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April Kinkead |
Carlisle Hall - Rm 625 |
Years of Service at UT Arlington: Graduate Teaching Assistant (2007 - present)
Education: Currently a doctoral candidate at UTA.
Current Research: I am currently researching the history of African American Oral Rhetoric: from slave narratives and Negro spirituals, to the speeches of the Civil Rights Movement, to modern rap music, and everything in between. I intend to compile the data and turn that data into a source for understanding the conventions of African American Oral Rhetoric. Henry Louis Gates Junior's Signifying Monkey helped to establish African American literary conventions. H. L. Gates, bell hooks, Geneva Smitherman, and others, have managed to compile references for understanding African American writing not only in terms of common literary conventions shared amongst African American authors, but also how African American Vernacular English contributes to these literary conventions. Given that orality weighs so heavily upon African American culture and in recent decades has begun to influence mainstream American culture, I feel it is imperative to have at our disposal a text for understanding African American oral rhetoric, much like we have texts that guide us through African American literary conventions. My hope is that by better understanding the oral rhetoric, we can (in a Heideggarian Phenomenological approach) uncover not only the beauty of the rhetoric, but more importantly its effectiveness (Aristotelian definition of rhetoric). Because of the entertainment industry, mainstream (white) America has more and more exposure to Black culture. More importantly, I believe mainstream (white) American politics will also be exposed more and more to Black Rhetoric in the near future. As the face and voice of America continues to evolve, I believe academic scholarship should help to bring about better understanding of these changes; therefore, it is necessary that we have at our disposal a complete and cohesive resource for examining, analyzing, and critiquing African American Oral Rhetoric.
Recent Publications: MA Thesis: Colorblind Fraternity: Unseating Racism, Males, and Brotherhood in Selected Works by Herman Melville [electronic resource]
Paper Presentations: 2007 CCCC: Black Bodies: Canvases for Power and Oppression Guest Speaker November 2007: Kappa Alpha Psi Open Forum “Why Do Black Men Cheat?” 2008 CCCC: African American Oratory: Systemization of the African American Oral-Rhetoric Tradition
Professional Memberships: MLA
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UT Arlington - Department of English |
