Worship of the written word – dismantling white supremacy culture.

Image taken from White Supremacy Culture (https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/)

This week’s show we explore white supremacy culture, and talked to two professors of writing and rhetoric from CU Boulder, Dr. Steve Lamos and Dr. Gabriela Rios about the methods they use to combat white supremacy culture within themselves and empowered their students to resist it.

Steve Lamos is an Associate Professor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and the English Department at the University of Colorado-Boulder. His work focuses on issues of race and racism within U.S. college-level writing instruction, particularly in the context of “basic writing” programs; on issues of teaching-track labor in contemporary U.S. writing programs; and on novel forms of literate becoming at the intersection of the sonic and the alphabetic.

Lamos’ published work includes the book Interests and Opportunities: Race, Racism, and University Writing Instruction in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Pitt UP, 2011), winner of a 2013 “Special Commendation” from the Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award committee; the essay “Toward Job Security for Teaching-Track Composition Faculty: Recognizing and Rewarding Affective-Labor-in-Space,” which won the 2016 Richard C. Ohmann prize for outstanding essay in College English; and a range of pieces in College Composition and Communication, College English, Journal of Basic Writing, Writing Program Administration, Composition Studies, and several edited collections.

Lamos’ current book project is tentatively titled Resonant Rhythms: Drumming, Writing, and Professing a Literate Life.  It explores intersections between his academic work and his work as the drummer and trumpet player for the indie / emo band American Football.  American Football is routinely included among the most influential emo artists of all time by Rolling Stone, Spin, NME, Kerrang!, Vulture, Stereogum, The Guardian, Alternative Press, Pitchfork, NPR, Brooklyn Vegan, and many others.

Gabriela Raquel Rìos is an assistant professor of cultural rhetorics with a joint appointment in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and the English Department. As a Chicana rhetorician, her work focuses on rebuilding and reclaiming indigenous Chicanx/a/o rhetorics. Using decolonial and anticolonial frameworks, her published work has looked at how Indigenous peoples resist ongoing colonization and critically examines how indigeneity and indigenous knowledge circulates in social movements and public discourses. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Rhetoric Review and Rhetoric Society Quarterly as well as several book collections such as Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latino/a Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy; Indigenous Pop: Contemporary Native American Music of the 20th Century​; and Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching Indigenous Rhetorics​.​  She is currently work on a book project titled Indigenous Genres of the Human: Locating the Intersections of Indigeneity and Latinidad.