About the Authors
Vanessa Aguilar is a Kansas City native who received a B.A. in English at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and M.A. at Emporia State University. Currently, she is a dual degree doctoral student in Chicano/Latino Studies and English at Michigan State University. Her work is dedicated to all those who have been pushed into the margins.
Stephany Bravo is a second-year doctoral student at Michigan State University pursuing a dual degree in English and Chicano/Latino Studies. She is the curator of "The Hub City Photo Archive," a digital archive that documents the shifting landscapes of Compton; an inaugural MUSE Scholar; and a University Enrichment Fellow.
Dr. Todd Craig is an associate professor of English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Medgar Evers College (CUNY), and also teaches in the African American Studies Department at New York City College of Technology (CUNY). He teaches courses in writing, rhetoric, Hip-Hop Studies, and always uses all caps when spelling the man's name (MF DOOM).
Magnolia Landa-Posas was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado, to a proud Mexican immigrant family. She earned her B.A. from the University of Colorado Boulder in Ethnic Studies. Currently, she is Student Voice and Leadership Coordinator for Denver Public schools, designing and leading youth learning and civic engagement.
Jared D. Milburn, also known as Illy Maine, is an artist, scholar, and filmmaker raised in Detroit, Michigan—in a very religious, gospel-led family/community. He was brought up to love the arts, language and community, and inherited the quest to spread love and joy to others as much as possible. He has Master's and Bachelor's degrees from Michigan State University and a Bachelor's in Religious Education from Union Baptist Seminary.
Emery Petchauer is an associate professor in the Departments of English and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His scholarship explores the aesthetic practices of hip-hop arts and their connections to teaching, learning, and living. He has over 20 years of experience as an artist/organizer building creative spaces for youth.
Eric Manuel Rodriguez is a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. His research weaves together cultural rhetorics, technical writing, and the rhetoric of health and medicine. Rodriguez has worked as graduate assistant for the Building Healthcare Collectives, a project funded by Humanities without Walls that seeks to build interdisciplinary capacity between academics and medical practitioners.
Dr. Cecilia Angélica Valenzuela researches sonic and embodied approaches to explore the listening and multimodal literacy practices of Latinx people in the U.S. Currently, she is a Carlos Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Mexican American Studies and Latino Studies at the University of Texas Austin.
Crystal VanKooten, member of the planning committee for SSRW 2020 and Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University, worked to format this webtext in collaboration with the authors. Dr. VanKooten's scholarship focuses on digital media composition through engagement with how technologies shape composition practices, pedagogy, and research. Her digital book, Transfer across Media: Using Digital Video in the Teaching of Writing, is available from Computers and Composition Digital Press.