Anita August

Dr. Anita August is the Director of Writing Programs at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.  Her PH.D. is in Rhetoric and Writing Studies and her scholarly interests are Nineteenth-Century Feminist Historiography, Feminist Visual Culture, Composition Pedagogy, Writing and Identity, Rhetoric(s) of Social Protest, Folk and Fairytale Narratives and Rhetorical Theory. 

Her debut novel, Gut Bucket Blues, is inspired by the blues and jazz music of New Orleans within a pastiche of literary writing styles that include, jump rope rhymes, jazz riffs, blues music, spiritual songs, poetry and drama, which all serve as verbal and nonverbal cultural instruments for sociopolitical dissent.  Dr. August has presented several conference papers on the rhetorical processes of Nineteenth-Century Feminists, Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells, Neo-Black Social Protest Rhetoricians, Jay-Z and Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Cultural Critics and Literary Writers, Joan Didion and Marguerite Duras.  Her course, Prophets of Rage in America:  From Thomas Jefferson to Jay-Z provides a framework for students to study the intersection of rhetoric, rage, and agitation to speak to issues about sociopolitical transformation.  Currently, Dr. August is working on a novel that will re-vision popular fairy tales as rhetorical tropes for feminine self-identification, power, agency, and collective empowerment.  http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/19562_anita_august_ph_d_.cfm