Kesha James
Assistant Professor Communication, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies- Education
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2022
MA, Auburn University, 2017
BA, Auburn University, 2015
- Specializations
Visual Rhetoric, Popular Culture, Whiteness Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Rhetorical Criticism
- Biography
Dr. James studies race, rhetoric, and media. Her research explores the ways Black speakers and media employ both discursive and visual rhetorical strategies to influence and transform understanding of race and power on a societal level. In large part, her work focuses on understanding how Black popular culture entertainment, particularly Black horror texts, disrupt the logics of the white gaze. Dr. James tracks the strategies used both to activate and subvert entrenched white ways of looking at Blackness. She identifies how such strategies invite viewers to visually consume these texts through alternative practices of looking, challenging the assumed dominant power of the white gaze in Black popular culture.
- Publications
James, K. (2020). “Audience Analysis” In Bjørn Stillion Southard (Ed.). The Art and Craft of Public Speaking (pp. 8-31). XanEdu: The University of Georgia.
James, K. (2019). Reconceptualizing Identity in Intersectionality: Using Identity to Dismantle Institutionalized Oppression in the Communication Discipline. Women’s Studies in Communication, 42 (4), 412-416. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2019.1682915