Hi! I'm Vee Lawson.

I'm a PhD candidate in Writing and Rhetoric at Michigan State University working in cultural and digital rhetorics around ephemeral texts, rhetorical intimacy, and feminist/queer/trans community formation online.

It's nice to meet you!

As a researcher and teacher, I draw on cultural rhetorics and digital feminist practices to understand how we can use writing to form supportive communities, especially in times of hardship, under surveillance, and in other adverse environments.

  • I enjoy working across both rhetoric and writing studies and women's and gender studies. I'm always open to collaboration, so please reach out if you'd like to talk ideas!
  • This year, I am a Cultural Heritage Informatics fellow and am working on using computational research methods within a story-based framework. You can read more about my process here!
  • In my free time, I'm an avid hiker and knitter (follow me on Ravelry, if you knit too!) and spend too much time taking photos of my cats.

You can read my full CV here, reach me on Twitter as @vee_lawson, or email me at lawsonv2@msu.edu.

Research

My dissertation is a mixed-methods analysis of proto-feminist storytelling in an online snark community. Participants in this and similar online communities engage in "snark," or pointed humor, in response to fundamentalist Christian media that attempts to propagate restrictive and often misogynist roles for women and children, an activity dubbed "fundie snarking." While participants distance themselves from the views espoused by the fundamentalists they snark upon, the discourse of many snark communicates replicates sexism through commentary on childbearing bodies, beauty standards, and expectations of women at home and in the workforce. In response, one Reddit-based snark community, the subject of this research, established itself as a home for deliberately story-based, ethical snark. Using computational topic modeling, network analysis, and interviews, I seek to understand how participants in this particular fundie-snarking forum recognize and remediate religiously-motivated misogyny through reflexive storytelling.

 

Recently, I've also published a review of Glasby, Gradin, and Ryerson's Storytelling in Queer Appalachia: Imagining and Writing the Unspeakable Other with constellations, and my chapter "Re-Storying Trans* Zines" is included in the Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetorics, released in early 2022.

Interdisciplinarity

I work across rhetoric and composition; feminist, queer, and trans studies; and the digital humanities. I incorporate multidisciplinarity into my teaching, and I am always interested in collaborative research. Please reach out if something sparks your interest!

Sample Courses Taught

WRA 101
Writing As Inquiry

A first-year writing course taught face-to-face, hybrid, and synchronously online.

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ENGL 1023
Composition II Special Topics

A special-topics first-year writing course about zines and feminist rhetorics.

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WS 301
Sexual Violence Against Women and Children: Theory and Response

An online, asynchronous course for undergraduate students seeking a WGS major, minor, or certificate.

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GNST 2003/H
Intro to Gender Studies

A broad-ranging survey course for undergraduate students across majors.

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