Carmen Kynard

Carmen Kynard
Known for	antiracism, black culture, language, literacy
Awards	Richard C. Ohmann Outstanding Article Award (2023), 2015 James M. Britton Award
Academic work
Institutions	Texas Christian University

Carmen Kynard is the Lillian Radford Chair in Rhetoric and Composition and a Professor of English at Texas Christian University. Before that, she worked at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research focuses on race, Black feminisms, AfroDigital/Black languages and cultures, and schooling dynamics, particularly in composition, rhetoric, and literacy studies.

She has taught in New York City's public schools and in teacher education. Her research has appeared in Harvard Educational Review, College Composition and Communication, and Literacy and Composition Studies.

Kynard is the author of Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacy Studies, which won the 2015 James N. Britton Award presented by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). In 2023, Kynard was also honored with the Richard C. Ohmann Outstanding Article Award for scholarship published in the academic journal College English.

Scholarship

Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacy Studies

Kynard's book Vernacular Insurrections explores the intersections of race, literacy, rhetoric, and composition by building on four decades of research and revisiting the student-led Black Protest movements of the 1960s. Drawing inspirtation from W.E.B. Dubois, the book highlights the pivotal role of Black student organizations and the Black Arts Movement in shaping African American literacies, rhetorics, and forms of resistance. Vernacular Insurrections benefits from an expanding body of research on African American literacies and rhetorics and critiques previous scholarship for often neglecting to place composition and literacy studies within the broader context of geopolitical protest movements. While many contemporary scholars have focused on validating African American Vernacular English (AAVE) linguistically, they have often overlooked the identity politics associated with its emergence. This book provides a sociopolitical and historical framework, offering a new understanding of the development of African American rhetoric within the larger narrative of resistance and Black liberation.

External links

• Carmen Kynard's personal website
• "Practicing Radical Pedagogy with Carmen Kynard" (Interview)