I am associate professor and chair in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT Austin. I am also affiliated with the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, the Center for Mexican American Studies, and the LGBTQ Studies Program. You can email me at karma.chavez@utexas.edu.
Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 2016
In July 2016, to capture a snapshot of the scope of justice-centered teaching and learning at col... more In July 2016, to capture a snapshot of the scope of justice-centered teaching and learning at colleges and universities, and to build shared analysis, Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners spoke with four organizers about their participation in movements on their public university campuses: • Karma Chavez, who, after leaving a position teaching rhetoric at University of Wisconsin–Madison, started as an associate professor in Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas in fall 2016. • Julia Gutierrez, a third-year doctoral student in Feminist Studies at Arizona State University, which has four campuses in the Phoenix/ Tempe area. • Charles Preston, an undergraduate in African American Studies at Chicago State University, a historically Black institution of higher education. • Craig Willse, an assistant professor in the Cultural Studies program at George Mason University in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC.
This essay recounts a collaborative experiment that the author and colleagues undertook in order ... more This essay recounts a collaborative experiment that the author and colleagues undertook in order to fortify relationships between the university and the community, lend credence to Black queer feminist revolutionary analyses of local issues, and help organizers build resources and capacity.
Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equ... more Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. They have three anthologies: Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, Against Equality: Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars, and Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is ... more As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the authors’ individual research projects that illustrates one of these tensions, and is followed by a response that explicates the questions of power and ethics. While the ethics of any research practice are often tied to a specific project, many of the issues we discuss apply widely to the practice of fieldwork and rhetorical criticism in general, and many of the questions we raise also resonate with one another. As such, the dialogic quality of the essay is meant to serve as its content as well as its form. We suggest that rhetorical discussions of power help all qualitative researchers better understand what is at stake when we move between text and field in our research practice.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, people from across the political spect... more After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, people from across the political spectrum offered explanations for the terrorists' motivations and searched for where to place the blame. Figures that featured centrally in the Cold War, such as the " homosexual-communist-subversive, " would reemerge in new forms in the discourse of this burgeoning War on Terror, including the racialized figure of the " queer-immigrant-terrorist. " This article analyzes conservative media discourse that blamed former Congressman Barney Frank and his " gay agenda " for the attacks due to Frank's influential role in passing the 1990 Immigration Act. It also explores how conservative and mainstream media reports and commentaries constructed the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, as " queer, " and how this (racialized and culturally specific) queerness was argued to be his primary motivation for the attacks. Reading these two kinds of discourse in relation to each other shows that " queerness " becomes the agency of terrorism, and this logic maps onto even the most " homonormative, " white gay bodies.
A critical reflection on the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 from the perspective of the queer act... more A critical reflection on the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 from the perspective of the queer activist/archivist collective Against Equality.
In this paper, the author reconsiders the historical narrative of Rhetorical Studies as a citizen... more In this paper, the author reconsiders the historical narrative of Rhetorical Studies as a citizenship narrative and thus argues that much rhetorical theory works to uphold the value and ideal of citizenship, while often ignoring or reframing appeals that challenge the very bases of citizenship and the nation-state. This account of Rhetoric’s intellectual history reveals the very parameters for what deserves attention in disciplinary history. The author suggests that this account also reveals the necessity to break from that history, not in order that Rhetoric become more inclusive but so that Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, noncitizen, non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), pp. 96-117, Apr 18, 2013
To start this dialogue, guest editor Karma R. Chávez posed a series of general and unbinding ques... more To start this dialogue, guest editor Karma R. Chávez posed a series of general and unbinding questions to participants about the meanings of queer theory and its relationship with questions of culture. The dialogue unfolded over the course of three weeks in an online forum and covered several important themes. First, participants engaged questions surrounding the meaning of queer, and its relationship to different cultural and linguistic contexts, especially with regard to diaspora, settler colonialism, and postcoloniality. Second, participants considered the interplay between queer and trans theories, which led to considerations of the body, memory, and homonormativity. Third, after the “coming out” of the U.S. actress Jodie Foster, participants had a lively discussion about the politics of visibility, responsibility, and accountability for different LGBTQ subjects. The dialogue concluded with final meditations.
A conversation Ulises Moreno-Tabarez and I had with several western activists who do queer activi... more A conversation Ulises Moreno-Tabarez and I had with several western activists who do queer activism in China.
For a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication about whether to change the journal's nam... more For a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication about whether to change the journal's name. Co-authored with Cindy L. Griffin of Colorado State University.
Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 2016
In July 2016, to capture a snapshot of the scope of justice-centered teaching and learning at col... more In July 2016, to capture a snapshot of the scope of justice-centered teaching and learning at colleges and universities, and to build shared analysis, Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners spoke with four organizers about their participation in movements on their public university campuses: • Karma Chavez, who, after leaving a position teaching rhetoric at University of Wisconsin–Madison, started as an associate professor in Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas in fall 2016. • Julia Gutierrez, a third-year doctoral student in Feminist Studies at Arizona State University, which has four campuses in the Phoenix/ Tempe area. • Charles Preston, an undergraduate in African American Studies at Chicago State University, a historically Black institution of higher education. • Craig Willse, an assistant professor in the Cultural Studies program at George Mason University in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC.
This essay recounts a collaborative experiment that the author and colleagues undertook in order ... more This essay recounts a collaborative experiment that the author and colleagues undertook in order to fortify relationships between the university and the community, lend credence to Black queer feminist revolutionary analyses of local issues, and help organizers build resources and capacity.
Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equ... more Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. They have three anthologies: Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, Against Equality: Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars, and Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is ... more As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the authors’ individual research projects that illustrates one of these tensions, and is followed by a response that explicates the questions of power and ethics. While the ethics of any research practice are often tied to a specific project, many of the issues we discuss apply widely to the practice of fieldwork and rhetorical criticism in general, and many of the questions we raise also resonate with one another. As such, the dialogic quality of the essay is meant to serve as its content as well as its form. We suggest that rhetorical discussions of power help all qualitative researchers better understand what is at stake when we move between text and field in our research practice.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, people from across the political spect... more After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, people from across the political spectrum offered explanations for the terrorists' motivations and searched for where to place the blame. Figures that featured centrally in the Cold War, such as the " homosexual-communist-subversive, " would reemerge in new forms in the discourse of this burgeoning War on Terror, including the racialized figure of the " queer-immigrant-terrorist. " This article analyzes conservative media discourse that blamed former Congressman Barney Frank and his " gay agenda " for the attacks due to Frank's influential role in passing the 1990 Immigration Act. It also explores how conservative and mainstream media reports and commentaries constructed the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, as " queer, " and how this (racialized and culturally specific) queerness was argued to be his primary motivation for the attacks. Reading these two kinds of discourse in relation to each other shows that " queerness " becomes the agency of terrorism, and this logic maps onto even the most " homonormative, " white gay bodies.
A critical reflection on the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 from the perspective of the queer act... more A critical reflection on the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 from the perspective of the queer activist/archivist collective Against Equality.
In this paper, the author reconsiders the historical narrative of Rhetorical Studies as a citizen... more In this paper, the author reconsiders the historical narrative of Rhetorical Studies as a citizenship narrative and thus argues that much rhetorical theory works to uphold the value and ideal of citizenship, while often ignoring or reframing appeals that challenge the very bases of citizenship and the nation-state. This account of Rhetoric’s intellectual history reveals the very parameters for what deserves attention in disciplinary history. The author suggests that this account also reveals the necessity to break from that history, not in order that Rhetoric become more inclusive but so that Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, noncitizen, non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), pp. 96-117, Apr 18, 2013
To start this dialogue, guest editor Karma R. Chávez posed a series of general and unbinding ques... more To start this dialogue, guest editor Karma R. Chávez posed a series of general and unbinding questions to participants about the meanings of queer theory and its relationship with questions of culture. The dialogue unfolded over the course of three weeks in an online forum and covered several important themes. First, participants engaged questions surrounding the meaning of queer, and its relationship to different cultural and linguistic contexts, especially with regard to diaspora, settler colonialism, and postcoloniality. Second, participants considered the interplay between queer and trans theories, which led to considerations of the body, memory, and homonormativity. Third, after the “coming out” of the U.S. actress Jodie Foster, participants had a lively discussion about the politics of visibility, responsibility, and accountability for different LGBTQ subjects. The dialogue concluded with final meditations.
A conversation Ulises Moreno-Tabarez and I had with several western activists who do queer activi... more A conversation Ulises Moreno-Tabarez and I had with several western activists who do queer activism in China.
For a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication about whether to change the journal's nam... more For a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication about whether to change the journal's name. Co-authored with Cindy L. Griffin of Colorado State University.
Rhetorical critics have long had a troubled relationship with method, viewing it as at times open... more Rhetorical critics have long had a troubled relationship with method, viewing it as at times opening up provocative avenues of inquiry, and at other times as closing off paths toward meaningful engagement with texts. Text + Field shifts scholarly attention from this conflicted history, looking instead to the growing number of scholars who are supplementing text-based scholarship by venturing out into the field, where rhetoric is produced, enacted, and consumed.
These field-based practices involve observation, ethnographic interviews, and performance. They are not intended to displace text-based approaches; rather, they expand the idea of method by helping rhetorical scholars arrive at new and complementary answers to long-standing disciplinary questions about text, context, audience, judgment, and ethics.
The first volume in rhetoric and communication to directly address the relevance, processes, and implications of using field methods to augment traditional scholarship, Text + Field provides a framework for adapting these new tools to traditional rhetorical inquiry.
Aside from the editors, the contributors are Roberta Chevrette, Kathleen M. de Onís, Danielle Endres, Joshua P. Ewalt, Alina Haliliuc, Aaron Hess, Jamie Landau, Michael Middleton, Tiara R. Na’puti, Jessy J. Ohl, Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Damien Smith Pfister, Samantha Senda-Cook, Lisa Silvestri, and Valerie Thatcher.
The battles for LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights have captured significant attention in the U.S.... more The battles for LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights have captured significant attention in the U.S. public sphere throughout the twenty-first century. Both movements, which are largely understood to be separate, have advocated a politics of inclusion in and assimilation to mainstream national values. Delineating an alternative approach to activism at the intersection of queer rights, immigration rights, and social justice, Queer Migration Politics examines a series of "coalitional moments" in which contemporary activists discover and respond to the predominant rhetoric, imagery, and ideologies that signal a sense of national identity.
Karma R. Chávez analyzes how activists use coalition to articulate the shared concerns of queer politics and migration politics, as activists imagine their ability to belong in various communities and spaces, their relationships to state and regional politics, and their relationships to other people whose lives might be very different from their own. Advocating a politics of the present and drawing from women of color and queer of color theory, this book contends that coalition enables a vital understanding of how queerness and immigration, citizenship and belonging, and inclusion and exclusion are linked. Queer Migration Politics offers activists, queer scholars, feminists, and immigration scholars productive tools for theorizing political efficacy.
Building on the decades of work by women of color and allied feminists, Standing in the Intersect... more Building on the decades of work by women of color and allied feminists, Standing in the Intersection is the first book in more than a decade to bring communication studies and feminist intersectional theories in conversation with one another. The authors in this collection take up important conversations relating to notions of style, space, and audience, and engage with the rhetoric of significant figures, including Carol Moseley Braun, Barbara Jordan, Emma Goldman, and Audre Lorde, as well as crucial contemporary issues such as campus activism and political asylum. In doing so, they ask us to complicate notions of space, location, and movement; to be aware of and explicit with regard to our theorizing of intersecting and contradictory identities; and to think about the impact of multiple dimensions of power in understanding audiences and audiencing.
This book chapter is based on a co-authored multi-media talk by Against Equality to support the r... more This book chapter is based on a co-authored multi-media talk by Against Equality to support the release of the collective's 2014 anthology Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion. It appears in the anthology Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions (2016). This chapter provides an overview of the collective's politics and archival practices from 2009 to 2015.
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Papers by Karma R Chávez
• Karma Chavez, who, after leaving a position teaching rhetoric at
University of Wisconsin–Madison, started as an associate professor
in Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas
in fall 2016.
• Julia Gutierrez, a third-year doctoral student in Feminist Studies at
Arizona State University, which has four campuses in the Phoenix/
Tempe area.
• Charles Preston, an undergraduate in African American Studies at
Chicago State University, a historically Black institution of higher
education.
• Craig Willse, an assistant professor in the Cultural Studies
program at George Mason University in Virginia, just outside of
Washington, DC.
The author suggests that this account also reveals the necessity to break from that history, not in order that Rhetoric become more inclusive but so that Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, noncitizen,
non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being.
• Karma Chavez, who, after leaving a position teaching rhetoric at
University of Wisconsin–Madison, started as an associate professor
in Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas
in fall 2016.
• Julia Gutierrez, a third-year doctoral student in Feminist Studies at
Arizona State University, which has four campuses in the Phoenix/
Tempe area.
• Charles Preston, an undergraduate in African American Studies at
Chicago State University, a historically Black institution of higher
education.
• Craig Willse, an assistant professor in the Cultural Studies
program at George Mason University in Virginia, just outside of
Washington, DC.
The author suggests that this account also reveals the necessity to break from that history, not in order that Rhetoric become more inclusive but so that Rhetoric may be something entirely different, something constituted through non-normative, noncitizen,
non-Western perspectives and ways of knowing and being.
These field-based practices involve observation, ethnographic interviews, and performance. They are not intended to displace text-based approaches; rather, they expand the idea of method by helping rhetorical scholars arrive at new and complementary answers to long-standing disciplinary questions about text, context, audience, judgment, and ethics.
The first volume in rhetoric and communication to directly address the relevance, processes, and implications of using field methods to augment traditional scholarship, Text + Field provides a framework for adapting these new tools to traditional rhetorical inquiry.
Aside from the editors, the contributors are Roberta Chevrette, Kathleen M. de Onís, Danielle Endres, Joshua P. Ewalt, Alina Haliliuc, Aaron Hess, Jamie Landau, Michael Middleton, Tiara R. Na’puti, Jessy J. Ohl, Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Damien Smith Pfister, Samantha Senda-Cook, Lisa Silvestri, and Valerie Thatcher.
Karma R. Chávez analyzes how activists use coalition to articulate the shared concerns of queer politics and migration politics, as activists imagine their ability to belong in various communities and spaces, their relationships to state and regional politics, and their relationships to other people whose lives might be very different from their own. Advocating a politics of the present and drawing from women of color and queer of color theory, this book contends that coalition enables a vital understanding of how queerness and immigration, citizenship and belonging, and inclusion and exclusion are linked. Queer Migration Politics offers activists, queer scholars, feminists, and immigration scholars productive tools for theorizing political efficacy.