one of which is the father to two adorable grandsons.
RESEARCH AGENDA:
Jason's research interests include the intersection of faith, culture, and politics in the rhetoric of the southern white evangelical church, an interest gained from years in parish ministry. Current research focuses on rediscovering the writings and work of Claude Clossey Williams, an early and mid-1900s Arkansas labor organizer who centered his work on the Christian Bible. Further research includes the Desert Blues of North Africa's Tuareg people and the effects of western influence on their culture and music.
Solomon W. Cochren is a native of Long Island, New York. He was a primary educator in the New York school district. Cochren holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Communication, a Master of Divinity from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. He was awarded The Theodore Louis Trost Memorial Prize and named Presidential Scholar and a Master of Theology from Duke University. He is a current doctoral student at the University of Memphis. Solomon is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, and NAACP. He is serving as an ordained Elder in the A.M.E. Zion Church.
RESEARCH AGENDA:
Solomon's research interests are in the media sector, focusing on topics of race, gender, identity, and rhetoric. He is interested in expanding the conversation of Hip Hop as a continued expression of freedom songs found in the spirituals and the Blues (The B-Side). Another research interest is the practice of meaning/identity making in American culture through media and how these practices are weaponized and used against communities of color and those who live on the margins. Unpacking how meaning/identity-making is used to build bridges of inclusion and barriers of exclusion in society.
Degan Loren (Communication)
Laura Sullivan (Communication)
Chicago Theological Seminary
Ph.D. in Religious Studies
Lawrence (Larry) Green
I also serve as a member of the following committees:
University of Memphis
Jonathan Smith (Communication)
Degan Loren (Communication)
Laura Sullivan (Communication)
Andre Favors (Communication)
Angela Smith Kuykendoll (Leadership)
Christian Theological Seminary
Ph.D. in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric
R. Janae Pitts-Murdock
Gina Stewart
Justin West
William (Bill) Lamar IV
R. Janae Pitts-Murdock
Gina Stewart
Justin West
William (Bill) Lamar IV
Moya Marie Harris
Jennifer Carner
Eugene "Geno" Gipson
Chicago Theological Seminary
Ph.D. in Religious Studies
Lawrence (Larry) Green
