Dr. Self currently serves as an assistant professor of communication studies and affiliate faculty in the Race and Ethnicity Program and Feminist Studies Program. A native of the historic Mississippi Delta, Dr. Self received his PhD in communication studies with minors in African and African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge; an MA in English language and literature from Jackson State University in Jackson, MS; and an MA in communication, media, and theatre from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL. Dr. Self is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African American men. In his spare time, Dr. Self enjoys reading, writing, traveling, and spending time with loved ones.

Dr. Self has taught the following courses in the Department of Communication Studies at Southwestern University: Introduction to Critical/Cultural Communication; Public Speaking; Rhetorics of Crime and Criminality; Rhetorical Theory; and Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media. 

As an interdisciplinary critic, Dr. Self primarily researches the discursive dynamics animating ideological discourses surrounding issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other categories of difference in both historic and contemporary American culture. More specifically, his scholarship in these areas analyzes the rhetorical and performative constitution of racialized, gendered, and queer bodies in American culture and how such constitutions may challenge or upend systems of inequality and oppression.

Dr. Self’s research has resulted in several awards. Most recently, his dissertation, Ties That Bind: Black Familyness and the Politics of Contingent Coalitions, won the Ann Veronica Simon Award for Outstanding Gender Studies Dissertation at Louisiana State University (2021); a Dissertation Award Honorable Mention from the Rhetoric Society of America (2021); the Cheris Kramarae Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (2021); and the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award, the National Communication Association’s highest dissertation recognition (2021). Dr. Self also received a Top Paper award from the GLBTQ Studies Division of the National Communication Association (2020). 

Dr. Self’s published scholarship can be found in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and Women’s Studies in Communication. You may access his publications here.