Jimmy Lizama
Ph.D. Student
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Area of Study
PhD in Rhetoric
Bio
My research interests lie in community literacy, activist literacies, advocate literacies, publicly-engaged composition, and counterpublics. In particular, I am invested in thinking through student on-campus activism and/or advocacy as a distinct kind of community literacy. Employing critical incident interviews, my dissertation investigates the specific rhetorical and/or organizational strategies by which student activists champion their needs and interests in higher education despite the willingness of universities and other actors to retaliate against student activism. Further still, I am also interested in the routes through which students acquire the activist and/or advocate literacies necessary to accomplish their political and institutional goals. Ultimately, I envision the results of my dissertation study informing curricular recommendations for the composition classroom that enable students, if they choose, to take social and political action regardless of partisan affiliation.
In the past, I have published research in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies on the Trump administration’s nativist framing of the MS-13 gang. In that work, I argue that the administration created an anti-immigrant narrative targeted at Central American migrants and their descendants. I argue that this xenophobic narrative is distinct from historical anti-Mexican narratives to the degree that it focuses on unaccompanied minor children, the figure of the child, and normative expectations about motherhood to narrow the borders of national belonging.
Education
- M.A. in Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University
- B.A. in English with Honors, University of Maryland, College Park
Research
Community Literacy, Activist Literacies, Advocate Literacies, Publicly-Engaged Composition, Counterpublics
Publications
Review of Just Kids: Youth Activism and Rhetorical Agency by Risa Applegarth (forthcoming)