Awards

David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English

2023 Recipient:

Aja Y. Martinez

University of North Texas

Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory

Humanities scholar Aja Y. Martinez makes a compelling case for counterstory as methodology in rhetoric and writing studies through the well-established framework of critical race theory (CRT), reviewing first the counterstory work of Richard Delgado, Derrick Bell, and Patricia J. Williams, whom she terms counterstory exemplars. Delgado, Bell, and Williams, foundational critical race theorists working in the respective counterstory genres of narrated dialogue, fantasy/allegory, and autobiography, have set precedent for others who would research and compose with this method. Arguing that counterstory provides opportunities for marginalized voices to contribute to conversations about dominant ideology, Martinez applies racial and feminist rhetorical criticism to the rich histories and theories established through counterstory genres, all the while demonstrating how CRT theories and methods can inform  teaching, research, and writing/publishing of counterstory. CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series. (source)

Aja Y. Martinez (she/her) is an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas and author of the multi-award-winning book Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory. Her scholarship engages with both public and academic audiences in a series of new projects that include several critical academic journal essays and book chapters, a CRT theoretical introductory chapter for a Routledge collection, a special College English double issue on CRT, CRT symposia in three academic journals, and four book-length projects. Two of the book projects, co-researched and -written with historian and Indigenous studies scholar Robert O. Smith, are under contract with New York University Press and University of California Press—kicking off Cal UP’s new series on CRT. Within these projects Martinez and Smith draw on mixed methods, ranging from archival, to ethnographic, to literary and rhetorical analysis. These books reframe the histories of CRT’s origins in legal studies while making provocative claims concerning CRT’s storytelling pedagogy, methodology, and theory. Additionally, Martinez is coeditor and cofounder, with Michele Eodice and Sandra Tarabochia (University of Oklahoma), of the transdisciplinary, digital open-access, and multimodal journal Writers: Craft and Context. Last, Martinez is coeditor, with Stacey Waite (University of Nebraska) of the University of Pittsburgh Press’s series Composition, Literacy, and Culture.  

“The professional literacy educators I most admire and strive to emulate are those who locate the genesis of their theories, methodologies, and pedagogies in the community and with the people. Our work as literacy educators does not begin with theory—theories are the product of the embodied work in and with our communities. It is from these literacy experiences with our communities and the stories we tell about these experiences that we craft pedagogy, methodology, and theory. Never the other way around.”