About Us

Rima Abunasser, PhD

Rima Abunasser, PhD is assistant professor of English at TWU (PhD in English, University of North Texas). Her teaching and research interests focus on British and global writing and activism, specifically on how transnational writers, both at home and in the diaspora, articulate nationalism, freedom and home. Her teaching specializations are British Literature from the eighteenth century to the present, the global Anglophone and Francophone novel, and the literature of the Middle East and North Africa, with additional expertise in Diaspora studies, Decolonial studies, Gender and Sexuality studies, and Race and Ethnic studies. She has published articles and chapters in the Journal of North African Studies, Remembering Kahina: Representation and Resistance in Post-Independence Maghreb, the European Institute of the Mediterranean’s IEMed Mediterranean Yearbook, and XVIII: New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century. She is also co-editor of the two-volume collection of activist writing, Voices of Freedom: Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, from Academica Press.

Ashley Bender, PhD

Ashley Bender, PhD is assistant professor of English at TWU (PhD in English, University of North Texas). Her teaching and research interests focus on work by and representations of women in Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature and culture. Her scholarship on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama explores the intersections of material culture and discourses of selfhood to analyze the ways that stage properties and characters’ bodies participate in the rhetorical construction of individual and national identities. She has published articles in Restoration, Eighteenth-Century Life, and Papers on Language and Literature. As BA Program Coordinator for English, she is strongly invested in helping students, undergraduate and graduate alike, cultivate strong professional dispositions that prepare them to excel in their lives beyond university. She brings her expertise in experiential education pedagogies to bear in her classes as a way to bridge “town and gown” and help students cultivate public humanities practices.

From 2018-2020, Bender co-directed “Building Global Perspectives in the Humanities” with Gretchen Busl, funded by a Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving Institutions grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. More recently, Bender has focused her research and advocacy on improving conditions for women in academia, especially academic mothers. After completing the OpEd Project’s “Write to Change the World” and “Accelerating Ideas” workshops, she published on the need for state-funded paid parental leave; and she has co-authored an essay with Jackie Hoermann-Elliott in The ADVANCE Journal. A strong advocate for local arts and culture, she is also board secretary for Real Waves Radio, Inc., a Denton-area non-profit that runs KUZU 92.9, a low-power FM station.

Gretchen Busl, PhD

Gretchen Busl (PhD in Literature, University of Notre Dame) is an associate professor and the Graduate Program Coordinator for the MA in English and PhD in Rhetoric at Texas Woman’s University. Her scholarship and teaching combine narrative theory, rhetoric, and gender studies to examine how we communicate across borders and between discourse communities. She is the co-editor of "Antiheroines of Contemporary Media: Saints, Sinners, and Survivors" and has published in Modern Language Review, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and English Studies. She is co-editing a volume titled Getting to the Finish Line: New Directions for the Dissertation Process for the Modern Languages Association and working on a monograph that explores framed narratives and oral storytelling in contemporary global novels. She is a passionate advocate for public humanities work, with a particular focus on the role of narratives in society.

Alyssa Grimley

Alyssa Grimley is pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric at Texas Woman’s University. They have previously worked as the assistant director of TWU’s Write Site and as a graduate reader at the University of Texas at Dallas. Assisting students develop their skills, voice and confidence in their writing is a major passion of theirs.

Their main areas of academic interest are genre fiction (particularly horror), trauma-informed pedagogy and affect and embodiment theory. Their goal is to combine these interests in their research and apply them to their pedagogical practices to cultivate a culture of empathy and growth in the classroom and beyond.

Raegan Harvey

Raegan Harvey is pursuing a master's in English with a focus on rhetoric and composition at Texas Woman's University. She is a writing consultant in TWU's Write Site, and is eager to continue building experience in supporting writers across the disciplines.

Her research centers on examining tabletop roleplaying games as tools for advocacy and change through lenses of queer theory, embodied rhetoric and disability justice. She is particularly interested in how unfacilitated or GM-less games can encourage equitable and collaborative play, opening up spaces at the table for multiple ways of being, knowing and learning

Agatha Beins,, PhD

Agatha Beins, PhD, (abeins@twu.edu) is Program Lead and an associate professor in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies program at Texas Woman’s University. You can find her work on feminist print cultures and social movement activism in her book Liberation in Print: Feminist Periodicals and Social Movement Identity. She has also written about the politics of archiving, feminist pedagogy, institutionalizing women’s and gender studies, and the intersections of art and activism for publications such as Feminist Studies American Periodicals, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, and the edited collection Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies II. Turning toward the generative possibilities of art, her current project explores the material, discursive, affective, and imaginative infrastructures that creative activism and activists build in their social justice praxis. You can find glimpses of her own art in literary journals: Blackbird, The Fiddleback, and Thimble. This research and writing has been supported by grants and fellowships from institutions including the Sophia Smith Collection, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women, Barnard College, and Tulane University.

Jennifer Conner

Jennifer Conner is a PhD candidate in the English/Rhetoric program at Texas Woman’s University, where she is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies. In addition, she is an assistant associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington, teaching courses in first-year writing.

She has more than 17 years of experience as a secondary school English language arts teacher, as well as providing speech and communication instruction at the college level. She has worked as a freelance journalist for local publications in New Orleans and Dallas..

Conner holds a master’s degree in communication from Dallas Baptist University, and a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Dillard University. Her research interest intersect at Black feminist rhetoric, communication theory and activism. As a scholar, she seeks to gain more nuanced skills, intermeshing what she’s ascertained in scholarship to more public sites of learning to be more constructive in discourse communities focused on social reform.

Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, PhD

Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, PhD, is an assistant professor of English and the Director of First-Year Composition at TWU, where she teaches and researches how writers write through and with their bodies. Her scholarship has appeared in national journals such as The ADVANCE Journal and Composition Forum as well as in several edited collections. Her book, Running, Thinking, Writing: Embodied Cognition in Composition was published by Parlor Press in 2021, and in that same year she shared the message of her book through various media outlets, including podcasts and her own writing. Prior to coming to TWU, she was a regular reporter for several newspapers and magazines in the D-FW area, including The Fort Worth Weekly, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Dallas Morning News, and Madeworthy Magazine. Although she has a little less time to write journalistically these days, she still tries to author an op-ed or two each year while maintaining an active lifestyle through running, walking, yoga, and chasing her three children around.

Juliette Holder

Juliette Holder is pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and a graduate certificate in Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies from Texas Woman’s University, where she is also an instructor in the first-year composition program.

She holds a master’s degree in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University and her research interests include feminist rhetorics, pop culture and pedagogy.

Jennifer Judd

Jennifer Judd is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric, a First-Year Composition instructor at Texas Woman’s University, and a Technical Writing instructor at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include writing across the curriculum, invitational rhetoric, gender studies, and disability studies. She is particularly interested in developing accessible learning environments that nurture trust and a diversity of perspectives.

Jennifer’s writing experience extends to a background in professional and creative writing. Her children’s books and poems have been published by Two Lions Publishing, Highlights for Children group, and Cricket Media group, among others. She has served in leadership roles with the North Texas chapter of The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and is passionate about community involvement and intersectionality, actively participating in local women’s service organizations, the newly formed DFW-Metro chapter of the NAACP, and grassroots advocacy for autistic individuals.

Gabriella V. Sanchez

Gabriella V. Sanchez is a PhD candidate and undergraduate instructor in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies program at Texas Woman’s University. As a teacher/learner, she recognizes that students possess a wealth of experiential, ancestral and cultural knowledge and creates a space for critical thinking that connects course content to larger society and our own lived realities. Her dissertation examines intersectional consciousness — ways of knowing and being that reject colonial, imperialist, and capitalist ideologies and structures — and the multiple, everyday strategies women of color provide that are necessary for individual and collective liberation.

Sanchez was recently awarded the [Wo]Mentoring in Graduate Education — a grant that will support her work with Chicana activist-scholar and professor emerita, Josie Méndez-Negrete. Under the WoMentorship of Dra. Méndez-Negrete, Sanchez will learn a publishing and editing process rooted in Chicana feminist practices, critical conciencia (consciousness) and care as she helps grow Méndez-Negrete’s Conocimientos Press.