Aja Martinez

Aja Y. Martinez is an associate professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a critical race theory scholar and storyteller whose work focuses on rhetorics of race and ethnicity in writing and rhetoric studies. She is the author of the multi‑award‑winning monograph Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory (NCTE, 2020), which presents counterstory as a central methodology for critical race theory in rhetoric and writing research and pedagogy, and has been recognized among notable recent books in rhetoric. Her scholarship has appeared in venues such as College English, Composition Studies, Peitho, and Rhetoric Review.

Martinez is also the author of the revised and expanded second edition of Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory in the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series, which incorporates new archival research on CRT founder Derrick Bell and additional pedagogical materials. In addition, she is co‑author with Robert O. Smith of The Origins of Critical Race Theory: The People and Ideas that Created a Movement, and co‑editor with Vershawn Ashanti Young of Code‑Meshing as World English: Policy, Pedagogy, and Performance.[13