In this dissertation, I develop a queer and cultural rhetorics framework for understanding how queer communities' communal composing practices allow them to enact the process of world-making. In particular, I argue that the practice of making things allows communities to create worlds for themselves that are empowering. I use the term "making" to intervene into rhet/comp's preoccupation with the term multimodality. The concept of multimodality does not necessarily engage in the communal act or practice of making, but rather focuses on items and compositions after they have been made, thereby invisibilizing the often social and cultural nature of making. I argue that engaging in the concept of making instead of/ in addition to multimodality opens up space to consider the ways in which queers (and other marginalized communities) have made things together to build community, to create a sense of critical agency amongst each other, to rhetorically intervene in a world that chooses to un-see and erase their lives, and therefore, their creations. Thus, this project builds out from current conversations in the field regarding multimodality, queer rhetorical practices, and feminist and activist rhetoric.Through ethnographically informed qualitative interviews, I detail themes on making from former members of the Lesbian Avengers-an activist group prominent in the 1990s-to illuminate how the communal practice of making is a deliberate and complex rhetorical act of world-building, especially for marginalized communities. I conclude by discussing what lessons (academic) leaders can learn from activist organizations like the Avengers and how to apply those lessons in their administration.
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