Ashley Canter, a PhD candidate in the Composition and Rhetoric program, recently published an article titled, "Silently Speaking Bodies: Affective Rhetorical Resistance in Transnational Feminist Rhetoric" in Peitho, the peer-reviewed journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CFSHRC).
About the article:
Working between the continents of Africa (specifically Uganda) and North America (specifically the U.S.), this essay considers how two groups of women from different locations and cultures used their bodies to protest when their voices were ignored in order to draw attention to environmental degradation in the local communities. In each case, women physically strip themselves of clothing or hair to draw attention to the destructive strength of neoliberal political economies and the resulting land loss.
Canter earned an Advanced Feminist Studies Certificate in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and currently teaches Writing & Society in the English Department. Her dissertation research explores the ways that Appalachian women's community literacies at one non-profit organization connect to global political economic rhetorics that have led to extractive economies in the region.