Dr. Jessica L. Ridgeway
Assistant Professor and
Director of the First Year Composition Program at NSU
223 Madison Hall
(757) 823-2158
jlridgeway@nsu.edu
Jessica Ridgeway is native of High Point, NC and has always been interested in literature and writing. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from the illustrious North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Professional English in 2009, a MAT degree in English, Secondary Education in 2012 and a Master of Arts in English and African American Literature. She has served as a licensed 6-12 English/Language Arts teacher, and has a wealth of experience in alternative, charter, magnet, and charters schools in North Carolina.
Dr. Ridgeway served as English instructor at NC A&T and Greensboro College and has recently earned a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at Wayne State University, where she also instructed composition and literature courses. Her research interests include Cultural Rhetorics, Composition Pedagogy, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Black Feminist Pedagogy, and Womanist Rhetoric. This fall, she will start a new position as an Assistant Professor of English and Director of First-Year Composition at Norfolk State University.
Publications:
Leavings, C., Braxton, C., & Ridgeway, J. (April 2025) All Black Everything: Exploring Hip Hop Based Education in First Year Composition-Duke Press
Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture
Ridgeway, J. (forthcoming) “Just Black Women’s Digital Rhetoric: Engaging in the True Meaning of #BlackGirlMagic and Multimodality in Rhetoric & Composition” Just Rhetoric: A Selection of Essays from the 21st Biennial Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America
Ridgeway, J. (under review) How Racial Code-switching Impacts Students: from a Black Woman’s Perspective Academia” Exploring Racial Code Switching in Education, Routledge
Ridgeway, J. (under review) Book Review: Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education, Advance Journal