Jay Nelson (he/him/his) is a first-year PhD student in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics. He is broadly interested in how law-induced precarity shapes marginalized identity and how these dynamics influence rhetorical and political engagements with hegemonic ideology. His current research investigates how cisgender women’s historical precarity informs the rhetoric of trans-exclusionary feminists, focusing on how such rhetoric both resists and reaffirms patriarchal ideologies traditionally used to block women’s rights legislation. Prior to joining the School of Communication, Jay graduated summa cum laude from CUNY Hunter College with a B.A. in English and a minor in Philosophy. He is an alum of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, where he studied the rhetorical performance of Black masculinity in 1980s gangsta rap. He has presented his work at Harvard University’s Scholarship & Social Justice Undergraduate Research Conference, conducted research as a visiting student researcher at Stanford University, and participated in the Eva Kastan Grove Fellowship at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, where he received mentorship from former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney on women’s policy issues.