2025 Presidents Dissertation Award Winners

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I’m thrilled to announce the 2025 Presidents Dissertation Award Winners! In recognition of the close relationship between scholarly excellence and professional leadership, the CFSHRC Presidents Dissertation Award is given to the author(s) of a recently completed doctoral dissertation that makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of feminist histories, theories, and pedagogies of rhetoric and composition. This award is adjudicated every year and carries a $200.00 honorarium.

I also want to express my deep appreciation for this year’s committee: Vanessa Kraemer Sohan, Jill Swiencicki, Temptaous McKoy, TJ Geiger, and Renee Ann Drouin (chair). Thank you for your service!

Winner: Elena R. Kaoloder-Martin, “Medical Evidence, Expertise, and Experiential Knowledge: A Study of Patients’ Communication Practices on Social Media” 

In “Medical Evidence, Expertise, and Experiential Knowledge: A Study of Patients’ Communication Practices on Social Media,” Elena R. Kaoloder-Martin furthers conversations around ‘coalition-building’ in medical contexts through her research and work with women with chronic illnesses. Shaped by the limitations of American medical care and combining numerous disciplines of rhetoric (feminist, health and medicine, disability, technical/professional), Kaoloder-Martin’s research gives voice to patients often gatekept from their own medical knowledge. Subsequently, patients utilize social media to ‘reframe’ effective health care delivery from an individual to a universal, collective issue. Using participants and voices often ignored by medicine, Kaoloder-Martin subsequently gives space and opportunity for all to build resources and create a stronger version of medical justice. 

As one judge notes, the dissertation is “A thorough, original, a project design that others will learn from, build on, and extend. A focus on women-identified people, especially women of color. It is outstanding work that will be attractive to a wide audience; the conclusions translate well for public intellectual work on podcasts, news articles, and should influence policy. It features a version of rhetorical listening to patients and a decision to interrogate the ideological threshold concepts (like evidence) that keep us all from getting heard and delivering care.”

Another judge agrees, stating, “Kaoloder-Martin’s project is original and breathtaking, but its truest success is how it creates opportunities outside the field of rhetoric to understand patients and the need for community.”

 

Honorable Mention: Hannah Taylor, “Unruly Periods: Reproductive Futurities and the Rhetorics of Menstruation”

Hannah Taylor’s “Unruly Periods: Reproductive Temporalities and the Rhetorics of Menstruations” challenges our cultural misconceptions of menstruation and our over-reliance on examining it through medical institutions. Analyzing menstruation through the lens of reproductive rhetoric, Taylor calls for us to move past solely recognizing it through rhetorics of shame and regulation. By foregrounding voices of women with color and activist organizations like the Period Project and Period, Taylor demonstrates how must re-construct menstruation though new material and temporal constraints to create opportunities for social justice.

One Judge celebrates what the dissertation offers for the field, as “the framing of “unruly” periods permits a new kind of critical interrogation. The focus on “futurity” promotes imaginative reframing of sexist assumptions and structures. The reproductive justice and activist and materialist orientations enhances the study of biopolitics and critical menstruation studies.

 

Honorable Mention: Jessica McCrary, “Oral History, Activism, and Remembrance: The Rhetorical Agency of Georgia’s Women Activists in and Beyond the Equal Rights Amendment”

Jessica McCrary’s “Oral History, Activism, and Remembrance: The Rhetorical Agency of Georgia’s Women Activists in and Beyond the Equal Rights Amendment” performs feminist rhetorical microhistory to both recover and preserve the activists who appealed to Georgia politicians to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1979s and 80s. Through documenting oral histories of the Georgia Women’s Movement Project, McCrary offers valuable insight into how ‘actors’ within such events define themselves within feminist work. Her work concludes with a call for examining oral history as a rhetorical act and for further methods using feminist rhetorical microhistory to track social movements.

One judge noted the impact of studying failed political movements, saying, “In re-conceptualizing failure, McCrary encourages us to celebrate feminist rhetorical work and use feminist rhetorical microhistory to empathetically understand diverse female perspectives.”





2025 Kathleen Ethel Welch Outstanding Article Award Recipients

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Named in recognition of the Coalition’s co-founder and first president, Kathleen E. Welch, the CFSHRC Welch Outstanding Article Award is presented biennially in odd years for refereed work published in Peitho journal that illustrates exceptional scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and/or theory. 

I am thrilled to share the news that this year’s award goes to Mais T. Al-Khateeb for her article “Marking the Boundaries of Care in/and Definitions of Refugee Medical Encounters” (Vol. 26, no. 3, Spring 2024). Additionally, honorable mentions were earned by Brynn Fitzsimmons and Pritha Prasad for their article  “Coalitional Refusals: Transformative Justice Beyond Repair” (Vol. 25, no 4, Summer 2023) and Abigail Long for “(Re)Turning to the Seams of Composing as a Feminist Orientation” (Vol. 26, no. 4, Summer 2024)

Details about the recipients and their articles appear below, but I first want to offer my deepest thanks to the committee members who carefully read over 25 excellent articles that were eligible for the award and did the difficult work of selecting the winner and honorable mentions. This year’s Welch Award Committee members were Gavin Johnson, Abby Knoblauch,  Vee Lawson, Nisha Shanmugaraj, and Carolyn Skinner. THANK YOU for your efforts on behalf of the Coalition and the field of feminist rhetorical studies!

Winner: Mais T. Al-Khateeb, “Marking the Boundaries of Care in/and Definitions of Refugee Medical Encounters” (Vol. 26, no. 3, Spring 2024)

Mais T. Al-Khateeb (she/her) is Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. Her research engages 20th and 21st centuries contemporary rhetorical theory from a transnational feminist perspective with a focus on refugees, their embodiments, and their mobilities.

The committee members remarked that this article offers an “essential contribution to feminist rhetorical studies and demonstrates an effective synthesis of various bodies of literature to make sense of ‘unexceptional logics of care.’” They praised the article for being “community-engaged in ways that have real-world implications, while foregrounding diverse feminisms and articulating a novel text and novel contribution.” Members also highlighted that the article offers “researchers a useful model for scholarship that is text-based but also situated in real-world consequences for people.”

 

Honorable Mention: Brynn Fitzsimmons and Pritha Prasad, “Coalitional Refusals: Transformative Justice Beyond Repair” (Vol. 25, no 4, Summer 2023)  

Brynn Fitzsimmons(they/them) is an assistant professor of English – Composition, Rhetoric, and English Studies at the University of Alabama. Their current work focuses on issues of epistemic justice in public discourse, with particular focus on community media and literacies as well as rhetorics of health, embodiment, and access in abolitionist social movements.x

Pritha Prasad (she/her) is an assistant professor of English at the University of Kansas (KU). As a scholar and teacher of rhetorical approaches to critical race and ethnic studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, her research focuses on how cultural, political, and educational institutions negotiate the politics of race and racism in the wake of racial unrest and violence.

Committee members found “Coalitional Refusals” to be “extremely important” as the term “‘coalition’ becomes commonplace in the field.” They praised the authors’ “timely critique” concerning the  “complicated ways ‘coalition’ can be enacted vs. the shallow deployments of the term,” and they asserted that the article “provides an important challenge to common feminist discussions of coalition.”

 

 

Honorable Mention: Abigail Long, “(Re)Turning to the Seams of Composing as a Feminist Orientation” (Vol. 26, no. 4, Summer 2024)

Abigail H. Long is a PhD candidate at Syracuse University. Her research interests include disability studies, crip composing methods, pandemic rhetorics, material methods, writing pedagogy, feminist research practices, and teacher preparation.

One committee member praised Long’s article for being “innovative and self-reflexive,” as it “turn[s]” a “critical but generous eye onto the work we all do.” Another committee member noted that the article was a “strong example of the materiality of feminist rhetorics – not only in content but also in delivery.” Overall, the article “contributes to our understanding of embodiment in important ways” due to “the strong mix of published theory and personal story.”


Please join me in congratulating these feminist scholars!

Jess Enoch, Immediate Past President

Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar: Feminist Approaches to Community-Engaged Research (4/3/25)

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Feminist Approaches to Community-Engaged Research

Presenters: Isabella ‘Amne Gomez and Amy J. Lueck

Date: April 3, 2025 at 10 am Pacific Time/ 1pm Eastern Time

Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/1k6j_Bd2QySvlzCQ-KOtUQ

 

In this webinar, Isabella ‘Amne Gomez and Amy J. Lueck will showcase their own collaborative process and relationship as a model for considering what feminist approaches to community-engaged research might look like. They share about the successes and challenges they have encountered and pull out themes and insights that have emerged in order to illuminate pathways for other scholars and organizations interested in initiating community-engaged projects on their campuses and in their communities.

 

                                                   

Image 1: Isabella ‘Amne Gomez                                          Image 2: Amy J. Lueck

 

 

Presenter Biographies

Amy Lueck is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Associate Provost for Faculty Development at Santa Clara University, where her research and teaching focus on histories of rhetorical instruction and practice, feminist historiography, cultural rhetorics, and rhetorical memory studies. Her book, A Shared History: Writing in the High School, College, and University, 1856-1886  (SIU Press 2020), brings together several of these research threads, interrogating the ostensible high school-college divide and the role it has played in shaping writing instruction in the U.S. Her recent research builds on this work by attending to the cultural rhetorics shaping history and remembrance at various sites, from universities and the tribal homelands on which they are built to historic attractions like the Winchester Mystery House, examining the boundaries and rhetorics of containment that serve to isolate communities and their histories. Since 2018 she has been collaborating with Muwekma Ohlone and Ohlone tribal members on public-facing projects that contest such boundaries, using digital media and deep relationality to unsettle the patterns of Indigenous erasure that her research documents.

 

Isabella ‘Amne Gomez is a member and youth ambassador of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since childhood, she has represented her Tribal Nation in numerous ways: by teaching cultural projects, volunteering at information and cultural exhibit booths, reading land acknowledgements, and dancing at cultural events and powwows. She was recently selected to be in the first cohort of the Webb Scholars Program and is a graduate of the Green Foothills Leadership Program. She currently attends and interns at Santa Clara University, majoring in philosophy.

CFP: Topic Proposal for Summer 2026 Peitho Special Issue

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CFP: Topic Proposals for Summer 2026 Peitho Special Issue

Topic Proposals and CVs Due: April 7, 2025
Decision from Editorial Board: May 12, 2025
Please email proposals and CVs to peitho-editorial-team@cfshrc.org, and any questions can be directed to Peitho Co-Editor Clancy Ratliff at clancy.ratliff@louisiana.edu.

The Peitho Editorial Team invites those interested in serving as guest editors to send topic proposals for the Summer 2026 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, Ourselves and 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”

Summer 2024, “Small and Subtle Feminist Rhetorical Doings”

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. 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

Please email proposals and CVs to peitho-editorial-team@cfshrc.org, and any questions can be directed to Peitho Co-Editor Clancy Ratliff at clancy.ratliff@louisiana.edu.

Topic Proposals for Summer 2026 Special Issue Due: April 7, 2025
Decision from Editorial Board: May 12, 2025

Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award (Due 3/28/25)

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Dear Colleagues,

I’m excited to announce this call for applications for the Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award. I hope you’ll apply and/or circulate this call. Application details are below.

The Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award is presented biennially in odd years to graduate students working in the field of composition and rhetoric and it recognizes outstanding scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory. The award is designed to enable students to attend the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference by providing $200.00 travel stipends plus conference registration.

Eligibility
Student must be an accepted presenter at the conference
Student must be a Coalition member at the time of nomination
How to Apply
The next awards will be announced, judged, and conferred in 2025. The application submission date for the 2025 conference is March 28, 2025. Applicants should provide the following items:

A letter attesting to their eligibility (see above) and describing the ways in which their research is consistent with the conference theme and with the mission of the Coalition

A letter from a faculty mentor in their program indicating support for the application and that they do not have other significant financial support for the conference. This letter may be sent separately, directly by the faculty mentor.

Please direct applications and any questions about this award to Jess Enoch, Immediate Past President, at jenoch1@umd.edu.

Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar on Research Funding (2/27/25)

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Register for the February Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar!

Title: Money (That’s What I Want): How to Successfully Fund Your Research
Date & Time: Thursday, February 27th, 12:00-1:30pm ET
Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/pDvQmazDT4iJgLtphS9urg

If it wasn’t clear before, in the first few days of the new presidency, the necessity and precarity of research funding has become extremely exigent. Our work as feminist scholars is critical, and we need resources to do this work. In this 90-minute webinar, we will explore the (evolving) landscape of research funding in the humanities. Panelists will address and provide examples of writing genres expected in funding applications, such as research plans and budgets. They will also offer advice on how to describe the value of their work to funding audiences. Participants will then have the opportunity to share and learn together in small breakout rooms themed around different kinds of funding. We hope to provide participants with a space to reflect and strategize.


Presenter Biographies



Image 1: Photo of Heather Adams

Heather Adams is an associate professor of English, cross-appointed faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the current Faculty Director of and Principal Investigator for the University of North Carolina Greensboro Humanities at Work (H@W) paid internship program. Adams’s scholarly and pedagogical interests include teaching rhetoric and writing, advocacy education, health rhetorics, community-engaged learning, and intersectional feminist methodologies. Adams’s research investigates themes such as health and wellness through a focus on rhetorics of reproduction and pregnancy in relation to affect, gender, race, and class. Adams’s Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction (2022) was awarded the 2024 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. She also coedited (with Nancy Myers) Inclusive Aims: Rhetoric’s Role in Reproductive Justice (2024) and is the author or coauthor of various articles and book chapters. Her collaborative work has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2024) as well as various UNCG sources, including the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement, the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office, the Humanities Network and Consortium, and the Department of English.


Image 2: Photo of Brandon Erby

Brandon Erby is an assistant professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital studies and an affiliated faculty member in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. His scholarship focuses on African American rhetoric, rhetorical history, rhetorical education, and prison studies. He is a recipient of the 2023 Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty and 2022 Book Proposal Development Grant from Princeton University Press. Dr. Erby is also the recipient of several research awards and grants from professional organizations including CCCC, RSA, MLA, and NEH.


Image 3: Photo of Julie Kidder

Julie Kidder is a doctoral candidate in rhetoric and instructor of first-year writing at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a JD from Georgetown. Her scholarship focuses on legal narratives in relation to race, gender, and ability.  She is the recipient of the CCCC 2025 Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship, RSA 2024 Janice Lauer Graduate Student Travel Grant, CFSHRC 2023 Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award, RSA 2022 Gerard A. Hauser Award, in addition to grants from Carnegie Mellon, including the Graduate Student Assembly/Provost Conference Fund, the Graduate Student Assembly Childcare Grant, and the English Department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Grant.

Call for Applications: The Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship Award

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Dear Colleagues,

Are you planning to attend Feminisms and Rhetorics 2025 and need travel funding? If so, read this call for applications for the Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship to presenters at the 2025 Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in Durham, New Hampshire. Please apply and/or circulate! See details below.

Description

The purpose of the Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship award is to encourage feminist scholarship (particularly historical in nature) by graduate scholars from diverse and historically un or underrepresented groups.  The award will be given to first-time presenters at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. The award includes both a monetary award ($500 each for up to 6 awardees) and participation in a specially designated session at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference.

Eligibility

As an organization, we are defining un/underrepresented groups as:

  • Scholars of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds
  • International scholars
  • Scholars who identify as LGBTQIA
  • Scholars with disabilities
  • Graduate scholars who were first-generation undergraduates

In addition, scholars must meet the following requirements:

  1. Be a first-time presenter at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference
  2. Be a member of the Coalition at the time of application
  3. Have an already accepted presentation for the conference
  4. Have firm plans to attend the conference (scholars who do not attend will forfeit the financial compensation for the award)

Review Criteria

The goal of the award is diversity and inclusion of underrepresented scholars vs. topics (as long as the work itself falls within the broader category of feminist rhetorical studies). Please keep this in mind as you submit your materials.

How to Apply

The next award will be conferred in 2025. The application deadline the 2025 Feminisms and Rhetorics conference is March 28, 2025. Applicants should submit a completed application form, a letter of recommendation for the award, a current CV, and a copy of their conference acceptance and confirmation. Please direct application materials and any questions to Jess Enoch Immediate Past President (jenoch1@umd.edu).

Feminisms and Rhetorics 2025 Decisions Are Out

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Hi, everyone!

We received hundreds of proposals for this year’s conference, which were reviewed by members of the Coalition, past FemRhet conference participants, and members of UNH’s conference committee in consultation with anti-racist reviewing processes. Thank you to everyone who submitted and/or reviewed proposals. A huge thanks to the Conference Planning Committee for overseeing this process and keeping us organized. The Conference Planning Committee is:

  • Chair: Patrick Thomas
  • Holly Anderson
  • Cristy Beemer
  • Moushumi Biswas
  • Erica Cirillo McCarthy
  • Rhea Lathan

For everyone who was invited to present, please complete the following steps:

1. To accept or decline this invitation, please complete the Invitation Acceptance form here no later than March 1, 2025. This form should be completed by all presenters. If you cannot accept this invitation, please select the “decline” on the Invitation Acceptance form by March 1st. (Direct link to invitation acceptance form: https://forms.gle/8a7wK67LByAYSQPK7)

2. Please note that to reserve your place in the program, online registration will be available in April through our conference website: https://femrhet2025.cfshrc.org/

Accessibility Guide: conference planners are hard at work composing the accessibility guide for the conference. It will be available to attendees as soon as it is completed.

If you have any questions about the conference, please direct them to the 2025 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference Committee:  feminismsandrhetorics@gmail.com. 

Best wishes,

Becca Richards, President CFSHRC

You’re Invited: Graduate Engagement Committee Feminist Coalition Open House (1/21 OR 1/22)

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Dear Graduate Students,

Please join us for one of our forthcoming Graduate Engagement Committee CFSHRC Open House sessions either January 21st (10 am PT/12pm CT/1pm EST) or 22nd (4 pm PT/6pm CT/7pm EST). Each one-hour session is informal and designed to let you meet members of the Coalition and other graduate students interested in intersectional feminist work across Writing and Rhetoric Studies, as well as to learn about the Coalition’s resources, opportunities, and emphases.

There is nothing to prepare! Just rsvp for the zoom link, and we’ll look forward to seeing you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our co-chairs, Erin Green (egreen11@umd.edu) or Kate Pantelides (kate.pantelides@mtsu.edu).

  1. Tuesday, January 21 at 1pm Eastern: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUlduyorjkiHNCdcsuJ2661eiibT1ewGQf9
  1. Wednesday, January 22 at 7pm Eastern: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkcuyoqjkqGt1f30mfL_RQIAYzFm1m7hB-

Best,
The CFSHRC Graduate Student Engagement Committee