LaToya Sawyer Awarded
2012 CCCC Scholars for the Dream Award

The Writing Program and Composition and Cultural Rhetoric are pleased to announce that CCR doctoral candidate LaToya Sawyer has been awarded a 2012 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Scholars for the Dream Award.

The Scholars for the Dream program was instituted to increase the participation of traditionally underrepresented groups—African Americans, American Indians, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and other Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. This award celebrates the scholarly contribution of first-time presenters at CCCC who are members of these groups.

Asked for a response to the award, LaToya said,

I am honored to receive the 2012 Scholars for the Dream Award. My CCCC presentation centers on my interest in Black female discursive, rhetorical, and literacy practices and how they reflect and respond to various spaces.

My presentation is titled “#WhereThemGirlsAt?: Exploring Online Hip-hop Female Literacies and Discourse Practices.” In this paper, I use rhetorical and discourse analyses informed by Hip-hop feminist theory to examine the ways top-selling rapper Nicki Minaj discursively creates and performs various identities, establishes ethos, and builds community on the social media site Twitter.

LaToya joins four past CCR recipients of the Scholars for the Dream award: Reva Sias (2011), Candace Epps-Robertson (2010), Tamika Carey (2007), and Elisa Norris (2005) .