Intersectional rhetorics of racism, resistance, and feminist world-making.
This course engages with materials that address racism, colonial violence, gender-based violence, incarceration, surveillance, environmental destruction, and systemic oppression. These topics are central to our inquiry and are treated with care. If at any point you need support, please reach out to the instructor or campus resources. Your wellbeing matters.
In the "Antiracist Rhetorics & Feminist Worldmaking" course, anti-racism is not a singular issue or isolated concern, but a radical act of love, care, respect, kindness, and solidarity. It is envisioned as a collective and liberatory project—an ongoing, rigorous interrogation of systems and structures that shape our world. Anchored in intersectional feminist thought, this course approaches anti-racism as a sustained intellectual, emotional, and embodied practice that recognizes how people experience shared spaces and institutions in deeply unequal and unjust ways. To borrow from Audre Lorde, "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives."
Accordingly, anti-racism in this course is necessarily anti-heteronormativity, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. It is rooted in social and global justice, linguistic justice, geo-political justice, disability justice, reproductive justice, and environmental justice—just to name a few. Through this expansive and intersectional lens, this course invites students to confront pressing questions: Why should a course on the rhetorics of racism and anti-racism matter—not only academically, but ethically and politically—to the world, to the planet, and to the people with whom we coexist, knowingly or not? What kinds of social, political, and personal transformations might we dare to envision through this work? And despite our embeddedness in institutional and bureaucratic structures that are far from equitable, how can courses like this become sites of collective inquiry, care, and possibility?
The guiding theoretical and methodological framework of this course is comparative anti-racist rhetorics. This means we will deliberately and critically cross colonial and imperial borders—until those borders become irrelevant in our anti-racist, feminist, and decolonial solidarities. We will learn not just from scholarly texts, but also from social media pages, musicians, artists, activists, political speeches, biographical narratives, community-led archives, and digital multimodal storytelling projects. Drawing from the lived knowledges and rhetorical practices of marginalized and resisting communities across the globe, this course centers grassroots anti-racist feminist movements that insist on collective survival, radical imagination, and liberation beyond empire.
How can we live and act in ways that honor the full humanity and dignity of ourselves and others—especially those whose lives, bodies, and voices are often marginalized or erased? What does it mean to create space for collective flourishing across difference?
How might our professional, personal, public, pedagogical, social media, and institutional practices contribute to transforming slogans like "Black lives matter," "Brown lives matter," "Indigenous lives matter," "Muslim lives matter," "Asian lives matter," and "Global South lives matter" into material conditions of justice, safety, and liberation—locally and globally?
In what ways do systems of colonialism, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and environmental injustice structure everyday life—and how can rhetorical practice serve as a method for confronting, refusing, and reimagining those systems?
What responsibilities do we carry—as students, teachers, cultural workers, or members of communities—in building solidarities that cross borders, identities, and disciplines? How can we center relational accountability in our anti-racist and feminist praxes?
Total Points: 485 · Note: The syllabus is subject to change. The number of posts is contingent upon the semester, and so are the points.
| Assignments | Deliverables | Points | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low Stakes | Reading Response | 65 | Once a week |
| Low Stakes | Scaffolding Assignments | 120 | Once a week |
| 1st Major Assignment | Project Proposal | 50 | Check the course calendar & Canvas |
| 2nd Major Assignment | Anti-racist Feminist Rhetorical Analysis | 100 | Check the course calendar & Canvas |
| 3rd Major Assignment | Final Project | 150 | Check the course calendar & Canvas |
In this first major assignment, you will craft a Solidarity Praxis Proposal—a semester-long inquiry centered on a movement, archive, rhetorical artifact, or community project connected to anti-racist feminist resistance. Your task is to name the struggle you are drawn to, clarify the political stakes, and outline how you plan to study it as both a researcher and participant in world-making.
This proposal should identify a topic that will anchor your work throughout the semester and potentially grow into your final project, which may take the form of:
Choose a topic that emerges from your lived commitments—something urgent, something you feel in your bones. Your research and reflection should not only analyze power but amplify resistance.
Choose a specific site where anti-racist feminist rhetoric is active. Your focus could include:
Where does your chosen artifact, archive, or movement live? Who created it, and who is it for? What histories, locations, and communities are involved? Identify its rhetorical features and context.
How does this topic illuminate the intersections of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, and other structures of domination? Why does this topic matter now—and to whom?
Develop two to three compelling questions that will guide your inquiry. For example:
Describe how you will study your topic across borders—disciplinary, geopolitical, or ideological. What methods might you use? What kinds of sources or communities will you engage?
Your proposal will be evaluated on:
This assignment builds on your Solidarity Praxis Proposal and prepares you for your final creative or research project. It invites you to engage deeply with a site of rhetorical resistance to understand how it generates meaning, solidarity, and collective power across borders and identities. You are expected to treat rhetoric not just as persuasion, but as world-making—a form of action that reveals, resists, and reimagines systemic oppression.
This analytical essay centers a rhetorical artifact, archive, or cluster of materials—such as a protest chant, manifesto, digital campaign, oral history, speech, or cultural production—that mobilizes resistance against racism, empire, and related structures of violence. You will critically examine how the selected artifact operates rhetorically through language, aesthetics, embodiment, media, and performance. Your work should be grounded in a transnational, anti-racist feminist framework and draw on theories from class readings such as intersectionality, decoloniality, abolition, and queer of color critique.
Analyze the rhetorical strategies used. Consider elements such as:
Situate the artifact within a broader political and cultural context. Address questions such as:
Use MLA or APA to cite all referenced materials. Include a complete Works Cited page.
This final assignment invites you to create a justice-oriented, multimodal intervention that builds upon your semester-long research and rhetorical inquiry. The project should center the principles of anti-racist feminist world-making and serve as a form of solidarity praxis.
You will produce a creative and critical final project—such as a digital zine, short film, podcast, interactive map, educational toolkit, social media archive, community resource, or traditional research paper—that applies intersectional rhetorical strategies to imagine otherwise. Your work should be rooted in care, transformation, collectivity, and a desire to rupture dominant systems of racial capitalism, imperialism, cisheteropatriarchy, and settler colonialism.
Your project must demonstrate the following:
This assignment is your invitation to think, create, and communicate otherwise. It is your offering to the worlds we are trying to build together.
Final Project (100 pts.)
Class Presentation (50 pts.)
Length: 5-10 mins. Your presentation must have:
This option invites you to write a research-based academic paper that explores a key issue or initiative related to anti-racist feminist resistance. The paper should not only analyze rhetorical practices in context but also offer your own justice-oriented intervention—rooted in solidarity, care, and a desire to transform existing systems.
Your work should engage with intersectional, anti-imperialist, and transnational feminist frameworks, demonstrating how rhetorical strategies are used to resist and reimagine beyond the confines of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy.
This paper calls on you to:
1. Introduction (1–2 pages):
2. Rhetorical Analysis (5–7 pages):
3. Justice-Oriented Recommendations (2–3 pages):
4. Conclusion (1–2 pages):
5. Works Cited (Required):
Use MLA or APA style. Include only sources cited directly in the paper, including course texts and independent research.
Format and Submission:
Evaluation Criteria:
This project invites you to directly engage with a community organization or collective addressing issues of racism, anti-imperialism, and liberation. Through action research, you will combine academic inquiry with ethical and collaborative fieldwork to document, support, and reflect on community-driven antiracist feminist efforts.
This project centers solidarity, accountability, and critical praxis. It asks you not only to study a movement or organization but to work alongside it—building relationships, learning from embodied knowledge, and contributing meaningfully to its work. Your final submission will document both your academic analysis and your contributions to the organization.
Project Proposal (1–2 pages)
Before beginning your final project, you will submit a proposal for instructor approval that includes:
Fieldwork Journal (ongoing)
Throughout your engagement, you will maintain a reflective journal documenting:
Your journal may include informal reflections, analytic insights, dialogue excerpts (with consent), and field notes.
Final Report (6–10 pages; excluding work cited)
Your report will synthesize fieldwork, academic theory, and critical analysis. It should include:
Introduction (1–2 pages):
Analysis of Practices (2–3 pages):
What You Did (2–3 pages):
Conclusion and Recommendations (1–2 pages):
Works Cited:
Submission Guidelines:
Evaluation Criteria:
Getting Started:
This assignment invites you to creatively communicate your analysis of antiracist practices and recommendations using a digital or multimodal format. You may choose from the formats below or propose an alternative format of your own that aligns with the goals of this course.
Each project must:
You must submit a short-written statement alongside your project. It should include:
All projects must include a Works Cited page that lists your sources in APA or MLA style. Multimedia sources, interviews, and community materials must be cited appropriately.