Dr. Robin M. Boylorn is the inaugural Holle Endowed Chair of Communication Arts and founding director of the forthcoming Holle Center for Communication Arts in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She is also Professor of Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama. She teaches and writes about issues of social identity and diversity, focusing primarily on the lived experience(s) of black women in the U. S. American South.
As a critical autoethnographer she studies culture through the context of lived experience. Her current research focuses on racialized representations of gender/sex. She coined the terms “ratchet respectability” and “blackgirl (one word/no space)” to critically engage representations and lived experiences of black womanhood. She uses ratchet respectability to discuss the oxymoronic and problematic class characterizations of black women on reality TV, and theorizes blackgirl (one word) as a way of understanding the indivisiblility of race and gender in the marginalized lives and experiences of black women.
As a scholar/activist, writer, speaker, and thinker she is committed to a life and work (life’s work) that prioritizes social justice, is rooted in love, self-care, and accountability, and is housed with honesty and humility.
She describes herself as:
crunk, creative, courageous, generous, ambitious
a poet, a professor, a visionary, a realist
a sports fan(atic), a storyteller, an old school hip hop head
an Alice Walker womanist (or a black feminist)
a cultural critic, a christian, a contradiction
a fashionista, a loner, a wordsmith, a misfit
a writer, a hustler, a survivor, a keeper
a fully recovered former people-pleaser
charming, discerning, smart, quick-witted
a North Carolinian living in Alabama by way of Florida
who is a writer who teaches, and/or a teacher who writes
about taboo topics and truth
She is also: loyal, liberal, honest, ethical, focused, independent, sentimental & “sensitive about her shit.” (Badu)
