A Lecture by LaToya Sawyer
Nicki Minaj: Critical Literacy and the Barbie-to-MAGA Pipeline
LaToya Lydia Sawyer is an assistant professor in the English Department at St. John’s
University in Queens, NY. She has a Ph.D. in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric from
Syracuse University with a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Women and Gender
Studies. LaToya’s research focuses on Black women’s rhetorical agency and identity
performances through digital media. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in
digital rhetoric, feminist theory, African American women’s rhetoric, and African
American literacies. LaToya’s awards and distinctions include being a 2023-2024
Wellesley College Suzy Newhouse Humanities Fellow, a 2020-2021 American
Postdoctoral Fellow through the American Association of University Women, a 2014-
2016 fellow in NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices program, and a 2012 Conference on
College Composition and Communication’s Scholar for the Dream award. She is
currently finishing her first monograph titled Composing Digital Black Womanhood,
which presents a multiplatform analysis of the rhetorical strategies Black women have
used across social media to build social worlds and representations of self and
community.