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Kendra Calhoun

Profile picture for Kendra Calhoun

Contact Information

109 Davenport Hall
607 S. Matthews Ave.
MC 148
Urbana, IL 61801
Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Intersections of language with identity, race, gender, and power; digital discourse; multimodality; humor and performance; African American language and culture; Black digital communities;  DEI in U.S. higher education

Research Description

As a linguistic anthropologist and sociocultural linguist, I take a critical qualitative approach to the study of language as a social process.

In my work on social media, I explore how digital technologies create possibilities for novel forms of discourse, and how these practices are inextricably connected to "offline" identities, cultures, and ideologies. My work on Black social media networks examines how Black digital discourse practices in the U.S. are grounded in African American language practices, racial ideologies, and political histories while embedded in a global, diasporic Black digital community and influenced by ephemeral trends of the digital age. My current work examines 'Black TikTok' as a digital community and site of raciolinguistic construction/contestation.

My scholarship in U.S. higher education contexts focuses on how discourses of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" function to obscure the limitations of institutional action in the face of structural inequalities. By centering members of the academy typically marginalized by DEI practices and within DEI research (graduate students of color, historically minority serving institutions), I examine how dominant DEI approaches are insufficient to address the myriad ways that inequity is baked into our institutional structures and practices.

Education

Ph.D. Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2021

M.A. Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2016

B.A. English & Psychology, University of South Carolina, 2013

Awards and Honors

2023-24 ACLS Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies 

Courses Taught

ANTH 399: Digital Culture and Communication (Fall 2024)

Additional Campus Affiliations

Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Highlighted Publications

Calhoun, K., & Yoo, J. (2024). “African American English, racialized femininities, and Asian American identity in Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra.Journal of Sociolinguistics 28: 64-84. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12673

Calhoun, K., & Fawcett, A. (2023). “They edited out her nip nops”: Linguistic innovation as textual censorship avoidance on TikTok. Language@Internet21https://doi.org/10.14434/li.v21.37371

Calhoun, K. (2023). “Social Media.” In Mark Aldenderfer (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Oxford University Press https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.602

Calhoun, K. (2020). Blackout, Black Excellence, Black Power: Strategies of everyday online activism on Black Tumblr. In A. McCracken, A. Cho, L. Stein, & I. Neill Hoch (eds.), a tumblr book: platform and cultures, University of Michigan Press https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055

Calhoun, K. (2019). “Vine racial comedy as anti-hegemonic humor: Linguistic performance and generic innovation,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(1), 27-49 https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12206

 

Recent Publications

Hughes, B., Calhoun, K., Fawcett, A., Wright, K. E., Zimmer, B., Brewster, E., McLean, J., & Zhang, L. (2024). AMONG THE NEW WORDS. American Speech, 99(1), 78-90. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-11186920

Calhoun, K., & Fawcett, A. (2023). “They Edited Out her Nip Nops”: Linguistic Innovation as Textual Censorship Avoidance on TikTok. Language@Internet, 21. https://doi.org/10.14434/li.v21.37371

Franz, H., Hudley, A. C., King, R. S., Calhoun, K., Miles-Hercules, D., Muwwakkil, J., Edwards, J., Duffie, C. A., Knox, D., Lawton, B., & Merritt, J. H. (2022). The Role of the Graduate Student in Inclusive Undergraduate Research Experiences. Pedagogy, 22(1), 121-141. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-9385522

Calhoun, K., Hudley, A. H. C., Bucholtz, M., Exford, J., & Johnson, B. (2021). Attracting Black students to linguistics through a Black-centered Introduction to Linguistics course. Language, 97(1), e12-e38. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0007

Calhoun, K. N. (2020). Blackout, Black Excellence, Black Power: Strategies of Everyday Online Activism on Black Tumblr. In A. McCracken, A. Cho, L. Stein, & I. Neill Hoch (Eds.), a tumblr book: platform and cultures University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055

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