African American Public Address Pre-Conference
at the
National Communication Association Conference in Baltimore, Maryland
Place: Baltimore Convention Center
Room: 344 (300 Level)
**The conference is free, but you must register. If you are interested in attending the conference, when you register for NCA, please sign up for the conference as well. If you are not attending NCA but would like to attend the pre-conference, sign up here.
***To see the other panels, click here
Official Social Media Hashtag:
#AAPA2019
Panel Three: 1:00pm-2:15pm
Title: Womanist Rhetorical Theory and Criticism
Chair:
Ayo Morton
Twitter: @KimberlyPJohns2
Dr. Kimberly P. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies concentration area at Tennessee State University. She brings to the Department of Communication, her areas of specialization; Political, Religious, and African American Rhetoric, Rhetorical Criticism, Cultural Criticism and Womanism. Dr. Johnson has presented her research at professional communication associations such as the National Communication Association, Rhetoric Society of America, Southern States Communication Association, and the Tennessee Communication Association. She is the author of The Womanist Preacher: Proclaiming Womanist Rhetoric from the Pulpit (Lexington Books, 2017) and currently working on a womanist reader.
Paper Title: Womanist Preaching and Redemptive Self-Love
Tiffany J. Bell, Valparaiso University
The lines in this poem illuminate Ntozake Shange’s rhetorical impulse to give voice to the Black Woman’s story. In addition to the Black Woman's voice generally, this poem also gives voice to her own private struggles projected into a public space in order to empower, enlighten, and educate. In 1974, Ntozake (pronounced In-ta-za-key) Shange used what is called a choreopoem to give voice to the Black woman in her work, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.” According to Shange, a “choreopoem” is a combination of poetry, prose, rhythm, and physical movement, and is performed on a stage (Shange, 1977). Fittingly, the choreopoem was developed to creatively recover and legitimize the importance of the Black female’s perspective. Shange used the choreopoem as a rhetorical instrument to highlight and vocalize the struggles and dilemmas of women of color. She states that her own "solo voice began its journey to many voices,” as she explored the use of the choreopoem (Shange 2010). Shange used the frame of Womanism to voice the struggles of Black women. Although she states she is a black feminist, womanism and black feminism are frequently interchangeable. Womanism “voices” the commonality of women and their struggles regardless of their age, material status, social status, sexual orientation, and religion. Using the choreopoem, Shange challenges the discourse surrounding Black women and encourages them to create their own voice as they choose, not the dominant discourse. In this manner, she changes the dynamic of discourse and makes it possible for society to hear voices that are new and different.
In this presentation, I examine three primary themes taken up by three different Black female authors. Written directly before or during the first wave of womanist scholarship, the importance of these narratives go beyond communication scholarship, either in composition or speech departments, as they build a qualitative and quantitative body of discourse to persuade audiences of the importance of womanism as a method of inquiry. The narratives I will study are Toni Cade Bombara’s Gorilla, My Love; Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café; and Alice Walker’s Coming Apart. The three themes I will consider weaved within each of these texts are: 1) Black women’s [and the men around them] identity formation in the midst of a society oppressing them in three socially stratified dimensions; 2) womanist maternal thought as an ideal for Afrocentric mothering; and 3) Black women’s literature as a site for doing womanist rhetorical theory. In order to do this, I will foreground my analysis with a brief summary of each text, highlighting significant scenes and characters to foreground information to frame this study.
A. Madlock-Gatison, Independent Scholar
Twitter: @PNKBLKProject
Instagram
Dr. A. Madlock Gatison is an independent scholar and university professor. Gatison completed her doctoral work in Communication and Culture at Howard University. She is an award-winning author with over 40 publications and over 45 national and international professional presentations and workshops. Dr. Gatison’s notable publications include Health Communication and Breast Cancer Among Black Women: Culture, Identity, Spirituality, and Strength (Lexington Books, 2018) with Lexington Books and Communicating Women's Health: Social and Cultural Norms that Influence Health Decisions (Routledge, 2018)
African American women now stand in a historic moment that gives the appearance of having a voice socially and politically, what Patricia Hill Collins calls “symbolic inclusion.” A type of inclusion in spaces where our words are welcome, but our physical presence at times is not. From community activists, journalists, politicians, pundits and a Black woman who once occupied the White House Black women have made their way into a variety of sociopolitical spaces once off-limits yet still hostile. The question is, how does one make room for the total presence of the Black woman. The former First Lady Michelle Obama has been the subject of various studies that examine her identity, personhood, and crafted image through an intersectional lens of race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status that test and contest her presence in closed and public spaces. This essay examines the former FLOTUS as a womanist rhetorician in those spaces and her ability to craft narratives that motivate and engage her audiences. Nvivo is the data analysis tool used to code Michelle Obama’s speeches, interviews, and social media messages for themes that provide a voice and affirmation to the lived experience of Black women. Words that reject oppression and are committed to social justice (Katie Geneva Cannon, 1988).
Paper Title: Michelle Obama Womanist Rhetorician
African American women now stand in a historic moment that gives the appearance of having a voice socially and politically, what Patricia Hill Collins calls “symbolic inclusion.” A type of inclusion in spaces where our words are welcome, but our physical presence at times is not. From community activists, journalists, politicians, pundits and a Black woman who once occupied the White House Black women have made their way into a variety of sociopolitical spaces once off-limits yet still hostile. The question is, how does one make room for the total presence of the Black woman. The former First Lady Michelle Obama has been the subject of various studies that examine her identity, personhood, and crafted image through an intersectional lens of race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status that test and contest her presence in closed and public spaces. This essay examines the former FLOTUS as a womanist rhetorician in those spaces and her ability to craft narratives that motivate and engage her audiences. Nvivo is the data analysis tool used to code Michelle Obama’s speeches, interviews, and social media messages for themes that provide a voice and affirmation to the lived experience of Black women. Words that reject oppression and are committed to social justice (Katie Geneva Cannon, 1988).
Instagram: drtonieshat
Toniesha L. Taylor is a Department Chair and Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Texas Southern University. Her research melds the boundaries of African American Studies, Afrofuturism Studies, Intercultural Communication, Gender Communication, and Digital Humanities.
Toniesha’s recent research and conference presentations center womanist rhetoric as method and theory; practical social justice pedagogy for faculty and students; and digital humanities methods for activist recovery projects. Recently, Dr. Taylor contributed “Reflections on Sandra Bland on the 3rd Anniversary of Her Death” to the Online Roundtable on Sandra Bland, Black Perspectives, July 13, 2018, and “World Making or World Breaking?: A Black Womanist Perspective on Social Media Crises in Higher Education” in Communication Education 68, no. 3 (July 3, 2019): 381–85.
Dr. Taylor is working with colleagues on a project focused on communication, policing, intervention and public engagement in urban and rural communities. Dr. Taylor is an affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at NYU and a National Teaching partner for the Colored Conventions Project.
