Hailey Nicole Otis

Dr. Hailey Nicole Otis is a critical rhetorical scholar committed to social justice and leveraging the tools of communication and rhetoric toward advocacy and worldmaking. Her research draws from intersectional feminist theory, queer theory, fat studies, and rhetorical theory and criticism to investigate the embodied and intersectional rhetorical tactics through which activists, advocates, influencers, and social media users envision and bring into being more liberatory worlds for multiply marginalized bodies.

Her primary research topic coalesces around digital forms of contemporary intersectional fat activism and this work has been featured on top paper panels in both the Feminist and Women’s Studies division of the National Communication Association (NCA) as well as the Organization for Research on Women and Communication (ORWAC) division of the Western States Communication Association. Another line of Hailey’s research explores how marginalized groups (specifically those in fat and disabled bodies as well as bodies of color) engage in worldmaking against the backdrop of healthist COVID-related discourses that render certain lives disposable and unlivable.

Hailey has received multiple Excellence in Teaching Awards and her essay, “Intersectional Rhetoric: Where Intersectionality as Analytic Sensibility and Embodied Rhetorical Praxis Converge,” earned the Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award from NCA in 2020. Her research appears in outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Women’s Studies in Communication, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Queer Studies & Communication.

Hailey is committed to innovative, social justice-oriented approaches to teaching and learning and has developed and presented a variety of pedagogical workshops on topics such as anti-ableist pedagogy and disability justice as well as abolitionist and anti-racist pedagogies.
 

Otis Graduate Advising Philosophy