2024 Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant
I am happy to share the news that the recipient of the 2024 CFSHRC Nancy A. Myers Feminist Research Grant, a biennial award of up to $700 for scholars to pursue or continue feminist projects, is Dr. Amy Gerald. Assistant Professor of English
at the University of South Carolina, Lancaster. Dr. Gerald’s article, “Finding the Grimkés in Charleston: Using Feminist Historiographic and Archival Research Methods to Build Public Memory,” appeared in Peitho 18.2 (2016). The grant will help carry that work forward by partially funding travel to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) at Howard University to access undigitized material in the Archibald Grimké and Angelina Weld Grimké papers, with a goals of, to quote from her grant application, “recovery of theBlack members of the Grimké family” and “creating public memory within Charleston and beyond.”
The grant committee found the proposal robust, focused, clear, and in line with Coalition goals. As one committee member noted, “The idea of being able to recover Black descendants of the Grimké sisters already promises to make a significant intervention into existing feminist rhetorical narratives of 19th century womanist and suffragist rhetoric. Gerald has well-laid plans for conducting the research and disseminating its results.”
Dr. Gerald earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a specialty in Rhetoric and Composition. She also has a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies, an MA in English from Appalachian State University, and a BA in English from Wake Forest University. Dr. Gerald’s scholarship lies at the intersection of feminism, rhetoric, and writing, with work appearing in journals such as Peitho, Composition Studies, JAC, Feminist Teacher, the Writing Lab Newsletter and the edited collection The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy (SUNY P, 2003).
Congratulations to Dr. Gerald! We look forward to hearing and reading more about the project in the future.
In closing, I want to thank the committee members who carefully and thoughtfully reviewed the proposals for this award cycle:
- Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday, Florida State University
- David Gold, University of Michigan, *Committee Chair
- Tarez Samra Graban, Florida State University
- Kim Hong Nguyen, University of Waterloo
- Ana Milena Ribero, Oregon State University
Your contributions to the Coalition are greatly appreciated!
Warmly,
Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Awards Coordinator
Our first award winner is Heather Brook Adams for her book, Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction (U of South Carolina P, 2022). Dr. Adams is associate professor of English and a cross-appointed faculty member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. In addition, she has coedited Inclusive Aims: Rhetoric’s Role in Reproductive Justice (Parlor P, 2024) with Nancy Myers, and her work has appeared in journals including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, Rhetoric Review, Women’s Studies in Communication, Peitho, Computers and Composition, and Pedagogy as well as in several edited collections. She currently directs the UNCG Humanities Network and Consortium.
Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2022). Dr. Hsu is assistant professor of Rhetoric & Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. They approach rhetorical studies through the lens of disability justice, queer and trans of color critique, and critical ethnic studies. The questions driving their work are: What can the field(s) of rhetoric do to foster connection and care across difference? And, what stories must we tell to remake worlds conducive to one another’s thriving? You access most of their work via 
Jane Greer for Unorganized Women: Repetitive Rhetorical Labor and Low-Wage Workers, 1834-1937 (U of Pittsburgh P, 2023). Dr. Greer is a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English Department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where she is also affiliated faculty member with the Center for Digital and Public Humanities. Her archival research focuses on the rhetorical performances and literacy practices of women and girls in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and she has collaborated with museums and cultural institutions across the Kansas City region to create opportunities for students to share stories of our collective past by composing museum tours and creating exhibits.
Leigh Gruwell for Making Matters: Craft, Ethics, and New Materialist Rhetorics (Utah State UP, 2022). Dr. Gruwell is associate professor of English at Auburn University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing and rhetoric. Gruwell’s research centers on digital, feminist, and new materialist rhetorics as well as composition pedagogy and research methodologies. Along with Charles N. Lesh, she is the editor of Mentorship/Methodology: Reflections, Praxis, Futures.
