"Stories take place. Stories practice place into space. Stories produce habitable spaces."
---Malea Powell, 2012 CCCC Chair’s Address: "Stories Take Place: A Performance in One Act"
About Me
Hello, I'm Christina V. Cedillo, an associate professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas, Currently, I teach courses in technical and business writing, writing in the disciplines (Education and Humanities), and advanced writing. I’ve also taught graduate courses in rhetorical theory at Ramsey Prison Unit. I graduated from Texas A&M University with a Ph.D. in English in 2011, with concentrations in rhetoric and composition, and women’s studies. Drawing on CRT, decolonial theory, and disability studies, I examine transhistorical and contemporary issues affecting BIPOC, disabled, and queer communities. My primary area of interest lies at the intersections of race, gender, and disability as I examine how legal, scientific, and popular discourses circumscribe the lives of marginalized populations (rhetorics of embodiment), and how they, in turn, enact rhetorical presence and engage in re-humanization practices (embodied rhetorics) using multimodality and digital technologies. In addition, my work in critical pedagogy draws on this research to advance access as an intersectional concept beyond standard whitestream UD frameworks.
Download my CV here.
My current monograph project, Embodying the Struggle: The Multimodal Rhetorics of Women of Color Activists, examines the interactions of activists’ public speech and writing, embodied presence, uses of technology, and movement through space(s) to theorize new concepts for analyzing “marginalized multimodalities.”
My work has appeared in Composition Studies, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College Composition & Communication, Feminist Studies in Religion, Argumentation and Advocacy, Present Tense, Composition Forum, the Journal for the History of Rhetoric, and various edited collections. I am also a co-founder and the lead editor of the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, an online, open-access venue dedicated to the study of multimodality in everyday life, particularly among marginalized communities and in commonplace contexts.
In addition to having served as co-chair of the CCCC Latinx Caucus and CCCC Committee on Disability Issues in College Composition, I was a member of the CCCC Executive Committee. I have also chaired the CCCC Disability in College Composition Travel Awards committee and served on the CCCC Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award and Lavender Rhetorics Award Committees. Through RSA, I have chaired the Book Award Selection Committee and the Cheryl Geisler Mentorship Award Committee, and I have served on the RSA Accessibility beyond the ADA Subcommittee of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA) Committee.
In 2021, I received the Leadership Award for People with Disabilities from the National Council of Teachers of English. And, in 2022-2023, I was selected as a Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) Teaching Fellow, receiving a grant to develop a new Digital Humanities-based rhetoric course.
Professional Address
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Bayou 2233.05, 2700 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77058
Phone: 281-283-3483
Email: cedilloc@uhcl.edu