D’Angelo Bridges

Professional Bio

D'Angelo Bridges is currently completing a dual-title Ph.D. in English and African American & Diaspora Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. I specialize in rhetoric-composition, African-American literature, and religion. My scholarship elucidates how African Americans use rhetorical strategies to survive the constant barrage of anti-black violence they encounter in their daily lives; specifically, I investigate the formation of African-American rhetorical identities through religious discourse and literary culture. My dissertation, “Written in Black: Rhetoric, Religion, and Visions of Collective Freedom,” traces the development of collective visions of freedom in the works of five African-American writers. These writers—James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Haki Madhubuti—convey the multidimensional, deictic nature of Black freedom in the United States.