In my dissertation A Rhetorical, Coalitional, and Decolonial Critique on Cistematic Academic Scholarly Practices: Mobilizing Queer and Trans*/formative BIPOC Resistance for Institutional Change, I engage in participatory action research and collected data from queer and transgender BIPOC scholars in Rhetoric and Writing studies and similar fields. I interviewed these scholars to consider how to engage in ethical queer and transgender practices in the academy in relation to pedagogy, scholarship, and community engagement. Building from scholarship in areas of Queer and Transgender Rhetorics, Ethnic Studies, and Women and Gender Studies, my project exemplifies how to 1) resist perpetuating harm in academic organizational practices in relation to queer and transgender pedagogy, research, and community engagement; 2) create a collaborative digital activist statement with queer and transgender scholars through a user experience method; participatory action, and 3) assert that queer and transgender rhetorics needs to cross disciplinary boundaries. As I argue, queer and transgender rhetorics remains a predominantly white field and lacks BIPOC representation to support intersectional scholars. Thus, this dissertation project develops a formative example and illustrates a coalitional and decolonial trans*/formative social justice approach to urge higher educational institutions to better support queer and transgender BIPOC lives within the academy.
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