Regina Duthely-Barbee

Regina Duthely specializes in Black feminist rhetorics, 18th-21st century African American rhetorics, hip-hop rhetoric and pedagogy, and digital composition and rhetoric. Her research deploys Black feminist readings of popular culture and Black women’s digital rhetorics to argue that the use of (dis)respectability politics in the public sphere is a means of liberation for Black women.

She has presented her work extensively at conferences such as the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Thomas R. Watson Conference, and the Computers and Writing Conference. In her article “Black Feminist Hip-Hop Rhetorics and the Digital Public Sphere” (Changing English, 2017), she argues that digital public discourse spaces like Twitter and blogs like The Crunk Feminist Collective allow for Black voices not only to be inserted in the mainstream media, but to transform those media to focus on their needs from their perspective. These digital counterdiscourses challenge the traditional boundaries between the academy and the community, and invite students and scholars to consider the real-world uses of writing and technology and its ability to change the world. She also has a book chapter forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook to Digital Rhetoric and Writing.

At Puget Sound Regina teaches courses on digital rhetoric and writing, and scholarly seminars focused on the relationship between language and power.