Mai Nou Xiong-Gum
Assistant Professor, Communication Studies
- Email: mnxiong.gum@furman.edu
- Phone: 864.294.3145
- Office: 135A Furman Hall
Dr. Mai Nou Xiong-Gum is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Furman University. Her latest research focuses on understanding the role of mobile communication and ICTs as they reconfigure our spaces of sociality, and, therefore, our communities and civic communication processes.
Her research continues to focus on the rhetoric of borders, hybrid mobilities, and forced migrant capabilities in our emerging new media settings. Thematically in her teaching, she encourages students to consider how media and media practices are rhetorical—but that access to media and the infrastructure that support media practices are not distributed evenly. As such, she investigates—in her research and with her students—how media and communication practices are tied to the politics of exclusion (and citizenship), particularly in the cases of marginalized people, women, and displaced and emplaced persons.
She has published in Rhetoric Review, Kairos, and has forthcoming publications in journals such as Communication Theory. Dr. Xiong-Gum has taught courses in digital rhetoric and civic media. At Furman, she teaches courses in digital storytelling and international women’s rhetoric.
Dr. Xiong-Gum joined the Furman Communication Studies faculty in Fall 2020, and she holds a Mellon Fellowship. Prior to this, she completed her doctoral research in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at North Carolina State University.
Honors & Rewards
- Mellon Fellow – Furman University, 2020 - 2023
- Top Papers - Mobile Communication Interest Group, International Communication Association, 2020 (Australia)
- Phi Kappa Phi
Education
- Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, Digital Media, North Carolina State University
- M.A. in English, Western Carolina University
- B.A. in Political Science and French, University of North Carolina (Asheville)
Research Interests
Dr. Xiong-Gum studies cultural and digital rhetoric to understand how both the cultural practices of communities and their media environments shape public discourse, (virtual) community building, and civic engagement.
She has a special interest in understanding how displaced and emplaced communities such as forced migrants use techne—what Aristotle refers to as the art of using the available means necessary—to attune to the changing configurations of borders and mobility regimes.
Beyond rhetorical theory, she uses critical cultural criticism to investigate how power operates and displaces information, people, and communities.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research draws from studies in critical mobilities, diaspora, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, gender / feminist theory, geography, and transnationalism.
Publications
- de Souza e Silva, Adriana & Xiong-Gum, Mai Nou. (2020). Mobile networked creativity: Developing a theoretical framework for understanding creativity as survival. Communication Theory, 30(4).
- Gollihue, Krystin & Xiong-Gum, Mai Nou. (2020). Dataweaving: Textiles as data materialization [Interactive Web-text]. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy, 25(1).
- Xiong-Gum, Mai Nou. (2020). Review of Mobile Communication and low-skilled migrants’ acculturation to cosmopolitan Singapore by Rajiv George Aricat & Rich Ling. International Journal of Communication, 14, 4003-4006.
- Sackey, Donnie, Boyle, Casey, Xiong, Mai Nou, Arola, Kristin, Rios, Gabriela, & Barnett, Scot. (2019). Secrets and Mattering: A Posthuman Approach to the Plain of Jars, in Perspectives on Cultural and Posthumanist Rhetorics. Rhetoric Review, 38(4), 375-401.
- Xiong-Gum, Mai Nou. (2019). Place as interface, sensory-data, and phronesis. The Proceedings of the Annual Computers and Writing Conference 2018, 2(1), 65-74.
- Roberts, Laura, Xiong, Mai Nou, & Halm, Matt. (2019). Continuing the Conversation of Rhetoric’s Keywords [Video]. Available from, https://vimeo.com/329912679.
Additional Professional Activities
- Association of Internet Researchers
- Rhetoric Society of America
- International Communication Association
- National Communication Association