Jolivette Mecenas

Associate Professor and Director of Composition
Specialties: Writing pedagogy; cultural rhetorics; writing programs

Contact Information
Email: jmecenas@csudh.edu
Office: LaCorte Hall, B-330
Phone: (310) 243-3040

Jolivette Mecenas received her PhD in English from the University of Hawai’i-Manoa. She completed her MA in English at San Francisco State University and her BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her primary research interests focus on culturally-sustaining writing programs at minority-serving institutions and on antiracist writing pedagogies. She also writes about and teaches courses on activist cultural practices and communication in public discourse, with a focus on graphic narratives and memoir in feminist and queer publics.

Publications
"A Punk Playlist for Queer Moms Raising Feminist Boys.” In Boyhood Reimagined: Stories of Queer Moms Raising Boys. Eds. Marlow, Jenn & Gail Schwartz. (Forthcoming, Motina Books, 2025).

“Equity-Minded Writing Placement for a ‘New Normal.’ Four Case Studies of Student Self-Placement (SSP).” WPA Advocacy in a Pandemic: Lessons Learned, edited by Todd Ruecker and Sheila Carter-Tod. (Forthcoming, University Press of Colorado, 2025. With Katherine Daily O’Meara, Breana Bayraktar, Lisa Mastrangelo).

“Refusal as Renewal: Asian/American and Saying No While WPA-ing.” Understanding Writing
Program Administrator Readiness and Renewal. Jangelo, Joe & Mark Blaauw-Hara,
editors, Peter Lang Publishers, 2023.

"Come Out and Dance" Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, vol. 7, no.1, Fall 2022.

"Anti-Racist and Faith-Based: Critical Pedagogy-Informed Writing and Information Literacy
Instruction as a Hispanic-Serving, Lutheran Liberal Arts University."Radical Teacher – A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching, vol. 121, 9 December 2021. pp. 14-23. (With Meghan Kwast and Yvonne Wilber).

“Aligning Practice with Belief: Bringing Antiracist Information Literacy and Writing Instruction to an HSI Lutheran University.” WPA: Writing Program Administration Special Issue: Black Lives Matter and Antiracist Projects in Writing Program Administration, Vol. 44(3), 2021. (With Meghan Kwast and Yvonne Wilber).

“Recognizing Institutional Diversity, Supporting Latinx Students: First-Year Writing Placement and Success at a Small Community Private HSI.” Open Words: Access and English Studies. Eds. Kristina Gutierrez, Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, and Sue Hum. Colorado State University, Vol. 12, No. 1, December 2019.