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Academics

Meet the Faculty

Photo of David G. Holmes

David G. Holmes
Professor of English and Director of African American Studies, Pepperdine University

Division: Humanities/Teacher Education Division
Office: Cultural Arts Center (CAC) 312
Phone: (310) 506-4234
E-mail: david.holmes@pepperdine.edu

  • Ph.D., University of Southern California
  • MA, University of Southern California
  • MA, California State University
  • BA, Oklahoma Christian University
Courses:
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Advanced Composition
  • Literacy Theory
  • Civil Rights Rhetoric, Literature and Film
  • Composition Theory
Key Awards/Affiliations:
  • Langston Hughes Visiting Professor, University of Kansas, Spring 2013
  • Elected Member, Executive Committee Conference on College Composition and Communication
  • Elected Member, College Section Nominating Committee, National Council of Teachers of English
  • Rhetoric Society of America
  • Visiting Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, Arizona State University, Tempe, January to May 2008
  • Lilly Fellowship, "Spirituality and Social Justice: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement," Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, June 2001
  • Seaver Research Fellow in Composition Rhetoric, Pepperdine University, 1999-2000
  • College Language Association
  • Scholars for the Dream Award, Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 1995
  • National Council of Teachers of English
  • International Society for the History of Rhetoric
Academic Interests:
  • African American Expressive Culture
  • African American Preaching
  • Civil Rights Movement Rhetoric
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Intellectualized Discourses of Racism
  • Political Rhetoric
  • Rhetoric and Religion
  • Theories of Ethos
Selected Works:
  • "'Hear Me Tonight': Ralph Abernathy and the Sermonic Pedagogy of the Birmingham Mass Meeting." Rhetoric Review, 32:2 (April 2013): 156-173.
  • "Speaking of Moses and the Messiah: Ralph Abernathy's Rhetoric for and by the People." Journal of Communication and Religion. Vol. 35 No. 1 Spring 2012 (1-11).
  • "(Re-)Dressing the KKK: Fred Shuttlesworth's Precept Hermeneutic and the Rhetoric of African American Prophetic Patriotism." Journal of Black Studies. Volume 42 Number 5 (July 2011):811-827
  • "The Civil Rights Movement According to Crash: Complicating the Pedagogy of Integration." College English, Volume 69, Number 4 (March 2007) :314-321.
  • "Affirmative Reaction: Kennedy, Nixon, King and the Evolution of Color Blind Rhetoric." Rhetoric Review, Volume 26, Number 1 (January 2007) :25-41.
  • "Cross Racial Voicing: Carl Van Vechten's Imagination and the Search for an African American Ethos." College English, Volume 68, Number 3 (January 2006): 291-307.
  • "Say What?: Rediscovering Hugh Blair and the Racialization of Language, Culture, and Pedagogy in Eighteenth-Century Rhetoric." Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture. State University of New York Press, March 2005.
  • Revisiting Racialized Voice, February 2004 by Southern Illinois University Press.
  • "Color Me Author." Journal of Teaching Writing, 19.1-2 (2001): 1-13.
  • "The Fragmented Whole: Ralph Ellison, Kenneth Burke, and the Cultural Literacy Debate." College Language Association Journal, Volume XLIII, Number 3 (March 2000).
  • "'Hear Me Tonight': The Out-Loud Public Literacies of the Birmingham Mass Meetings." Featured Session, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Atlanta, Georgia, April 2011.
  • "My Tales from the Hood and the Academy: Reflections on Culturally Relevant Pedagogies." Invited Lecture, Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, October 28,2009.
  • "Cultural Winds and Religious Waves: Negotiating Student Uses of Religious Discourses in the Classroom." Invited Lecture, Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, October 29,2009.
  • "Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe: Elaine Brown and the Emergence of Afro-Feminist Rhetorics of Black Nationalism." Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, California. March 2009.
  • Chair, "Hermeneutics: Decoding Religious Ideologies through Prophetic Politics, Sophistic Ethics and Critical Race Theory." Rhetoric Society of America, Seattle, Washington, May 2008.
  • "Reclaiming the Word: Fred Shuttlesworth and the Rhetoric of Precept Hermeneutics." Rhetoric Society of America, Seattle, Washington, May 2008.
  • Chair, Super Session on "African American Rhetoric." Rhetoric Society of America, Seattle, Washington, May 2008.
  • "Mediating Messages from Moses and the Messiah: Ralph Abernathy's Ethos and the Nommo of Spoken Literacy." Conference on College Composition and Communication, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2008.
  • "(Re) Dressing the KKK: Fred Shuttlesworth's Precept Hermeneutic and the Rhetoric of African American Prophetic Patriotism." Invited Lecture, Arizona State University, March 26, 2008.
  • "Recasting the Kingdom, Reclaiming the Word: Race, Religion and the Democratic Paradoxes of African American Rhetorical Sovereignty," Invited Lecture, Florida State University, October 22, 2007.
  • "Faith Comes by Hearing: Recovering the Rhetoric of the Birmingham Civil Rights Mass Meetings." Invited Lecture, Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, Alabama, August 8, 2007.
  • "Citizens of Color and for Color: Teaching Whiteness for Cross-Racial Democracy." National Council of Teachers of English, Nashville, Tennessee, November, 2006.
  • Chair, African American Studies Section. Christian Scholars Conference, Rochester Hills, Michigan, June 2006.
  • Chair, "Rhetorical and Political Bodies." Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Memphis, Tennessee, May, 2006.
  • "Showing and Telling: The Alabama Civil Rights Movement and the Pedagogy of Place." Association of Integrated Studies Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina, October 15, 2004.