Meet Our Speakers
Kierra Lawrence,
Student Keynote Speaker
Kierra Lawrence is a senior undergraduate student majoring in English at Albany State University. She plans to become a professor in English literature with a concentration in Creative Writing and African American studies. Some of Lawrence’s most significant achievements consist of participating in multiple conferences and symposiums for her most prized work entitled Lauryn Hill as a Pedagogue: Teaching the Oppressed to Transgress for Progression, presenting the occasion for Nikki Giovanni at the poetry conference (2014) at Albany State University and performing spoken word pieces at events in her free time. One of the most significant events that have helped with the molding of Lawrence as a writer and a scholar was her attendance at the Furious Flower Conference where she had the opportunity to meet poets and scholars such as Sonia Sanchez and Jessica Care Moore. Lawrence plans to pursue her career as an English professor by attending graduate school after her undergraduate career.
Adonis Price,
Student Keynote Speaker
Adonis Price is an aspiring creative director and business owner. He is currently a freshman at Albany State University studying theater in order to sharpen his directing skills. Romeo and Juliet is the first play that Adonis will perform on stage . With the lead role of Romeo, Adonis is learning to break the boundaries of his talents and apply what he's learned to founding his own production company.
Steven Lessner,
Featured Presenter
Steven Lessner is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, where he teaches first-year writing courses that invite undergraduates to explore how their diverse music literacies, including Hip Hop, can be used to effectively transition to writing in higher education. He has taught undergraduate writing previously at Elon University and Michigan State University. In his research, he focuses on how African American male students’ literacy and language practices can be invited, included, and learned from in first-year writing pedagogy, and how Hip Hop artists exhibit specific characteristics of organic intellectuals. He has presented his research at the Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, College Composition and Communication, Hip Hop Literacies Conference, and Circling the Elements: Hip Hop Conference. He has published his research on writing pedagogy in a book chapter co-authored with Collin Craig entitled “Finding Your Way In: Invention As Inquiry Based Learning In First Year Writing.” He enjoys working with and mentoring first generation college students. In his free time, he loves visiting radical bookstores in Baltimore and DC, writing poetry, visiting family, and listening to lots of Hip Hop. His favorite Hip Hop artists include Nas, Method Man, Kendrick Lamar and Lupe Fiasco. His favorite albums are Method Man and Redman’s Blackout and Nas’ Illmatic.
Dr. Melinda Mills
Featured Presenter
Dr. Melinda Mills is the Coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies program, and an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology at Castleton University in Vermont. Much of her research focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality. She is currently working on a manuscript on multiracial identities, More than Multiracial. Professor Mills teaches courses on popular culture and media representations, including one centered on hip hop. This allows her to introduce her students to scholarship by some of her favorite thinkers, including Mark Anthony Neal and Melissa Harris-Perry. Melinda enjoys adventuring through the Adirondacks, running through new neighborhoods, reading books or listening to them during her commute to Vermont. She also shamelessly loves cupcakes, Fetty Wap, and Hello Kitty, in that order.
Ngozi Okidegbe,
Featured Presenter
Ngozi Okidegbe is a former law clerk to Justice Madlanga of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She holds a BCL/LLB degree from the McGill Faculty of Law. Her areas of research are in procedural law and human rights. Her work has been presented at several conferences including the 2014 International AIDS conference, Melbourne, Australia.
Prof. Andre,
Keynote Speker
Professor Andre Stefan Johnson is currently an Assistant Professor of English and the 2016 Teacher of the Year for the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Mass Communication at Albany State University & He is founder and organizer of Circling The Elements National Hip Hop conference held at ASU and former Co-Host of The Hip Hop Cypher Talk Show on ASU channel 19.
Professor Andre is a former instructor for the African American Studies Program at Florida State University. While at FSU he won an Outstanding teaching Award in 2006 and taught a wide variety of courses including The African American Experience, The Black Short Story, Introduction to African American Literature, Writing about Spike Lee Films, Writing About Tupac and Black Male Frustration, and Writing About Hip-Hop.
Professor Andre’s general Area of study is African American literature with an emphasis in African American drama and film studies. His minor areas are Film Studies, Film Criticism, Hip-Hop Critical Theory, and African American Rhetoric. His research focuses on the works of Oscar Micheaux, Spike Lee, Amiri Baraka, August Wilson, George C. Wolfe, James Baldwin, and Suzan Lori-Parks. His research also explores and examines Hip-Hop aesthetics and how Hip-Hop reflects, embodies, complicates, and deviates from the modes of Racial Uplift. While at ASU, Professor Andre has taught African American Drama Studies, Hip Hop Critical Theory, Black Spoken Word Performance: “The Revolution is Real (Yo),” and African American Film Studies: Dis-Embodying Modes of Racial Uplift.He is currently preparing to teach Hip Hop Critical Theory:“Holler if You Hear Us: Tupac Amaru Shakur as Activist, Souljah, Poet, & ‘Thug’” in Fall 2016.
This year will be Professor Andre's first time speaking at CTE. His presentation is a collaborative mixture of spoken word, research, and creativeness entitled “I still love SHE: Hip Hop –SHE’S Our DOPENESS” - A Critical Performance with special features by Kierra Lawrence, Adonis Price, Taylor Brown, & Brandi Johnson.