2022 Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant Announced!

The Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant supports researchers in pursuing or continuing feminist projects that require funding to conduct such activities as archival research, translation, interview transcription, and digital archivization and/or digital project development, among other activities. In only its third cycle, this biennial research grant has been made possible by a generous gift from one of the Coalition’s past presidents whose service to the organization has been characterized by a deep and steady commitment to mentoring new and emerging researchers in the field.

We are pleased to announce that the 2022 Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant Award goes to Brenna Swift, PhD candidate in English Composition and Rhetoric, and assistant director of the Writing Fellows program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include feminist disability studies, the disability justice movement, community engagement, feminist and antiracist pedagogies, writing center studies, education for antiviolence, and disability justice approaches to trauma-informed practices.

The judges are excited about Swift’s dissertation project, which presents disabled peoples’ use of journaling as tools to build “just worlds.” By studying how disabled people invent accessible journaling, they believe Swift’s work will expand the field’s conception of journaling practices as well as the ways that journaling allows disabled persons and nonbinary persons who identify as disabled to tell their own stories, forge connections, advocate, and claim power. Swift’s project both draws on and will contribute to feminist histories of writing, literacy studies, writing pedagogy, feminist disability studies, and disability justice activism. Most of the grant will support the professional transcription of Swift’s 19 interviews with disabled writers in the U.S., the U.K., India, and China. With a portion of the grant, Swift also plans to create a website that will provide a space for her study participants to share their writing and artwork, promote disability justice, guide writing teachers, and provide a forum for other journalers.

In addition to congratulating Swift, we acknowledge and recognize the other six outstanding scholars whose work was nominated or submitted for this award: Ashley Canter (University of Massachusetts-Amherst); Dr. Jan Fernheimer and Dr. JWells (University of Kentucky); Cody Januszko (Carnegie Mellon University); Lia Schuermann (Texas Women’s University); and Merima Tricic (University of California-Irvine).

Tarez Samra Graban
Immediate Past-President
Awards Chair 2020–2022

 

and the 2022 Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant Committee
Lisa Shaver (chair)
Abby Dubisar
Katherine Mack
Madiha Patel
Carl Schlachte