Lisa Ede Mentoring Award Winner

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Stephanie L. Kerschbaum
Winner of 2021 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award

Faculty head shot of Stephanie L. Kerschbaum

The Lisa Ede Mentoring Award was established in 2015 as a biennial award to recognize 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. In the spirit of its namesake, Professor Emerita of English, Lisa Ede, the award was designed to encourage as broad and collective an understanding of “mentoring” as possible. As a career award, it often honors those individual mentors or mentoring teams who demonstrate a breadth, depth, and longevity of mentoring that is guided by a feminist of caring and care.

On behalf of the 2021 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award Committee, I am pleased to announce this year’s winner: Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle, and formerly Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware. While at UD, Stephanie provided stellar feminist mentoring on her campus through leadership of Faculty Success Program cohorts, organization of Write on Site groups and writing retreats, and various workshop facilitations. In 2018, she served as the inaugural Faculty Mentoring Fellow to analyze, improve, and develop resources for faculty mentoring across campus. Stephanie also coordinated funding to support the participation of 12 women faculty of color on the tenure track in Promotion and Tenure Workshops.

Truly Transformative Mentoring

At the national level, she has also influenced how we mentor in the field, through her service as CCCC Executive member and Chair of the CCCC Committee on Disability Issues; and by co-facilitating the “Making a Career in Rhetorical Studies” workshop for two different RSA Summer Institutes. More recently, she has organized online mentoring groups and virtual Write on Site groups, such as the “First Book Club,” which supported faculty composing their first academic monographs. These online opportunities, spanning more than a dozen institutions, exemplify her truly transformative mentoring practice. They signal, as one nominator wrote, how Stephanie creates “sustainable, interdependent networks between thinkers who otherwise might not ever become connected.” Another nominator suggested that, as a close mentor to so many within disability studies specifically, Dr. Kerschbaum might earn an official title of “Disability Rhetoric Field Mentor” for Rhetoric and Composition.

Dr. Kerschbaum is also a leading scholar of disability studies and rhetoric. Her first book, Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference (2014) challenges institutional diversity discourse by examining classroom interactions, marketing of higher education, and her own researcher positionality. She is co-editor of Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education (2017) and a Special Issue of Composition Forum on “Doing Composition in the Presence of Disability” and also the author of numerous single-authored and collaboratively authored articles on disability and rhetoric in journals such as Research in the Teaching of English, Disability Studies Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Kairos, and others. She is, as a third nominator writes, “someone dedicated to the advancement of feminist research and pedagogy through the mentorship of feminist colleagues.”

Mentoring in Invisible Spaces

The Award committee agreed, indicating that Stephanie’s nomination packet left a strong impression. Their conversation around her nomination materials was rich, noting especially her wide-ranging mentoring practice that encompasses people at all career stages, from graduate students to middle-career faculty; that she creates spaces for mentorship that are not egocentric; and that she mentors in ways that would typically be invisibilized by institutional structures.

In a typical year, the Lisa Ede Award would be conferred at the Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, but in 2021, we look forward to featuring Dr. Kerschbaum in conjunction with one of the Coalition’s  “Advancing the Agenda Workshop Series” sessions, which will occur online this fall. Watch for further announcements about this and other sessions!

In addition to congratulating Dr. Kerschbaum on her achievement, we want to acknowledge the following individuals whose mentoring careers were also illuminated and nominated for this award, evidenced by strong supporting letters: Dr. Katrina Powell (Virginia Tech); Dr. Suellynn Duffey (U Missouri-St. Louis); and Dr. Jane Greer (U Missouri-Kansas City).

Congratulations!

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

and members of the 2021 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award Committee
— Amy Lueck
— Becca Richards
— Kaia Simon

 

[The image at the top of this post is a head and shoulders photograph of Dr. Stephanie L. Kerschbaum.]

Fellowship Pods Registration Now Open! Register by 7-19

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Hello Coalition!

I am writing to open the registration process for the Fellowship Pods Program. This program is intended to help foster community-building among the Coalition’s membership. You can find more details about the program, which will run from July 2021 through May 2022, here: https://cfshrc.org/announcing-the-fellowship-pods-program/

Steps to register for the program:

  1. If needed, activate or renew your Coalition membership here: https://cfshrc.org/membership-join/ If you are financially unable to become a member at this time but still wish to participate in the Fellowship Pods Program, please let me know.

  1. Read the list of themed pods here:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/151iFr7TDQVmofsHttyj2dFsBiXrhOXIssGXJy00DgHg/edit?usp=sharing (Remember: You can choose to join a pod without a pre-established focus. Joining a pod without a pre-established focus will allow you and your pod members to collectively decide how you will spend your time together.)

  1. Complete and submit the registration form: https://forms.gle/WJgAS2oavvrm5yQ79

The deadline to register for the program is July 19.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions and concerns you have about the program or registration process. Also, thank you so much to everyone who proposed a themed pod. Unsurprisingly, your suggestions are amazing.

Sincerely,
Mudiwa
mpettus@mec.cuny.edu

BIG NEWS from Peitho

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I’m happy to share two exciting happenings from Peitho!

  1. Peitho 23.3 is now live! Access it HERE!!! Big thanks to the Peitho editorial team–Jen Wingard, Temptaous McKoy, and Rachelle A.C. Joplin–for putting together this excellent issue and to Abigail Morris at East Carolina University for getting it formatted and posted to the website.
  2. We are thrilled to introduce Kelli Lycke as the new Peitho Web Coordinator! Kelli joins incoming editors Clancy Ratliff and Rebecca Dingo and continuing Associate Editor Temptaous McKoy to round out your next Peitho editorial team.
    image of Kelli Lycke, incomimg Peitho Web Coordinator

    Kelli Lycke

    Currently, Kelli is a second-year PhD student in the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English program at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include public monuments, memorials, and other commemorative material texts. Kelli also enjoys experimenting with film and web texts as compositions, as well as teaching students how to use technology in new and interesting ways. When she’s not working or studying, she plays board games and bicycles with her two pitbulls. In her role as the Web Coordinator, she hopes to establish great relationships with prospective authors.

All best,

Wendy Sharer, President CFSHRC

Announcing the Fellowship Pods Program

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I am happy to announce that the Coalition has established The Fellowship Pods Program, a non-hierarchical fellowship program to foster community-building among its membership. The program is designed to respond to members’ calls for a re-imagining and re-structuring of coalition networks that have fostered a culture of elitism and bias. Distinct from the Coalition’s existing mentoring programs that offer guidance regarding professionalization and publication, the Fellowship Pods program will provide space for members to think, organize, and revel with other members around collectively chosen topics and shared interests.

The Coalition hopes that the Fellowship Pods Program will help

  • disrupt charismatic models of leadership in the Coalition
  • encourage participants to establish and maintain relationships with the Coalition membership beyond the confines of Feminism and Rhetorics conferencing, and
  • foster membership collaboration on research, teaching, and community engagement & social justice projects 

The program will run from July 2021 through May 2022. In July, program participants will be assigned to a pod (small group of Coalition members), and, in their first meeting(s), members will determine the anticipated topics and activities that will animate their pod’s year-long dialogue and/or collective action. 

THE ASKS:

  1. If you are interested in the Fellowship Pods Program, please email me (mpettus@mec.cuny.edu) and then anticipate receiving an email from me later in the month that provides more information about the initiative, including details about the enrollment process. Note that, to register and participate, you will need to be a member of the Coalition. You can join the Coalition via our website. Rates are $10/year for graduate students and $25/year for faculty (other membership categories and options are available on the website as well). If you are financially unable to become a member at this time but still wish to participate in the Fellowship Pods Program, please let us know.
  2. The Coalition hopes that much of the community-building in the pods will happen organically, so pod members are asked to determine the focus of their fellowship in conversation with each other. Additionally, I want to honor requests that space for identity-based, career-focused, and other themed-pods, including pods based on hobbies and crafts, be created. Therefore, if you would like to join a pod with a pre-established focus, please email me the specific theme and a brief description of the pod you would like established by June 21, 2021. I will advertise these themed-pods during the general enrollment period so that other program participants may elect to join them, if they desire. 

(Note: If you do not wish to join a pod with a pre-established focus, your first action for the program will be to complete the enrollment process later in the summer.)

Please feel encouraged to email me with any questions and concerns. I am serving as the coordinator of the program during its first year, and I welcome all feedback about the program. 

Sincerely,

Mudiwa Pettus (she/her)
CFSHRC Executive Board Member-at-Large
Assistant Professor of English
Medgar Evers College, CUNY
mpettus@mec.cuny.edu

 

Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship Recipient

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Nisha Shanmugaraj
Winner of 2021 Shirley Wilson Logan
Diversity Scholarship Award

bio pic of Nisha Shanmugaraj head shot, in front of a bookcase

The Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship was established in 2019 as a biennial award to encourage feminist scholarship (particularly historical in nature) by graduate scholars from diverse or historically un or underrepresented groups. The award is given to first-time presenters at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference, and includes both a monetary award and participation in a specially designated session at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. Because the inaugural Scholarship competition was planned under COVID conditions with 2021 FemRhet plans in flux, the Coalition’s Advisory Board voted to extend eligibility of this first award to participation at any Fall 2021 conference.

On behalf of the 2021 Shirley Wilson Logan Award Committee, I am pleased to announce this year’s winner: Nisha Shanmugaraj, a third-year doctoral student in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. This award will support Nisha’s participation at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Fall 2021. The theme of this year’s conference is “Feminist Community Formations Across Borders and Experience,” and Nisha’s paper is  entitled “How Second Generation Indian-American Women Construct National Belonging.”

In this paper, drawing on 25 qualitative interviews of second-generation Indian American women, Nisha investigates how they experience, respond to, and re-envision normative discourses of the “model” minority under which they are often homogenized or stereotyped. By conducting a rhetorical analysis of interview transcripts, she examines moments of “race unmaking and re-making that reimagine tropes of the docile, intelligent brown women.”

Of her interest in this conference and on the current direction of her scholarship, Nisha’s major professor and nominator, Stephanie Larson, writes:

“Nisha is the type of teacher-scholar who strives to enact her research in all aspects of her work. While her research takes up issues of inclusivity and equity in the context of intersectional feminist rhetorics, I’ve witnesses those same commitments manifest in her classroom and service efforts here at CMU.”

The selection committee agreed, indicating that Nisha’s application was strong in all its facets and that her scholarly interests were well demonstrated at so early a stage of her graduate career. One judge wrote the following of Nisha’s application:

“This tightly focused study of Indian American women’s negotiation of discourses of the model minority advances the Coalition’s mission and makes a significant contribution to diversity scholarship.”

Another judge concurred:

“With the focus of Nisha’s work on the Indian American women’s experience and discourse, her scholarship addresses an under-studied minority group that can make significant contributions to the diversity conversation. Her chosen topic for research is absolutely relevant to the CFSHRC’s mission.”

Nisha has published in Composition Forum (2020) and Business and Professional Communication Quarterly (2016), and is currently working on an article about her experiences creating a graduate student committee on anti-racism at CMU. The CFSHRC is in the process of formalizing its plans for Fall 2021 virtual conferencing; please watch for more announcements about how we will spotlight Nisha’s work at one of our upcoming events.

**********

As the Coalition embarks on summer activities and fall planning, we invite you to watch for announcements and calls for our remaining competitions this year: the Lisa Ede Mentoring Award (to be announced late summer/early Fall); the Presidents Dissertation Award (to be announced late summer/early Fall); the Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant (deadline: Dec. 15, 2021) and the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award (deadline: Dec. 1, 2021). Remarkably, Coalition members have not slowed down even while facing numerous challenges at work and at home. Awards do not and cannot compensate for what time, productivity, and personal circumstances our members have lost in a long and difficult year, but we are nonetheless glad to celebrate your milestones with you and buoy you however we can. We look forward to your nominations and applications in the coming months!

Very sincerely,

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

and members of the inaugural Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship Committee

David Gold
Karen M. Hansen-Morgan
Ruby Nancy
Alexis E. Ramsey-Tobienne
Kendall Turchyn

Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award Recipients

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True to its namesake, the Nan Johnson Award was created to support graduate students in their scholarship, to enable their  participation at Feminisms and Rhetorics, and to help them find new and returning venues for networking and professionalization. The 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. In place of the 2021 Feminisms and Rhetorics, the Coalition opted to open up the award to support free registration at any summer or early fall 2021 conference where recipients can share and deepen their understanding of feminist work.

On behalf of this year’s Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award committee, I am pleased to announce our 2021 award recipients:

Morgan Banville
doctoral student in Rhetoric, Writing and Professional Communication — East Carolina University

Brienna Fleming
doctoral student in Rhetoric and Composition — Ohio University

Priyanka (Priya) Ganguly
doctoral student in Rhetoric and Writing — Virginia Tech

Ashley Pendleton
recent MA in English — University of Missouri-Kansas City
incoming doctoral student in English — Florida State University

Laura Rosche
doctoral candidate in English — Indiana University

Rhiannon Scharnhorst
doctoral candidate in Rhetoric and Composition — University of Cincinnati

Nisha Shanmugaraj
doctoral candidate in Rhetoric — Carnegie Mellon University

Rachel Stroup
doctoral student in English — University of Maryland

Basanti Timalsina
doctoral student in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture — Michigan Tech

The 9 recipients named above represent all stages of a graduate career, and their work this summer and fall reflects the full range of applications and contributions of  feminist rhetorical histories, theories, and practices to interdisciplinary questions. The 2021 awardees will be attending the 2021 SIGDOC conference, as well as the Rhetoric Society of America’s 2021 Summer Institute, participating in workshops on “Histories of Rhetoric Elsewhere and Otherwise,” “Archival Power,” “Precarity and Visual Praxis,” “Rhetoric and Public Health,” “Rhetoric and Sexual Violence,” “Making a Career in Rhetorical Studies,” and “Engaging Critical Horizons of 21st-Century Feminisms and Rhetorical Studies.”

Please join us in congratulating these scholars, and in thanking the generous donors who made sustaining and increasing this year’s award possible. Finally, please join me in thanking members of the 2021 Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award Committee, who put in several hours of labor over several days at a busy point in the year—for some, at the end of the semester, and for others, in the brief window between spring and summer terms:

David Gold
Karen Hansen-Morgan
Ruby Nancy
Alexis Ramsey Tobienne
Kendall Turchyn

 

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

We Need You! Please Complete the 2021-2022 CFSHRC Volunteer Survey

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Many thanks to all who have helped the Coalition this past year as we worked to make the organization and the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference more inclusive, accessible, affordable, and anti-racist. As we continue this important work, we would like to involve a broader swath of people in constructing concrete changes to our “business and conferencing as usual.”

To this end, we’re reaching out to members and supporters who might be interested in serving in different capacities as part of this change-making. We hope you will take a few minutes to complete our brief “2021-2022 Volunteer Survey,” available at the following link:

https://forms.gle/2djxLim4yBvsDSG98

Please submit your response by Friday June 4th. Thank you for your help!

Warmly,

Wendy Sharer, President

 

 

Resources for Fighting Anti-Asian Racism & Rhetoric

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The Coalition celebrates the fact that, on May 18th, Congress passed the “COVID–19 Hate Crimes Act,” legislation that responds to the significant increase in violence against Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAAPI) populations in the US since the beginning of the pandemic. The bill cleared the Senate nearly unanimously last month and now heads to the President’s desk for final signature.

The moves by our federal government to address violence and hate crimes against AAAPI people are urgently needed, but so too are the efforts of teachers, scholars, and activists seeking to change the stereotypical and dehumanizing narratives that enable anti-Asian racism. With the urgency of this work in mind, the Coalition hosted “Witnessing Anti-Asian Racism and Rhetoric: A Speaking and Listening Forum” via Zoom on Wednesday, May 5, 2021. Co-facilitated by Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Bo Wang, and Wendy Sharer, the forum invited attendees to share their experiences of Anti-Asian racism and rhetoric and their ideas and strategies for confronting this racism and rhetoric.

We know that many people were unable to attend the event, so we are pleased to share compiled suggestions from the session on the Coalition website. Please visit https://cfshrc.org and scroll down to the “Resources” section to find the “Fighting Anti-Asian Racism & Rhetoric” link, which will take you to lists of publications, organizations, and multi-media resources dedicated to identifying and eradicating anti-Asian racism. You will also find action ideas, compiled from the May 5th session, for individuals, scholars, teachers, and professional organizations.

Please check out these resources and help us to make them even more robust! We encourage you to share your suggestions for additions with Wendy Sharer, President CFSHRC, at president@cfshrc.org.

 

 

Event: Witnessing Anti-Asian Racism and Rhetoric: A Speaking and Listening Forum

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In response to the rapidly increasing hate crimes against the AAAPI (Asian/Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition invites AAAPI colleagues and allies to a virtual forum that will provide the opportunity to speak up and speak out about Anti-Asian racism and rhetoric, to share stories and experiences, to be heard, and to listen. This session is intended to provide a space for participants to contemplate and have a conversation about what we can do to educate ourselves and the public on AAAPI histories and lived experiences; dismantle racist and misogynistic myths, narratives, and tropes that continue to endanger the AAAPI community; build coalitions across different racial and ethnic groups; and move forward with mutual accountability, respect, and solidarity.
Day/ Time:
  • Wednesday, May 5, 1:00 PM ET

Moderators:

  • Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Virginia Tech
  • Wendy Sharer, Eastern Carolina University
  • Bo Wang, California State University, Fresno

Registration is free but required. Please register at this address:  
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qfuygrDgsGNIw2wAtqI-IaqwAFy7g44MF 

Compiling List 
**The Coalition is also compiling a list of resources for understanding and combating anti-Asian racism and rhetoric. Please send suggested resources, with brief descriptions, to president@cfshrc.org. Resources will be shared via the Coalition website (www.cfshrc.org).

Peitho 23.2 Now Live!

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https://cfshrc.org/peitho-journal/

The most recent issue of Peitho is now live! Take some time to enjoy tributes to Kate Ronald (compiled by Charlotte Hogg, Meredith Love, Lisa Shaver, and Ann S. Updike) and engage with outstanding, complex, and diverse feminist scholarship by Veronica Popp and Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, Jennifer Keohane, Amy Robillard, Rebecca Jones, and Rebecca Temple.

Many thanks to the editorial team Jen Wingard, Temptaous McKoy, Rachelle A.C. Joplin, and Jen England