Dr. Toniesha L. Taylor
Department Chair and Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, School of Communication at Texas Southern University
Womanist Rhetoric, African American Communication and Culture, Twitter and Social Media Analytics, Black Digital Culture and Social Movements.
Bio
I spend my days in formalized curiosity as a Scholar Administrator. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, School of Communication at Texas Southern University. My research foci in African American, Religion, Intercultural, Gender, and Digital Humanities.
I've cultivated my interest throughout my doctoral work at Bowling Green State University where I completed my Ph.D. in Communication Studies with a focus on Rhetoric in 2009. My research, conference presentations, and publications speak to diverse interests. Recent research and conference presentations include discussions on womanist rhetoric as method and theory; practical social justice pedagogy for faculty and students; and digital humanities methods implications for activist recovery projects.
Publications include “Saving Sound, Sounding Black and Voicing America: John Lomax and the Creation of the “American Voice” in Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog, June 8, 2015, http://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/06/08/john-lomax-and-the-creation-of-the-american-voice/
and a co-authored essay with Amy E. Earhart titled “Pedagogies of Race: Digital Humanities in the Age of Ferguson” in Debates in Digital Humanities, 2016, ed. by Lauren Klein and Matthew Gold. Recently, I contributed “Reflections on Sandra Bland on the 3rd Anniversary of Her Death” to the Online Roundtable on Sandra Bland, Black Perspectives, July 13, 2018, aaihs.org and in 2019 “Dear Nice White Ladies, A Womanist Response to Intersectional Feminism and Sexual Violence” to the forum in Women and Language 42, no. 1 (Spring 2019).
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.
Research Interests
My primary research agenda focuses on African American Oral and Rhetorical History and digital humanities. My published research focuses on the use of emerging and traditional media in the construction of identity and social justice. In privileging Black women’s narratives of identity my research continues to examine the ways in which African American women construct identity and community through preaching, intellectual pursuits, social activism, and lived experience.
Education
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Communication Studies
Ph. D. May 2009
San Jose State University, California
Speech-Communication
M. A. May 2002
California State University, San Marcos
Communication and Liberal Studies
Minor: History
B. A. May 1999
Publications
2021. “Signifying Shade as we #RaceTogether drinking our #NewStarbucksDrink “White Privilege
Americana Extra Whip”.” In The Digital Black Atlantic, edited by Roopika Risam and Kelly
Josephs.
2020. “Social Justice.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, edited by Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers. Modern
Language Association. https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org
2019. “We Speak, We Make, We Tinker: Afrofuturism as Applied Digital Humanities.” In The Black
Speculative Arts Movement: Afrofuturism, Art+Design, edited by Reynaldo Anderson and Clint
Fluker Lexington Press.
2019. “World Making or World Breaking?: A Black Womanist Perspective on Social Media Crises in
Higher Education.” Communication Education 68, no. 3 (July 3, 2019): 381–85. https://doi.org/
10.1080/03634523.2019.1607884
2019. “Dear nice white ladies, A Womanist Response to Intersectional Feminism and Sexual
Violence.” Women and Language 42, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 187–90. doi:10.34036/WL.2019.022.
2018. “Reflections on SandraBland on the 3rd Anniversary of Her Death.” to the Online Roundtable
on Sandra Bland, Black Perspectives, July 13, 2018, https://www.aaihs.org/reflections-on-sandrabland-on-the-3rd-anniversary-of-her-death/
2017. “Review of the Book Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, by R. Anderson & C. E. Jones.
Iowa Journal of Communication 49 (2): 194-97.
Earhart, Amy E. and Toniesha L. Taylor. 2016. "Pedagogies of Race: Digital Humanities in the Age of
Ferguson." In Debates in Digital Humanities, 2016, edited by Lauren Klein and Matthew Gold,
251-264. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/
text/72
2015. “Saving Sound, Sounding Black and Voicing America: John Lomax and the Creation of the
“American Voice”.” Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog, June 8, 2015,
soundstudiesblog.com/2015/06/08/john-lomax-and-the-creation-of-the-american-voice
2014. "Black Women, Thou Art Produced! Tyler Perry’s Gosperella Productions: A Womanist
Critique." In Interpreting Tyler Perry: Perspectives on Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by
Jamel Bell and Ronald L. Jackson, II, 196-221. New York, Routledge.
2013. “Transformative Womanist Rhetorical Strategies: Contextualizing Discourse and the
Performance of Black Bodies of Desire.” In Understanding Blackness through Performance:
April 2020 Toniesha L. Taylor, page 2Contemporary Arts and the Representation of Identity, edited by Anne Crémieux, Xavier Lemoine and Jean-Paul Rocchi, 41-55. London: Palgrave.
Taylor, Toniesha L. & Johnson, Amber L. 2011. "Class, Meet Race”: A Critical Re-scripting of the
Black Body Through Ghetto and Bourgeois Characters in American Film." In Masculinity in the
Black Imagination: Contemporary Narratives and Representations of Black Men, edited by Ronald L.
Jackson, II & Mark Hopson 113-128. New York: Peter Lang Press.
August 2011. What is Reproductive Justice? In A. Johnson (Ed.) Reproductive Racism? Retrieved from
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2011/08/25/what-reproductive-justice
2010. “Womanism.” In Encyclopedia of Identity, Vol. 2., edited by Ronald L. Jackson, II, 888-893.
Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications.