Introducing our Keynote Speaker:

K.J. Rawson is the Associate Professor of English and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Co-Director of NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks at Northeastern University. Before coming to Northeastern, he was the Associate Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, and prior to that a Lecturer in the Division of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky. He earned his Ph.D. in 2010 from Syracuse University in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program, then their Master’s degree in 2005 from the University of Colorado, Boulder in English Literature, and his Bachelor's degree in 2003 from Cornell University in English Literature.

K.J. works at the intersections of the Digital Humanities and Rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and Feminist Studies. By focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. Rawson is also the founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials, and he chairs the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.