Amber Johnson | Saint Louis University (original) (raw)

Amber Johnson

As a scholar/artist/activist, Dr. Johnson explores the language, exigency, sound, and aesthetics of various social movements. Their research and activism focus on performances of identity, protest, and social justice in digital and lived spaces. As a polymath, their mixed-media artistry involves working with metals, recycled and reclaimed goods, photography, poetry, percussion, and paint to interrogate systems of oppression.

Dr Johnson is a performance, identity, sexuality, and digital media scholar. Their research examines how individuals and collectives perform identity, the impact social media has on issues of authenticity, representation, and credibility, and the complex expressions of sexuality in digital media and everyday performances. Amber is an advocate for sexual health, reproductive justice, and broader conceptions of sexuality. Their approach merges ethnography and rhetorical criticism in an effort to bridge contextualized understandings of artifacts and lived experience as they are produced and performed in real time for social change.

Before her position at Saint Louis University, Dr. Johnson earned tenure and promotion at Prairie View A&M University after three years of service. Prior to that, Dr. Johnson was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Fixed-Term faculty member at Cal State Long Beach. They received their PhD from Penn State in Communication Arts & Sciences under the guidance of Dr. Ronald Jackson, and their MA and BA from Saint Louis University in Communication Studies.

Dr. Johnson is available for campus visits, lectures, performances, and special courses, as well as research collaborations.

Dr. Amber Johnson is an award winning Assistant Professor of Communication and Social Justice at Saint Louis University and the creator of The Justice Fleet ™, a mobile justice museum that interrogates radical forgiveness.
Phone: 314-977-2921
Address: 3733 West Pine Mall
Saint Louis, MO 63104

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Using autocritography, this essay acts as a critical performance of interracial communication, ci... more Using autocritography, this essay acts as a critical performance of interracial communication, civil and academic unrest, and theatre during the Grand Jury Hearing for Darren Wilson a year after he murdered Michael Brown in the streets of Ferguson. On the second day of my interview for the intercultural communication professor position at Saint Louis University, the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson. Protests erupted around the city. Later that week, after Thanksgiving and as protests began to wane, my family and I went to the Fabulous Fox Theatre to view Motown: The Musical. Drawing from canonical prejudice, this essay adds canonical exception to the discussion in an attempt to illuminate the repulsive practice of respectability politics in policed spaces like the academy, theatre, and music.

ABSTRACT This autopoetic response to Sweetwater by Robin M. Boylorn offers praise and a critique ... more ABSTRACT This autopoetic response to Sweetwater by Robin M. Boylorn offers praise and a critique of resilience as a an answer to adversity. The author argues that resilience is not enough for black women. Black women must be verbs and maintain a level of strength in order to transform beyond her circumstances.

KEYWORDS Adversity; Resilience; Black women; Autopoetic narrative; Performative review

The video vixen holds a special place in American society’s underbelly. Good hair, firm breasts, ... more The video vixen holds a special place in American society’s underbelly. Good hair, firm breasts, round ass, slim waist, and pouty mouth, she is beautiful according to European and African American standards. She personifies sex. After seeing Case serenade and propose to Beyoncé in his music video “Happily Ever After,” I wanted to be the video vixen. I wanted my desirability memorialized in a video. Nelly was my chance, or so I thought. In this autocritography, I use performative writing to confess my short-lived career as a video vixen. My intention is to trouble boundaries of gender and sexuality by telling and re-telling my experience on the set of Nelly’s “Country Grammar (Hot Shit)” music video shoot alongside my anthem at the time, Jay-Z and Pharell’s “I Just Wanna Love You (Give It 2 Me).” I illuminate how bodies move between and beyond boundaries established by language due to the intersectional properties of our experiences, counter-memory, and re-membering.

In this performative response to Concrete and Dust: Mapping the Sexual Terrains of Los Angeles by... more In this performative response to Concrete and Dust: Mapping the Sexual Terrains of Los Angeles by Jeanine Mingé and Amber Zimmerman, the author sets out on her journey reading and interpreting the text, and reflecting the text back upon her own body. Using poetic narrative and autoethnographic techniques, the author discusses (dis)memberment, intersectional identities, queer theory, and sexual assault.

This analysis focuses on the Life Always campaign that attacks Black women and deepens reproducti... more This analysis focuses on the Life Always campaign that attacks Black women and deepens reproductive health disparities. Their anti-abortion billboard campaign adds to a body of discourse that stigmatizes Black women as promiscuous , irresponsible, psychologically immature, and murderers. Using critical rhetoric and visual textual analysis , we analyze the campaign alongside Life Always' website in an effort to illuminate the hidden agenda behind the ads and the ramifications for those ads on the discourse surrounding African American women's reproductive health disparities. We argue that if Life Always wants to change our nation's ideologies concerning abortion, creating laws that attack Black women's wombs is an ineffective and misdirected plan. We must create a new ideology that eliminates the pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy and instead promotes pro-health and reproductive justice. The terms Black and African American are used interchangeably in this study. Impregnated with my 2nd child, a baby girl growing a reproductive system much like my own in the center of my womb, I scheduled a monthly check up with a Dr. that wasn't my regular physician due to scheduling conflicts. A short, balding, White man entered my room and introduced himself. He started asking me questions about my lifestyle, my pregnancy, and my plans for birth control. " What are you going to do for birth control? " My response: " We practice the rhythm method. " With skeptical eyes he interrogated me further: " You know that doesn't always work. Do you have a backup plan? My wife and I tried that and we have four kids now. " My thought: What does your family have to do with my rhythm? " We used it before and it worked quite well, Dr. " His response: " Well what are you going to do if you get pregnant? " The bantering continued for some time, and in the end, I had questions of my own. " Why do you assume I don't want more children? Why do you assume I am incapable of tracking my own body's reproductive schedule and keep from getting pregnant? " Why do you compare your white, upper-class lack of family planning to my Black, middle-class, careful attention to family planning? " I was happy when my regular Dr. returned. We had an understanding about our Black bodies and the historical reproductive injustices indented in the dimples of our buttocks, the frown lines molded to our temples, the scarring written across our wombs. The substitute Dr's negative health messages symbolized the thousands of negative health messages we witness daily. We must analyze these

This exploratory qualitative research study examined male college students' narratives describing... more This exploratory qualitative research study examined male college students' narratives describing memorable sexual experiences, and how those encounters inform current sexual practices. Drawing from a larger collaborative research project, this study explores the narratives of 130 men who were attending college at one of three diverse US campuses in 2012. Utilizing a coordi-nateed management of meaning theoretical frame we examine how sexual experiences are informed by logical forces of looped narratives that exhibit both charmed and strange loops. Findings demonstrate how men's management of meaning regarding their sexual experiences is informed by larger expectations steeped in rigid masculine values, a major force in socially constructing sexuality.

This exploratory qualitative research study examined college students' memorable narratives regar... more This exploratory qualitative research study examined college students' memorable narratives regarding their first sexual experience, and how those encounters inform current sexual practices. Drawing from a large national data set, the study explores the narratives of 100 women and men who were attending college on one of three diverse U.S. campuses in 2012. Utilizing a qualitative content analytic methodological framework , we found that women and men frame their first sexual experiences, in terms of message valence (positive, negative, neutral), in similar ways. Yet, subsequent thematic analysis of these messages reveals that gendered patterns and nuances exist in terms of positively framed (great experience; thoughtful, good decision; a special experience; and positive communicative experience) and negatively framed (undesired consequences, rape=abuse, regrets, and unpleasurable to horrible experiences) themes. Following an explication of how these thematic insights are more aptly understood through a gendered lens, directions for future research and implications for research, theory, and practice are provided.

Health Communication Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription inf... more Health Communication Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:

The video vixen holds a special place in American society's underbelly. Good hair, firm breast, r... more The video vixen holds a special place in American society's underbelly. Good hair, firm breast, round ass, slim waist, and pouty mouth, she is beautiful according to European and African American standards. She personifies sex. After seeing Case serenade and propose to Beyoncé in his R&B video "Happily Ever After," I wanted to be the vixen. I wanted my desirability memorialized in a video. Nelly was my chance, or so I thought. In this autocritography, I use performative writing to confess my short-lived career as a video vixen. My intention is to trouble boundaries of gender and sexuality by telling and re-telling my experience on the set of Nelly’s “Country Grammar” video shoot alongside my anthem at the time, Jay Z’s “I Just Want to Love You.” I illuminate the ways in which bodies move between and beyond boundaries established by language due to the intersectional properties of our experiences, counter-memory, and re-membering.

Antoine Dodson’s Black, gay, southern, lower class, seemingly unintelligent identities create spa... more Antoine Dodson’s Black, gay, southern, lower class, seemingly unintelligent identities create space for media to exploit him as a Homo Coon*a sexualized form of the Zip Coon that frames Black, homosexual masculinity negatively, and appropriates a stereotype that denies it authenticity by reducing it to coonery. However, if we see Dodson through a critical lens, his story complicates notions of class, education, access, femininity, and masculinity. His business savvy marketing moves and self-promotion challenge stereo- typical notions of poor, undereducated people. His gendered performance coupled with his ability to care for his family physically, emotionally, and financially complicate gender roles. Using E. Patrick Johnson’s theory of appropriation, I argue that social media users frame Dodson’s identity as coonery, which appropriates gay, Black, masculinity in limiting ways. However, a more critical reading of Dodson illuminates the ways in which his identity complicates binaries and creates space for multiple salient identities to emerge that do not render femininity to the domain of women, or masculinity to the domain of heterosexual men, but instead focuses on salience at the intersections.

I wasn’t always sexually liberated from the confines of rhetorical structures that deny my body p... more I wasn’t always sexually liberated from the confines of rhetorical structures that deny my body pleasure. In fact, my sexual liberation did not occur until well into my twenties, post Bachelor and Master degrees. But between the temporal space of my first sexual experience and liberation, there is a moment of spiritual identity negotiation within an intra-racial relationship with vast intercultural differences, specifically class and religion. In this autopoetic narrative that begins and ends in a church, I tell a story from my sexual past. A story that used to “remain at the bottom of the sexual [and theological] pyramid without a voice” (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 145) or body because it challenges the traditional ideals of Christian sexuality and what it means to become and perform Christianity. Autoethnographic techniques create space to engage sexuality with the body present, telling the story, and offering a particular kind of complexity. Carolyn Ellis asserts “the goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathetic social science in which readers can keep in their minds and feel in their bodes the complexities of concrete moments of lived experience” (Ellis, 2004, p. 30).

This performative essay is a redrafting and extension of a critical dialogue following a public p... more This performative essay is a redrafting and extension of a critical dialogue following a public presentation on the nature and
importance of communication studies. The dialogue is framed by using the metaphor of breathing, as it relates to particular
links between human communication and communication activist research.

KEYWORDS Adversity; Resilience; Black women; Autopoetic narrative; Performative review

Amber Johnson | Saint Louis University (original) (raw)

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