Alexis McGee is an Associate Professor of Research at the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. with two certificates of concentration in linguistics as well as rhetoric & composition from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Her research interests include Black feminist rhetorical theory; Black rhetorics; language, and literacies; sound studies as well as rhetoric and composition theory and history. Her monograph, From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetorics (SUNY Press 2024), is the 2026 winner of The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award.

Selected Works Cited:

McGee, Alexis. From Blues to Beyoncé: A Generation of Black Women’s Sonic Rhetoric. State U of New York P. February 2024.

McGee, Alexis. “Toward a Black Rhetoric of Voicing.” College Composition and Communication. vol. 75, iss. 2, 2023. pp. 333-59. https://doi.org/10.58680/ccc2023752333

McGee, Alexis. “(Re)Reading Sor Juana’s Rhetorics: The Intersectional, Cultural, and Feminist Rhetorician.” Rhetoric Review. vol. 40, iss, 3, 2021.

Billingsley, Khadeidra and Alexis McGee. “Black Feminist Pedagogy, Extra-Institutional Mentorship, and Other Things Learned from the Black Caucus.” NCTE/CCCC: Teaching, Organizing, and Learning in the Contemporary Freedom Struggle. Edited by Jamal Cooks, David F. Green Jr., and Mudiwa Pettus. (Forthcoming).

McGee, Alexis. “Beyisms: The Southern Sociolinguistic Strategies and Rhetorics in Beyoncé’s Lemonade.” Beyoncé, Black Feminism, and Spirituality: The Lemonade Reader, edited by Kinitra Brooks and Kameelah Martin, Routledge, 2019.

McGee, Alexis and J. David Cisneros. “Looking Forward, Looking Back: A Dialogue on ‘The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism.’” Special issue of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol 15, iss. 4, 2018.

The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award, Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, 2026.

Cultivating New Voices Award, National Council of Teachers of English, 2020-2022

Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award, National Council of Teachers of English, 2014

Listening, Reading, and Writing Voice

This course investigates the importance of voice as it is composed through a variety of forms. What does it mean to read voice within texts? How do we listen to voices? How can we craft voice when we write? In addition to seeking answers to these questions, this course builds working definitions for the features defining voice, loosely, by engaging with scholarly conversations across discourses (sociolinguistics, writing studies, postcolonialism, etc.). By the end of this course, students should be able to identify, develop, and understand of how voice can be used rhetorically.