Khirsten L. Scott, PhD

Daughter of the US South, Dr. Khirsten L. Scott is a community-driven educator who works across the disciplines of rhetorical theory and writing studies, digital and Black studies, and critical pedagogy. Dr. Scott earned her BA in English Literature and Language from Tougaloo College, her MA in Composition, Rhetoric, and English Studies from the University of Alabama, and her PhD in English, Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville.

Dr. Scott is currently working on her first book, Black on the Edge: Writing, Resistance, and HBCU Survival Literacies, which explores the resilience and cultural significance of HBCUs within the U.S. higher education landscape. The book blends personal narrative, historical analysis, and critical theory to highlight the survival literacies—practices of resilience, resourcefulness, and resistence—that have enabled HBCUs to survive despite systemic challenges. By placing HBCU stories at the forefront, Dr. Scott challenges dominant narratives and underscores the transformative power of HBCUs in shaping the future of education for Black students.

Within the city of Pittsburgh, she is the lead organizer and facilitator of HYPE Media (Homewood Youth-Powered and Engaged Media), a critical literacies program focused on youth-led story-making possibilities that respond to stigmatized narratives of Black girls, Black women, and Black communities. Khirsten is cofounder of DBLAC, Digital Black Lit and Composition, a virtual and in-person community offering writing support for Black scholars. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh where she was awarded the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring (2020) for early-career faculty. She was recently awarded the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement from the Campus Compact.

She served as a critical education consultant for the University of Pittsburgh’s Education Outreach Center, Bible Center Church’s The Maker’s Clubhouse, the Modern Language Association (MLA), Bedford/St. Martin, a humanities-based publishing imprint of Macmillan Learning, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). Dr. Scott has been invited to facilitate workshops and discussions with a number of community organizations, schools, and institutions of higher learning across the US.

Her work can be found on her YouTube Channel, in the Journal of Information Literacy, Los Angeles Review of Books, Kairos, Prose Studies, the Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric, Mobility in Work in Composition, Bridging the Gap: Multimodality in Theory, and Practice and Kentucky Teacher Education Journal.

Access CV here.