The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

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Edited by Kajsa K. Henry, Florida A&M University

Graduation ceremony at Florida A&M University. Image by Steven M. Cummings via Wikimedia.

In “Where Would We Be? Legacies, Roll Calls, and the Teaching of Writing in HBCUs,” Beverly Moss asserts that “Black rhetorical excellence has thrived at HBCUs. Pedagogical and scholarly creativity in the teaching of writing has excelled” (2021, p. 146). However, it is her critical question that anchors this special issue: “where would we, in composition studies, be without writing and rhetoric faculty who have taught or currently teach at HBCUs and/or scholars in the field who are alumni of HBCUs?” (p. 145). While HBCU scholars’ contributions have been noted—even if only marginally—there continues to be no sustained curiosity by mainstream rhetoric publications and professional organizations about the practices within these spaces shaped by their knowledge. However, the creation of the Bedford/St. Martin’s (Macmillan) powered HBCU Symposium on Rhetoric and Composition in 2016, along with the subsequent symposiums held every two years since, scholars brought these contributions from the margins into the center of conversations about the teaching of writing that happens on HBCU campuses across the country. During the Fourth HBCU Symposium on Rhetoric and Composition (2021), hosted by Florida A&M University and led by chair, Kendra L. Mitchell, professors from historically Black institutions across a wide spectrum of disciplines gathered virtually to discuss their discursive practices as they prepared students to engage with writing within several contexts. The symposium deliberately moved beyond traditional English departments or writing programs to include historical and contemporary composition and rhetorical practices happening among multiple disciplines. Drawing on the success of that event, the theme of this special issue, Transdisciplinarity @ HBCUs: (Re)Writing Our Futures Beyond the Margin, opens a space where we may focus on the critical consciousness and lifelong learning that permeates curriculum development in the sciences, mathematics, and other fields not readily associated with language and literature at HBCUs.

Instantiations of cross-boundary interaction counter rigid disciplinary devotion. In the wake of changes to teaching because of the Covid-19 epidemic, the increasing attacks on academic freedom, the shrinking population of humanities-based majors, and now with the advent of AI in the classroom, we see this moment as an opportunity to see transdisciplinarity at the center of the historical ingenuity formed out of the need to always adapt and rethink how we teach, especially using the foundations of rhetoric. For it is this ingenuity that propels HBCU communities beyond the marginal periphery into the epicenters of an uninhibited future and one that makes its own spaces. While the conversations on transdisciplinarity are not new to our field or HBCUs, this approach is essential for thriving beyond our ever-fluctuating learning environments. The various ways that Black scholars engage with and ask their students to engage with knowledge draws on a history of resilience that defines the past, present, and future state of what it means to teach at an HBCU. This collection “help[s] [the field] interrogate master narratives about literacy, race, and citizenship . . . in general and African American [Black] literac[ies] specifically” (Spencer-Maor, 2021, p. 61) through its focus on the writing and rhetoric occurring at and because of HBCUs.

Therefore, in this special issue we have authors who see HBCU futures as inherently informing the liminal spaces where change takes place, where the imaginary sees the whole picture beyond the constraining strictures of disciplinary discourses in these historically Black spaces. These conversations produce opportunities for productive transdisciplinary work that steers us towards what we envision black futures to be: in our words, on our terms. Thus, the need arises for a transdisciplinary understanding of rhetoric within the context of black futurity.

To understand the structures and connections between the articles in this issue, we begin by defining Transdisciplinarity to locate the benefits of moving beyond a single, multidisciplinary, or interdisciplinary model of knowledge production. In its most general sense, Transdisciplinarity refers to an approach that helps us to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries by integrating the methods, insights, and perspectives from multiple fields to examine problems holistically.  Unlike interdisciplinarity work that involves combining disciplines or multidisciplinary work by borrowing tools from one field for use in another, transdisciplinary work synthesizes these multiple areas to address what are often shared concerns. In her promotion of the transdisciplinarity of Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines (WAC/WID) programs, C.C. Hendricks provides a useful definition of transdisciplinarity, especially as it relates to writing studies. She notes that transdisciplinarity is

an understanding of writing and knowledge formation not bound to disciplinary epistemologies alone: an intellectual openness to new perspectives and methods from outside of one’s discipline that does not preclude disciplinary difference or expertise. Within the context of writing and transfer, this openness can promote methodologies that better attend to the transdisciplinary realities with which students regularly contend as they move through academic and non-academic spaces. (2018, p. 48-49)

A transdisciplinary approach to understanding writing and knowledge production encourage the development of a multipronged method to see the multiple dimensions of a problem and develop a plan of action that presents a concerted effort to attack and solve it. These efforts value innovation and conversation to find the best practices even if that means crossing the boundaries of disciplines.

Since rhetoric and composition serves as the primary means by which disciplines communicate, negotiate, and integrate their diverse perspectives, the methods associated with it remain central to transdisciplinary work because it facilitates the translation of specialized knowledge into accessible and actionable insights. When students write about these topics, they must navigate different forms of knowledge and rhetorical contexts, honing their ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively to varied audiences. Thus, as professors within and beyond writing classrooms showcase writing as a tool that allow students to synthesize ideas about several topics, it reveals the need for broadening our understanding of rhetoric’s ability to allow us to explore complex ideas. So, of course in the traditional sense writing and rhetoric remains at the heart of this type of transdisciplinary work, but I want to suggest another way of thinking about the function of rhetoric within HBCUs by reimaging the work of Richard McKeon through the concept of black futures.

McKeon, a philosopher and rhetorician, offers a nuanced perspective on rhetoric that deeply intertwines with the concept of transdisciplinarity because of his focus on the product and the praxis of argumentation. His approach moves the idea of rhetoric beyond the study of persuasive language to see it as a method for synthesizing knowledge across disciplines. Rhetoric, much like what we suggest is the function of transdisciplinary conversations, emphasizes its unique role in fostering connections between varied fields of inquiry. According to McKeon, rhetoric can serve as a tool and theoretical framework to solve a multi-dimensional problem. In order to get to that understanding, he advocates for a view of rhetoric that notes its integration with philosophy, education, and technological change, which makes it useful in a culturally diverse and rapidly evolving world. McKeon names rhetoric as an architectonic productive art, which he defines after critiquing traditional histories of rhetoric that fail to address the dynamic nature of its application across different contexts and eras. McKeon proposes that the history of rhetoric “might give significance and lively interest to the altering definitions, the differentiation of various conceptions of rhetoric itself, and the spread of devices of rhetoric to subject matters far from those ordinarily ascribed to it” (McKeon & Backman, 1987, p. 124). His historical analysis spans from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages to modernity, illustrating how rhetoric adapts and reinvents itself. He argues that this past reveals the continuing impact of rhetorical practices on contemporary thought and expression. It is to these other subject matters that this view of rhetoric as an architectonic productive art proves to be useful in thinking about the functionality of rhetoric within transdisciplinary teaching that thinks about black futures.

Positioning the history of rhetoric in this way shows that its dialogic function of fostering dialogue and engaging diverse perspectives aligns with the structures of Transdisciplinarity. Rhetoric as an architectonic productive art provides a way of thinking about the production of knowledge that considers its adaptability, its process of invention and discovery, and its acknowledgement of the relatability of knowledge across traditional boundaries. According to Mark Backman, McKeon's conception of rhetoric as an architectonic productive art provides an intellectual principle to organize considerations of change and its attendant dissonance in the modern world (McKeon & Backman, 1987, p. xxiii). David Depew agrees and says that “McKeon's call for rhetoric to become an architectonic productive art with a "theoretical orientation" means that in our technological age rhetoric must play the role that Aristotle assigned to theoretical philosophy. It must assume the burden of "producing subject matters and organizing them in relation to each other and to the problems to be solved” (2010, p. 40). While Backman in 1987 or Depew in 2010 had some idea of impending technological advancements, neither could have foreseen the ways that the Covid-19 epidemic of 2020 would challenge traditional instructional methods, how the rise in the continuous attacks on access to knowledge would result in massive book bans, how professors would have to contend with the increase in legislative oversight in the college classroom surrounding the teaching of history and “race,” how the dismantling of liberal arts programs would impact universities across the country, and how the onslaught of AI assisted writing programs would change how we would need to teach writing. The result of these changes usher in the need for professors in every discipline to explore new avenues of discussion and inquiry about how to systematically explore and address these complex problems. Since HBCUs, with their majority black student population, serve as the immediate context in which these problems arise for the authors included in this special issue, the development of their transdisciplinary ways to address these problems must consider how a transdisciplinary view of rhetoric can aid in the creation of liberatory black futures.

The idea of black futures as a concept and a movement looks towards the creation of a liberated and sustainable future for Black people. Although long associated with Afrofuturism—a genre and cultural movement that reimagines a Black future through speculative art, science fiction, and technology, the ideas of black future grounds these visions in real-world applications. In their 2020 book, Black Futures, Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew generated more attention to the term with their collection of essays, art, and reflections on Black life and the possibility of not only existing but thriving black communities. The goal of operating through a mode of black futures thinking promotes advocating for policies that dismantle system oppression, liberate artistic expression that imagines new Black realities, and the creation of community initiatives that can help build sustainable futures. By creating in our words, on our terms, the hope is that the world becomes a space where Black life can live freely from racial injustice economic hardship, and the threat of cultural erasure. The professors at HBCUs can help aid in the imagining and shaping of black futures by operating through a transdisciplinary view of rhetoric.

Black futures as theory and praxis reflects the tenets of McKeon’s understanding of rhetoric. Backman suggests that Mckeon believes that “rhetoric is not simply a verbal art; it is also a formative principle that both directs the systematic contemplation of any subject matter and contains the analytic tools necessary for the comprehension of diverse and often contradictory philosophic principles and systems” (1987, p. viii). In McKeon’s view, rhetoric serves as a means to generate new ideas and perspectives, respond to context-specific social, cultural, and political dimensions, serve as a tool for liberating us from fixed ideological structures, and advocate for the ethical use of rhetoric for the collective good. The contemplation of the future of black lives requires a systematic approach where professors across disciplines work in tandem to construct viable expressions of empowered communities and individuals. HBCUs have long stood at the helm of cultivating what Manning Marable coined as the “black intellectual tradition.” Thus, our classrooms can become these spaces where we can help students at HBCUs imagine a world structured by their words and defined by their actions.

In essence, McKeon's rhetorical framework allows us to see ways that the philosophical tool of Black futurism allows us to structure, articulate, and share alternative visions, emphasizing that the language we use to discuss the future is powerful in shaping it. Rhetoric can serve black futures as both a bridge to communicate ideas and a tool to inspire, mobilize, and manifest alternative, self-empowered futures to move us closer to transforming these aspirations into reality.

Turning to the essays of this special issue, we can see the beginnings of this work. Using essays from Kiese Laymon’s stunning How to Kill Yourself and Others, along with James Baldwin’s “Letter to My Nephew” and Ta-Nehesi Coates’s “Letter to My Son,” in “The 'Laymon Letter': Kiese Laymon and Epistolary Art in the HBCU Writing Classroom,” Kenneth Johnson, II, asks us and his students to consider the ethics and healing qualities found in the letter genre. He positions storytelling through letter writing as a radical and democratic process that allows students to share their experiences, archive these experiences, and participate in powerful expressions of love and forgiveness. In "Teaching K-Pop at an HBCU: The Possibility of Afro-Asian Solidarity" we find Hyo Kyung Woo using K-Pop to encourage her black students at an HBCU to participate in a transnational conversation about popular culture, cultural exchange, appropriation, and the power of music to help transcend borders. Woo hopes that by bringing popular culture studies, combined with an introductory look at “race” studies, into the classroom to build solidarity across borders while also questioning stereotypes and addressing cultural appropriation to facilitate meaningful moments of exchange. In "Revolutionary Transdisciplinary Pedagogy, James Baldwin, and the HBCU Writing Classroom," Kajsa Henry outlines the works of James Baldwin and his literary sons and daughters as particularly conducive to the teaching of research skills that promote the writing classroom as a revolutionary transdisciplinary space. The proposed structure of a research-based writing courses influenced by the habits of mind at the foundation of American Studies shows the possibilities that arise when we ask more of the research essay and present it as a conduit for revolutionary thinking. Kimberly Fain takes on the task of bringing Beyonce’s Homecoming, a transdisciplinary performance of mass proportions itself, into the writing classroom as a roadmap for teaching writing. In "Beyoncé's Homecoming: How Pop Culture Is a Transdisciplinary Roadmap for Rhetoric and Writing in the HBCU Classroom," Fain outlines her approach to using popular culture as an opportunity to show the wealth of the transdisciplinary framework of Homecoming and how it can influence students to see how their stories intertwine with history, place, and questions of identity. In "Writing Towards Liberation: A Writing Guide to Support Black Students’ Linguistic Agency," Hannah Franz, Anne Charity Hudley, Kia Turner, and Marie Tano draw on their own positionalities with the English language to inform the creation of the Students’ Right to Their Own Writing (SRTOW) website. Their essay provides the theoretical foundations of the development and also what HBCU faculty and students have to say about the effectiveness of SRTOW in achieving the goal of linguistic liberation for black students.

Moving beyond the writing classroom, the other authors make similar efforts to make their classrooms a space where the best of multiple disciplines influence pedagogical choices in the classroom. In “Considerations for Classroom Instructional Climate Challenges: Dissonance in Student Behaviors and Expectations in an HBCU Health Science Learning Environment,” Marilyn Weatherspoon and Cheree Wiltsher explore the shifts that occurred in the classroom climate after the Covid-19 Pandemic that began in Spring of 2020 because of changing pedagogical modalities. Although speaking from a health sciences perspective, Weatherspoon and Wiltsher drew on the expertise of education scholars and their own experiences during the Covid-19 period to suggest ways forward for understanding the classroom as a dynamic space that honors collaboration and communication. For Chandra Clark, in "Through Voice AND Pen: Transdisciplinarity and Social Justice in HBCU Speech Education," her public speaking course offers an opportunity for students to see that they can use their voices to participate in social justice issues. By bringing African/Kemetic rhetorical practices and orators into the classroom, Clark centers a tradition of thinking that enhances the critical v consciousness of her students. In "Writing to Advance Advocacy: A Course Designed for Social Justice, Activism, and Community Building on the HBCU Campus," Kenisha M. Thomas establishes a similar goal for her students in her social work course, Writing to Advance Advocacy. The course combines the three professional competencies under the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) with her implementation of a “teaching and learning to know” approach to writing that draws together a shared understanding of the power of rhetoric to enact substantial and sustainable change. In "Transdisciplinary Team-Teaching at an HBCU: Witchcraft, Religion, and Political Theory in Early Modern Literature," Emily Murray and Kyle Murray outline the ideology behind and the framework of their cross listed course that combined critical, intersectional, and transdisciplinary approaches for teaching literary and other primary texts from the early modern period. Murray and Murray developed the rhetoric, historical framework, and political lens to discuss the representations of class, gender, and race to explore systems of power.

We thank all the contributors to this special issue for their insights and efforts to bring the experiences with writing at HBCUs from the margins and into a strong future. We would also like to thank Dr. Tiffany Packer (FAMU) and Dr. Kendra Mitchell (FAMU) who served as editors in the early stages of this project.