Graduate Student Pop-in Open House

Graduate students, please join us!

The Graduate Student Engagement Committee will host a pop-in Open House for graduate students, held on Friday, March 22, from 2-4pm Eastern / 11-1pm Pacific. 

Across a series of 30 min. sessions, members of the Graduate Student Engagement Committee will solicit your ideas around support, mentoring, and engagement. We’ll offer you space to connect with other graduate student members so you can share ideas and resources to sustain and advance your feminist work.

We look forward to connecting with you! And please pass this information along to anyone who might be interested in joining us!

  • Risa Applegarth, on behalf of the Graduate Student Engagement Committee:
  • Liane Malinowski
  • Elizabeth Novotny
  • Salena Parker
  • Karen Tellez-Trujillo

Details:

  • Register using this link or scan the QR code below.
  • Pop in and out every half hour; stay for one session or several.
  • Open to all graduate students! Even if you aren’t (yet) a Coalition member, we’d love to see you pop in.

Event link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cfshcr-pop-in-open-house-for-graduate-students-tickets-834747079987?aff=oddtdtcreator

CFP: Topic Proposals for Summer 2025 Peitho Special Issue

CFP: Topic Proposals for Summer 2025 Peitho Special Issue

The Peitho Editorial Team invites those interested in serving as guest editors to send topic proposals for the Summer 2025 special issue of Peitho. We invite topic proposals on a wide range of topics related to feminist theories and gendered practices, including but not limited to:

  • archival scholarship
  • digital interventions
  • emerging pedagogies
  • feminist methodologies
  • global rhetorics
  • historical research
  • Indigenous studies
  • institutional critiques
  • issues of embodiment
  • LGBTQ+ studies
  • minoritized rhetorics
  • rhetorical theory

Special issues can include traditional scholarly articles as well as other kinds of projects, such as video content (with captions), Recoveries and Reconsiderations pieces, manifestos, and book reviews. Guest editors are expected to adhere to the practices expressed in the Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors statement.

 

Examples of past special issues of Peitho

  • Fall/Winter 2014, “The Critical Place of the Networked Archive”
  • Fall/Winter 2015, “Looking Forward: The Next 25 Years of Feminist Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition” (25th anniversary of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition)
  • Summer 2019, “Rhetorical Pasts, Rhetorical Futures: Reflecting on the Legacy of Our Bodies, Ourselvesand the Future of Feminist Health Literacy”
  • Summer 2020, “Transgender Rhetorics”
  • Summer 2021, “On Race, Feminism, and Rhetoric”
  • Summer 2023, “Coalition as Commonplace: Centering Feminist Scholarship, Pedagogies, and Leadership”

Topic proposals for special issues should include the following:

An editorial board-facing description (1000-1500 words) of the idea for the special issue, along with an explanation of why the guest editors (you) are interested in the topic. What needs will this special issue meet — in research, teaching, academia, and/or community work? Have other journals had special issues on this topic? Have scholarly presses published edited collections on this topic? If so, how would this special issue build on the previous work? This description should include a brief review of the previous scholarship on the topic and a bibliography.

A public-facing call for article proposals (500-750 words): this can use some of the same language as the description for the editorial board, but it should also include a timeline and criteria for review of proposals and brief explanation of the review process. Invited submissions are acceptable if there is transparency about these decisions, so invited submissions need to be addressed in the public-facing call for proposals if guest editors plan to invite submissions, such as for a cluster conversation. Book reviews and Recoveries and Reconsiderations pieces should be addressed in the public-facing CFP as well, if those are planned as part of the special issue.

CVs from the prospective guest editors: If this is a collaboration, please provide a brief note about previous collaborative projects and/or how and why you decided to form a partnership together for this proposal.

The editorial board and editorial team will review topic proposals using the following criteria from our reviewer guidelines:

  • Timeliness of or need for research on the topic (new or little-known material? New understanding of known material?)
  • Engagement with current scholarship in rhetoric and feminist studies
  • Commitment to methods and practices of feminist scholarship

Topic Proposals for Summer 2025 Special Issue Due: April 12, 2024

Decision from Editorial Board: May 17, 2024

Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda: Dr. Ada Hubrig, “Scaling Collective Access: From Your Presentation to Our Field,” Friday, March 15 

We have re-scheduled our first event in the Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda for this academic year. Dr. Ada Hubrig will present “Scaling Collective Access: From Your Presentation to Our Field” on Friday, March 15 from 3:00-4:30pm Eastern Time/12:00pm-1:30pm Pacific Time. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZErcuCtrDstH9FNndXNq__94C5z3WUluLJT

In this webinar, Dr. Ada Hubrig asks us to consider collective access and its implications for fostering community. Beginning with implementing access in our own work, Ada asks us to consider how we can scale access, by reimagining conference spaces to reimagining the work of our field–and academia more broadly–through collective access. The webinar will feature a presentation followed by a group discussion.

Ada Hubrig (they/them; Twitter @AdaHubrig) is an autistic, genderqueer, disabled caretaker of cats. They live in Huntsville, Texas, where they work as an assistant professor and Co-Director of Composition at Sam Houston State University. Their scholarship centers disability and queer/trans communities, and is featured in College Composition and Communication, Community Literacy Journal, and The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics among others, and their words have also found homes in Brevity and Disability Visibility. Ada is managing editor of Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics.

Captioning will be available for this webinar. Please be in touch with Nancy Small (Nancy.Small@uwyo.edu) or JWells (jwells@uky.edu) regarding any additional ways the Coalition can make this meeting accessible to you.

Announcing the Fall 2023 Issue of Peitho

The Peitho Editorial Team is pleased to announce the Fall 2023 issue!
  • You’ll find articles by Kristy Crawley, Lisa Mastrangelo, and Zoe McDonald analyzing gender in the history of rhetoric in both the distant and recent past.
  • This issue offers two Cluster Conversations, the first of which is “Addressing The Barriers Between Us and that Future: (Feminist) Activist Coalition Building in Writing Studies,” edited by Lisa E. Wright, Natasha Tinsley, Anna Sicari, and Hillary Coenen. This Cluster Conversation features important narratives about barriers, especially in academia. In the wake of what has happened at Harvard University to Dr. Claudine Gay, we are proud to publish these essays, and we value the courage of these authors.
  • The second Cluster Conversation is “Reclaiming the Work of Wendy Bishop as Rhetorical Feminist Mentoring,” edited by Mary Ann Cain and Melissa A. Goldthwaite. It marks the twentieth anniversary of Wendy Bishop’s death. In the process of sharing their memories of Bishop, these authors offer insights about the long-term impact of good mentoring, and they pay it forward.

Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda: “Scaling Collective Access: From Your Presentation to Our Field” (Feb. 2; 3pm EST)

Please join Coalition colleagues in our first event in the Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda for this academic year, “Scaling Collective Access: From Your Presentation to Our Field.”

In this webinar, Dr. Ada Hubrig asks us to consider collective access and its implications for fostering community. Beginning with implementing access in our own work, Ada asks us to consider how we can scale access, by reimagining conference spaces to reimagining the work of our field–and academia more broadly–through collective access. The webinar will feature a presentation followed by a group discussion.

Ada Hubrig (they/them; Twitter @AdaHubrig) is an autistic, genderqueer, disabled caretaker of cats. They live in Huntsville, Texas, where they work as an assistant professor and Co-Director of Composition at Sam Houston State University. Their scholarship centers disability and queer/trans communities, and is featured in College Composition and Communication, Community Literacy Journal, and The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics among others, and their words have also found homes in Brevity and Disability Visibility. Ada is managing editor of  Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics.

We’ll convene on Friday, February 2 from 3:00-4:00pm Eastern Time/12:00pm-1pm Pacific Time. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZErcuCtrDstH9FNndXNq__94C5z3WUluLJT

Captioning will be available for this webinar. Please be in touch with Nancy Small (Nancy.Small@uwyo.edu) or JWells (jwells@uky.edu) regarding any additional ways the Coalition can make this meeting accessible to you.



Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition Statement about Gaza and Israel

Dear Coalition Members, 

As bell hooks reminds us, feminist solidarity is not homogeneity: “rather than pretend union, we would acknowledge that we are divided and must develop strategies to overcome fears, prejudices, resentments, competitiveness, etc.” (hooks, “Sisterhood,” 137).  

With this in mind, we, the members of the Coalition’s Advisory Board, write to you—not with a singular statement to flatten our many voices—but to acknowledge the violence, pain, grief, precarity, and historical complexity of this moment: the overwhelming death and destruction in Gaza, and the suffering of our community members in the U.S. and around the world. We understand that many of our members have different relationships with Israel and Palestine, and we cannot capture all the emotions, loss, and trauma in one statement.

We mourn the horrific massacre, abduction, and violence against Israelis and residents of Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, which resulted in the most significant loss of Jewish life on a single day since the Holocaust. We witness and protest the rising cases of antisemitism within the United States and around the world since the attack, and we are alarmed for the safety of the Jewish community and especially for our Jewish colleagues and students. 

We are horrified by the violence and harassment against Palestinians, Palestinian-Americans, and Arabs in the US and abroad. We deplore the rising tide of Islamophobia occurring globally, as attacks against Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans have increased in number and violence, putting many of our co-workers and friends at risk. Too, we stand against the ongoing military violence perpetrated by Israel’s political leaders that has killed and injured tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced over one million, and we urge elected officials to use their authority as US politicians to call for a permanent ceasefire–and we encourage feminist rhetoricians to do the same.

By referring to the violence in both Israel and Gaza, we do not mean to equate the destruction, but rather, to hold space for the multi-layered and complex suffering our members and their communities are experiencing; we believe we can hold multiple truths in our hearts as we call for justice and witnessing. As feminist rhetoricians, we are committed to the ethics of care that necessitate our denunciation of violence, dehumanization, antisemitism, and Islamophobia—and we hope that campus administrators will leverage their resources and care to support faculty, students, and staff who are impacted by the intergenerational trauma of this moment.

Many will say that to address this moment, a statement is not enough, and we agree. Statements, on their own, cannot enact change, but they can help create conditions that lead to change. To this end, we reaffirm our commitment to rhetorical listening across differences and to ongoing dialogue unmarred by violence, and we are exploring possibilities for venues and events through which to enact this commitment.

With peace,

The Coalition Advisory Board



Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda

Greetings, Coalition!

 
I’m thrilled to announce that the Advisory Board has voted to rename the “Advancing the Agenda Webinar Series” to the “Cheryl Glenn Webinar Series for Advancing the Agenda” and to fund the series, finances permitting, at $500 per year. 
 
Cheryl has been an amazing supporter of the series and of the Coalition. We’re so happy that we can recognize her contributions in this way. Please join me in thanking Cheryl for all she has done for the CFSHRC! The series committee is working on the next webinar, and we’ll publicize details soon.
 
Best,
 
Jess

Summer 2023 Issue of Peitho

We are pleased to announce the Summer 2023 issue of Peitho! It is a special issue with the title “Coalition as Commonplace: Centering Feminist Scholarship, Pedagogies, and Leadership.” The guest editors are Aurora Matzke, Louis M. Maraj, Angela Clark-Oates, Anyssa Gonzalez, and Sherry Rankins-Robertson.

It has thirteen articles in sections titled:

Coalition in Theory/Praxis in the Field

Accountability with/in Community Relations

The Promises and Perils of Coalition-Building in Academia

Temporal Politics of Coalition

The issue concludes with an afterword by Shirley Wilson Logan, Cheryl Glenn, and Andrea Lunsford.

CFSHRC Volunteer Survey

Dear CFSHRC members and supporters,

Many thanks to all who have helped the Coalition during the past three years as we worked to make the organization and the Feminisms & Rhetorics conference more inclusive, accessible, and anti-racist.

As we continue this important work, we’re reaching out to you to see if you would be interested in serving to further these efforts and/or to continue the Coalition’s tradition of recognizing achievements in feminist research, teaching, and mentorship. We hope you will take a few minutes to complete this brief volunteer survey and to offer your assistance as we move forward.

Warmly,
Jess Enoch
President, CFSHRC

Congratulations to the 2023 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award and Presidents Dissertation Award Recipients

Coalition Friends,
It was wonderful to see so many of you in Atlanta for Feminisms and Rhetorics! For those of you who were not able to attend, I am thrilled to share information about two awards presented at Spelman: the 2023 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award and the 2023 Presidents Dissertation Award. Details about award recipients are below: please take a moment to read about and celebrate the winners’ accomplishments!

-Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Awards Coordinator

2023 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award

The Lisa Ede Mentoring Award recognizes an individual or group with a career-record of mentorship, including formal and informal advising of students and colleagues; leadership in campus, professional, and/or local communities; and other activities that align with the overall mission and goals of the Coalition. This year’s recipient is Dr. Gwendolyn Pough, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Dr. Pough exemplifies the kind of mentoring this award was created to acknowledge and amplify.
Gwendolyn Pough, in a red top and dark-framed glasses, stands in front of a bookcase
Her significant contributions to the study and application of feminist rhetorical theory include an edited collection, Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminist Anthology; a single-authored book, Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere; over two dozen articles and book chapters; and more than fifty scholarly presentations, lectures, and keynotes. Pough has also led major professional organizations, including both the Conference on College Composition and Communication (for which she was Chair) and the Rhetoric Society of America (of which she is currently President). Too, she has served and continues to serve the Coalition through her membership on our Advisory Board since 2014.

Through all of these endeavors and accomplishments, Dr. Pough has been an invaluable resource–professionally and personally–for the many, many people she has mentored, a fact reflected in the multiple letters from current and former students and colleagues that were submitted in support of her nomination. Regarding these letters, the Lisa Ede Mentoring Award Committee explains,

“It would be difficult to summarize the love and gratitude expressed for Pough by those mentees who contributed to her nomination. Many talk about her presence, her generosity, her intellect, and her mentorship in terms that are reserved for someone who has been among the most impactful people in their lives. Pough’s mentees seem not only stirred but transformed by her example. Indeed, the committee was impressed by the holistically strong nomination filled with letters from a diverse and equally impressive collective of mentees. Those who have taken her classes or worked with her on dissertation projects describe a fierce teacher who shows up everyday ready to do the work. Those who have met her through professional networks comment on how she takes up labor that she doesn’t need to do simply because she wants to do her part in building our collective field. Those inspired by her scholarship express how she makes deep, complex inroads into the ongoing conversations about Black rhetorics, feminism, hiphop, and more, and makes it look easy! In sum, the nominating letters powerfully demonstrate that she has a wide range of talents and mentoring styles, all rooted in Black feminist, hip-hop pedagogies. Pough has radically changed the game and challenged white feminism her entire career.”

Congratulations and thank you to Dr. Pough!

Thank you as well to the Lisa Ede Mentoring Award Committee: Moushumi Biswas, Sherri Craig (Co-chair), Laura Davies, Allison Durazzi, and Gavin Johnson (Co-chair). Your contributions to the Coalition are greatly appreciated!


2023 Presidents Dissertation Award

This year, the woNisha Shanmugaraj, wearing a white top, stands in a hallwayrk of two scholars was recognized with the 2023 Presidents Dissertation Award. The first recipient is Dr. Nisha Shanmugaraj, who completed her dissertation, “Negotiating the Model Minority: HowIndian American Women Rearticulate Dominant Racial Discourse,” at Carnegie Mellon University and currently holds the rank of Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In her dissertation, Dr. Shanmugaraj builds on work by Aja Martinez, Jay Dolmage, Lisa Flores, Tamika Carey, Ursula Ore, and many others as she analyzes case studies of and interviews with twenty-five second-generation Indian (South Asian) American women to consider their rhetorical strategies for responding to and challenging the “model minority” stereotype.

The award committee praised the project for being “densely rooted in the coalitional and intersectional frameworks of feminist studies” and noted that its “contributions in terms of identity formation and vernacular rhetorical practice are many. And the grounded theory approach to the robust data set is well suited to the coalitional stance the author takes.” Congratulations to Dr. Shanmugaraj!

The second award was earned by Dr. Salma Kalim, Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Dr. Kalim researched and composed her dissertation, “Affect and Digital Circulation in PakistanDr. Salma Kalim, wearing a brown top and tortoise shell framed glasses, stands in front of a white and red walli Feminist Rhetorics,” at Miami University in Ohio. The project draws on the work of Sara Ahmed, Gesa Kirsch, Eric Darnell Pritchard, and Jacqueline Jones Royster, among many others, and employs rhetorical analysis and interviews to explore how Pakistani women create and circulate messages of feminist activism–both digital and offline–to further regional and transnational alliances and to create change in conservative, oppressive contexts. The award committee praised Dr. Kalim’s project, noting that it is “thoroughly and richly situated within transnational feminist rhetorics and circulation studies” and that it effectively opens multiple avenues for future research. Congratulations to Dr. Kalim!

Much gratitude is due to the hard-working committee that read multiple dissertations and selected these deserving recipients: TJ Geiger, Maureen Johnson, Temptaous Mckoy (Chair), Temitope Ojedele, , and Jill Swiencicki. Thank you!