Get to Know Angelina

Angelina Malenda is a PhD Candidate on the Rhetoric, Culture and Engagement track with a certificate in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. Ang’s expertise is in affect, rhetoric(s) of trauma, violence, artwork, new materialism and creative production. Their research focuses on visceral forms of communication and reimagining normalized boundaries of agency through affect, emphasizing our need to reevaluate our use of survivor to understand victimhood within a system of violence. Ang received her Master’s degree from Villanova University, during which time they volunteered with Planned Parenthood. At Iowa, she continued service with the Prison Writing Project, Tell Magazine, and COGs Graduate Student Union. Ang firmly believes learning and research should be experiential and grounded within community, arguing issues of justice need to think through and beyond theory. She combines years of theorizing and creating into a dissertation that unpacks violent ideologies while, simultaneously, highlighting the potential of affective energy to disrupt the violence of rape culture. Currently, she works at the University of Pennsylvania in the OBGYN department's first ever March of Dimes Center for Advancing Maternal Health Equity, where she helps run an (In)Equity Journal Club and is a part of Penn Medicine’s Listening Lab.