Nelesi Rodrigues
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E-mail:
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Room:MN 5258
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Mailing Address:
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga ON L5L1C6
Canada
Nelesi Rodrigues (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at UTM’s Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy (ISUP) and in the Adult Education and Community Development program at OISE’s Department of Leadership, Higher & Adult Education. She has a Ph.D. in Composition, Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric and a Certificate in Gender Sexuality and Women Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Her experiences as a Luso-Venezuelan migrant settler in Turtle Island, an English writing teacher, and a lifelong dance practitioner inform her scholarly research. Nelesi teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and is often involved in non-formal learning projects with different communities—including older adults and migrants.
Her book manuscript, Contact Composition: Women Inventing with/in Words and Movement(s), investigates learning that happens in contexts where embodied, creative movement intersects with other dimensions of movement and (im)mobilities (i.e.: dance theatre and migration, urban cycling and women’s right to public spaces). In addition to her interest in movement(s), (im)mobilities, and learning, Nelesi is invested in studying how community engagement and arts-informed pedagogies can support just and culturally affirming education.
Nelesi’s work has been recognized through several competitive fellowships, including the Fulbright Foreign Student Program Fellowship and the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Her writing has been published in academic journals including the journal of feminist rhetorics Peitho and the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education (forthcoming).
Publications
Balyasnikova, N.; Entigar, K.; & Rodrigues, N. (forthcoming, Fall 2025). (Re)collecting and (re)turning to ourselves: creative feminist and queer praxes with transnational migrants in adult learning. In D.E. Clover, K. Harman, C. Diaz-Diaz, & G. Franger (Eds.), Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, Special Issue on Feminist Adult Education and the Imagination: Creative and Arts-Based Practices.
Rodrigues, N. (forthcoming, Fall 2025). Movement as Method: Deciphering the Spells of Ananya Dance Theatre’s Movement. In E. Schell, K.J. Rawson, A. Long, C.J. Jewell, S. Turner, & G. Wilson (Eds.), Rhetorica Rising: Advancing Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies. South Carolina University Press.
Awanjo, A., Harris, T.; Holding, C.; Lane, S.; Rodriguez, N.; Saito, N.; Scott, K.; & Shirazi, T. (2022) “Student Writing About Student Writing,” Inventing the Discipline: Student Writing in Composition Studies, Peter Moe and Stacey Waite eds., Parlor Press.
Rodriguez, N. (2018) “The Question of the Subject in Times of the Quantified Self.” Spectator, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 44–50.
Manwelyan, E, and Rodriguez, N. (2017) “Of Vessels, Conduits, and Instruments: Reflections from the Bodies as Media Working Group,” co-authored with Eugenia Manwelyan. INMATERIAL. Design, Arts & Society, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 91–115.
Research
Research Interests: Embodied learning and rhetorics; transnational feminist rhetorics; arts-informed pedagogies; community writing; migration, mobility justice, and learning.