2026 Session 1

Jan. 31, 2026

An Interactive Session led by Dr. Sweta Baniya. 

Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Professional & Technical Writing, Department of English, Virginia Tech.

Sweta Baniya is an associate professor of rhetoric, professional and technical writing at Virginia Tech. She specializes on transnational disaster studies, risk/crisis communication, non-Western rhetorical traditions, and community engagement. Her research centers around the ever evolving and challenging global issue of natural and manmade disasters, such as earthquakes or climate change.

More than 6.9 million people lost their lives globally to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the frequency of disasters across the globe, my presentation, Intersectional Disaster Response: Global Women’s Actions and Approaches to COVID-19, will showcase how women disaster responders from Nepal, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago have addressed the challenges of radical inequalities, such as racial, gender-based violence, and discrimination during COVID-19, via intersectional disaster response and advocacy-based crisis communication. By putting human experiences, stories, and responses to COVID-19 into conversation, I showcase how intersectional rhetorical strategies were used by women from three locations. Bringing together narratives from seemingly disparate locations, my presentation illustrates the rhetorical strategies and cultural practices similar in each location and creates space for discourses on COVID-19 operating across geopolitical boundaries.