Mentoring Digital Narratives as Feminist Rhetorical Practices
Florence Elizabeth Bacabac, Dixie State University (St. George, Utah)
Introduction
Following the concept of "social circulation," Royster & Kirsch (2012) suggested the importance of tracing feminist performances across time, place, and conditions to broadcast how they set and shape critical engagement. This type of inquiry does not only expose the generative circuitry of women's thoughts/actions, but also preserve their social value in various contexts. It is necessary to examine how ideas, beliefs, practices, etc. circulate in new genres or new media and influence others to enact agency reforms. From this angle, I argue that documenting women's mentoring experiences through digital narratives embodies intergenerational feminism that convey mediated legacies within the scope of women's rhetoric.
Mentoring Digital Narratives
Mentoring may only be one of the many tools to help women meet academic and professional parity, but the value of sharing its success stories online could potentially empower others, especially in the state of Utah, to seek out educational opportunities for advancement. In particular, mentoring digital narratives collectively describe women's located experiences, breakthroughs, and challenges that engender academic/professional progress and manifestations of feminist rhetorical practices, enabling what hooks (2004) referred to as cultural transformation. For this reason, a simulation of Selfe & the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) Consortium (2013) through this project preserves feminist mentoring narratives in digital affordances as potent rhetorical accounts.
In this webtext, I will discuss the concept of mentoring digital narratives as feminist rhetorical practices based on the mentoring program of DSU Women's Resource Center in St. George, Utah. I will review the project's theory, context, and practice and conclude that these digital narratives relate situated/contextual truths in circulated spaces, causing permutations to structures that empower Utah women in higher education.