The 3rd Annual Cultural Rhetoric Speark Series is co-sponsored by the Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion (ACEI), St. John's College, and SJC 's English Department presents, Dr. Todd Craing. Recipient of the 2025 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award, educator, and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching, and music Dr. Craig is a St John’s alum, an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology, and of English and Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate.

Dr. Todd Craig

A product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York, Todd Craig is an award-winning author, educator, and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching, and music. His research inhabits the intersection of writing and rhetoric, sound studies and Hip Hop studies. He is the author of “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press), which received the 2024 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the 2025 Advancement of Knowledge Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). The book examines the Hip Hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader, writer, and creator of the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha (pronounced “torture”), and essays in various edited collections and scholarly journals including The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy, Amplifying Soundwriting, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Fiction International, Radical Teacher, Modern Language Studies, Changing English, Kairos, Composition Studies and Sounding Out!

Dr. Craig teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, Urban Education, African American and Hip Hop Studies, and is the co-host of the podcast “Stuck Off the Realness” with multi-platinum recording artist Havoc of Mobb Deep. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology, and of English and Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center.

* This event will be held both in-person and virtually. Please indicate your preference when registering.