Dr. Jaquetta Shade-Johnson’s research investigates the constellative knowledge production and rhetorical practices of meaning-making within cultural communities. At the intersections of cultural rhetorics, Indigenous studies, digital storytelling, and environmental humanities, her research is primarily focused on how First American communities make meaning through rhetorical, embodied, material, and storied relationships with the land. Her current book project is an archival, embodied, and Land-based autoethnographic historiography which addresses the the rhetorical erasure and recoding of Cherokee matrilineal and matriarchal identities as patrilineal and patriarchal from the Assimilation Era to the present day to illuminate impacts of an imposed patriarchal structure on clan identity and matrilineal power. Her work has appeared in journals including Spark: a 4C4Equality Journal and the Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies.
keywords
cultural rhetorics, embodiment, materiality, digital storytelling, environmental humanities, decolonial theory, anticolonial practice, Indigenous rhetoric, multimodal composition
ENGL 3830 - Topics in Advanced Writing and Research
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2025
This reading and writing-intensive course provides students with the resources necessary to conceive, propose, and execute their own research projects. This course will introduce students to a range of critical methods in the study of literature and culture, while offering a writing-intensive experience in a small seminar environment. Readings for the course may include novels, poems, films, or other media as well as relevant historical and critical commentary. The topic of the course will vary.
ENGL 4717 - Native American and Indigenous Studies Capstone Seminar
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2025
Engages a wide range of NAIS methodologies with a series of case studies. Focuses on print, visual, and digital texts encompassing wide swathe of Eurowestern disciplines, while seeking to recuperate and restore Indigenous epistemic practices within our scholarship. Refines students' skills in intellectual debate in the spirit of shared inquiry and challenges research and writing skills. Same as ETHN 4717.
ENGL 4830 - Honors Thesis
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2025
Students accepted to English Departmental Honors are enrolled in this course.
ETHN 4717 - Native American and Indigenous Studies Capstone Seminar
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2025
Engages a wide range of NAIS methodologies with a series of case studies. Focuses on print, visual, and digital texts encompassing wide swathe of Eurowestern disciplines, while seeking to recuperate and restore Indigenous epistemic practices within our scholarship. Refines students' skills in intellectual debate in the spirit of shared inquiry and challenges research and writing skills. Same as ENGL 4717.
WRTG 2095 - Ideas for Social Change
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2025
Introduces key concepts and practices central to understanding historical and contemporary social movements in the U.S. Grounded in theories about discourse, bodies, culture, and power, the course is taught through various frameworks such as intersectionality, rhetoric, critical race theory, feminism, queer studies, decolonial studies, and/or LGTBQ+ studies. Students will discover, identify, and analyze social issues of significance to them; practice developing their own visions for social change; and present their visions in public-facing multi-modal genres. Formerly offered as a special topics course.
WRTG 3020 - Topics in Writing
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2024 / Fall 2025
Through sustained inquiry into a selected topic or issue, students will practice advanced forms of academic writing. Emphasizes analysis, criticism and argument. Taught as a writing seminar, places a premium on substantive, thoughtful revision. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours. Department enforced prerequisite: WRTG 1150 or equivalent (completion of lower-division writing requirement).
