CFSHRC Wednesday Night Event at Cs 2026: “Feminist Pedagogies ‘In These Times’– a Teach-In.” 3/4/26 from 6-8pm

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Dear Coalition Colleagues, 

Please mark your calendars for the annual CFSHRC Wednesday Night Event at Cs 2026 on Wednesday, March 4 from 6-8pm in the Huntington Convention Center, Meeting Room 203. This year’s event is “Feminist Pedagogies ‘In These Times’– a Teach-In.”

During our CCCCs 2025 event, many attendees wanted to talk about how to do feminist teaching “in these times,” meaning how to build classrooms, assignments, and structures to encourage students to think about inclusion, justice, and writing in the face of so many obstacles. Feminist teaching comprises a wide-range of practices that include: collaboration, community-building, decentering power, engaging the knowledge of students and marginalized people, dialogue, and reflection. The goal of these diverse praxes, according to Dale M. Bauer, is that “The feminist agenda offers a goal toward our students’ conversions to emancipatory social action” (389).

Moreover, as bell hooks writes in Teaching to Transgress, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy” (12). At this moment of political and financial uncertainty, as we witness challenges to academic freedom and declines in federal funding, we will use our collaborative space as we gather in Cleveland to share strategies for our classrooms so that we may bring these conversations about emancipatory social action back to our home campuses.

 

The first hour (6-7pm) of the event will be announcements, awards, and three teach-ins. Our teach-in presenters (and their topics) are:

  • Jessica Ridgeway, Norfolk State University, “Exploring Black Women’s Digital Rhetoric: from Silenced to Uproariousness  (A Rhetoric for #JUSTus)”
  • Munira Mutmainna, St. John’s University, “Walking as Praxis: Embodied Knowledge in Decentering Power in the Composition Classroom”
  • Melody Bowdon and Xaria Arthur, University of Central Florida, “Rhetoric, Mindframes, and the Intersectional Feminist Classroom”

If time allows, we plan to have table discussions of the teach-ins following the presentations.

 

The second hour (7-8pm) will feature our annual mentoring tables. This year, we crowdsourced topics from you, our members. Here is the list of mentoring tables and the table leaders:

  1. Writing (and Publishing) a Book: Elizabeth Ellis Miller, Jess Enoch, and Krista Ratcliffe 
  2. Community-Facing Pedagogy: Risa Applegarth and David Gold 
  3. Loving the Work But Hating the Job: Timothy Oleksiak and Patty Wilde
  4. Feminist Leadership: Xaria Arthur and Melody Bowdon 
  5. The Job Market: Kate Burt and Sayed Ali Reza Ahmadi  
  6. I Just Wanna Meet Folks–A Table for Feminist Conversations: Kelli Gill And Samira Grayson 
  7. Thriving In (and Surviving) Graduate School: Aubrey Fochs and Melissa Nicolas 
  8. How To Build a Writing Group: Moushumi Biswas, Amy Lueck, and Jenna Vinson
  9. Preparing for Promotions–Tips for the Dossier and Reviewer List: Jen Almjeld and Lynee Gaillet 

 

Many thanks to our table leaders for offering their time and expertise to us! 

Everyone is welcome at our event: members, non-members, friends, children, family, and the like. Like last year, we will attempt to stream the first hour on Zoom for those who cannot attend in person. To register for the Zoom, please use this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/posQ0j5ZR-aC5SXrf-aeWQ

Please note, however, that internet bandwidth at conference centers tends to be unreliable, and I apologize in advance if the Zoom fails. 

Finally, below you’ll find sharable images for the event so, if you’d like, you can invite others to attend. 

I hope you can join us on Wednesday, March 4 from 6-8pm! 

 

Best wishes,

 

Becca Richards, President

Flyer for Wednesday Night Event at Cs

Agenda For Wednesday Night Event at Cs (content in body of email)

Listening Sessions on Supporting Feminist Scholarship, Nov 6 and Nov 7

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We Want to Listen to You.


The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition ad hoc Scholarly Support Committee invites you to join us for two upcoming listening sessions. The purpose of these synchronous online sessions is to gather qualitative data which will help us imagine how the Coalition can support feminist scholars in our current political climate. Our listening events will be held on Zoom and are scheduled for:

  • Thursday, November 6, 10:00 AM (EST)
  • Friday, November 7, 3:00 PM (EST)

During these listening sessions we want to focus our attention on the following questions:

  1. How can we build relationships to support one another’s work in a hostile political climate?
  2. What sort of support do feminist scholars need beyond their local university/college?
  3. Who would Coalition members like to hear from about our current political climate (legal experts, upper administrators, etc.)?
  4. What are other professional organizations doing to respond to this moment?

Your insights are vital for ensuring that we provide meaningful, actionable support for feminist scholars. If you are interested in attending either or both of these listening sessions, please register by Nov 2 via Zoom.

To register for the November 6 event at 10:00 am, please visit https://jmu-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/2vkzD3l1SnqhJv417iP2_A

To register for the November 7 event at 3:00 pm, please visit https://jmu-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/oFg4Dq7TRgCEe9HSFUvkRA

For inquiries about the event, please direct your questions to Jen Almjeld at almjeljm@jmu.edu. We hope you will join us in this collaborative effort to sustain and support feminist scholarship in rhetoric and composition.

In solidarity,

The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition ad hoc Scholarly Support Committee

Coalition Graduate Student Open House and Survey

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Dear Graduate Students,

Please join us for a Halloween Edition of the Coalition’s Graduate Student Engagement Committee Open House on Friday, October 31 at 1:00 pm ET/12:00 pm CT/11:00 am MT/10:00am PT.

The 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. All are welcome (graduate student or not), but the session will focus on graduate student needs and interests.

There is nothing to prepare! Just rsvp for the zoom link: https://mtsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/Xg6FVee8QfSaRFKazZ82zA

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 (emgreen5@uncg.edu) or Kate Pantelides (kate.pantelides@mtsu.edu). Costumes encouraged!

Whether or not you can attend the Open House, please fill out our Graduate Student Survey to help us design opportunities throughout the academic year related to your needs.

Spookily Yours,

The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition’s Graduate Student Engagement Committee

 

Open House flyer with Halloween decorations.

Share Your Ideas for 2025-2026 Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar Series

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The CFSHRC Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar series hosts 3 events a year (typically between October and June) to provide members with mentoring/workshop events focused on a variety of feminist-related topics. Last year, for example, we discussed the presidential election and coalition building strategies, grant proposals, and community engagement work. These events and those that preceded them in previous years have been deeply meaningful and broadly engaging, so we’re thrilled to continue the Webinar series thanks to financial support from Cheryl Glenn!

The planning committee (co-chaired by Patty Wilde and Jenna Vinson) and I invite you to suggest topics, workshops, discussion leaders/scholars you’d like to see in the next year. Additionally, we welcome self-nominations, too. To receive full consideration, we’d appreciate your responses to this survey by August 1, 2025.

For those of you attending Feminisms and Rhetorics this week, consider nominating a panel you attend for a webinar. If you hear a panel/presentation that you think would help our Coalition, we’d love to know about it. Again, you can submit your ideas using this Google Form link: https://tinyurl.com/mr3e2vy2.

While we won’t be able to take up every idea, we appreciate any nominations and suggestions. And we look forward to seeing you at an upcoming webinar!

Thank you so much!
Becca Richards, President
Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.

 

Let’s Talk About It: Coalitional Conversations We Need to Have (April 9, 2025 6-8pm)

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Dear CFSHRC friends and colleagues,

As you make your plans for attending CCCC 2025 in Baltimore, make sure you arrive in time to attend the annual CFSHRC Wednesday Night Event (April 9) from 6-8pm in the Baltimore Convention Center Meeting Room 308.

We invite all conference-goers—(bring your friends!)—to make the most of this occasion to be together and attend small-group roundtable discussions about issues that help build our coalition during our Wednesday night event, “Let’s Talk About It: Coalitional Conversations We Need To Have.” In the past four years, many of you have expressed feeling isolated as one of a few, or maybe even the only composition and rhetoric scholar on their campuses. After the COVID closures and cancellations of 2020-2021, we sought out opportunities to gather in new ways, and we have learned to treasure the times that we are together. To that end, our Wednesday evening of Cs event provides an opportunity for us to get together and talk about the urgent topics of our lives.

In recent years, we have seen school and program closures, the banning of books and DEI initiatives, racism, homophobia, climate change catastrophes, white supremacy, global violence, campus protests, and transphobia. While some pursue “business as usual” or a “return to (a new) normal,” the Coalition leadership will structure 45-minutes for members to talk and write about “It.”

First, we hope you’ll attend. But additionally, we’re asking for your input and expertise to make our Wednesday evening event engaging, meaningful, and coalitional. Below, fill out the survey to suggest topics and/or volunteer to serve as discussion leader. Discussion leaders will guide groups of 4-8 in documenting feminist coalitional thinking about these exigencies.

We will also continue our tradition of hosting mentoring tables for the second hour (7-8pm). If you would like suggest a topic for a mentoring table and/or volunteer to host/organize a mentoring table, please submit your ideas below. In the past. we’ve had mentoring tables on: mid-career life, parenting and the academy, alt-ac, the job market, writing a book, publishing in journals, career changes, approaching retirement, archival research, queer pedagogies, feminist historiography, community-engaged teaching, etc. You don’t have to do any prep work for table mentoring; just come and share your hard-earned lived experiences with others.

Here’s the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/5v9D3btDowBCiF4a8

Please submit your survey responses by February 15, 2025, so we have plenty of time to plan the event. Thanks, in advance, for your guidance and attention. We hope to see you in Baltimore!

Best,
Becca Richards, President

2024 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award Recipients

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A little over a week ago, the Coalition had the pleasure of recognizing recipients of the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award at our CCCC Wednesday evening event in Spokane. The Horner Award recognizes outstanding scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory and carries a $200.00 honorarium. For this award cycle, the selection committee read and discussed 20 outstanding, diverse books—monographs and edited collection from multiple presses—published in calendar year 2022 or 2023. From among this impressive pool of nominated books, the committee selected two winners and four honorable mentions. 

Dr. Heather Brook Adams, wearing dark glasses and a black shirt, smiling in front of a gray background. 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.

Our second award winner is V. Jo Hsu for their book, Constellating Home:V. Jo Hsu, wearing a black shirt, black pants, and a patterned cap, smiling while standing in front several buildings.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 www.vjohsu.com.

Honorable mentions were conveyed to the following scholars:

Jane Greer wearing glasses and a scarf smiling while standing next to a brick wall. 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.

Dr. Gruwell smiling and wearing glasses, a blue shirt and a white sweater.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.

Dr. Nish smiling and wearing a grey shirt

Jennifer Nish for Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics (U of South Carolina P, 2022). Dr. Nish is associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Michigan Technological University. Her research engages with transnational feminism, digital media, activist rhetoric, and disability. Her research is also published in College Composition and Communication, Peitho, and several edited collections. Her current projects include a co-edited collection (with Belinda Walzer, Mais Al-Khateeb, and Sweta Baniya) titled (Re)Mobilizing Solidarity in/and Transnational Feminist Rhetorics and a book project that explores the activism and advocacy of people with Long Covid and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

Dr. Royster, smiling, wearing a multi-colored top and elephant necklace

Jacqueline Jones Royster for Making the World a Better Place: African American Women Advocates, Activists, and Leaders, 1773-1990 (U of Pittsburgh P, 2023). Dr. Royster is former Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology (2010-2019), and Professor Emerita at both The Ohio State University and Georgia Tech. In addition to Making the World a Better Place, her book publications include  Double-Stitch:  Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters (co-edited, 1991); Southern Horrors and Other Writings:  The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1997; 2nd edition 2016), Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women (2000), Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003 (2003); Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture (co-edited, 2005); Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies (co-authored with Gesa Kirsch, 2012, and recipient of the 2014 Horner Book Award); one college textbook and two school textbook series. She is also past recipient of The Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize and the Frances Andrew March Award from the MLA and the Braddock Award and the Exemplar Award from CCCC. She has also been named a Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America.

Congratulations to all recipients! 

The Coalition would like to extend sincere gratitude to the members of the 2024 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award committee:

  • Risa Applegarth, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
  • Nicole Clawson, University of Utah
  • Regina Duthely-Barbee, University of Puget Sound
  • Nanette Hilton, College of Southern Nevada, *Committee Chair
  • Jennifer Love, Lane Community College

THANK YOU for all you do for the Coalition!

-Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Awards Coordinator

Seeking Donations for Fundraising Auction at FemRhet 2023

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The CFSHRC Development Team seeks donated items for a silent auction at FemRhet 2023. Proceeds from the auction will be used to sustain/expand the Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship and the Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award in future years. Descriptions of both awards, from the Coalition’s website, are included below.

Items should be small and light so that you can bring them to the conference with you and so that winning bidders can transport them back from Atlanta. Such items might include handicrafts, books, jewelry, clothing, etc. We also request that items connect in some way to the theme of the conference—“Feminisms and Reckonings: Interrogating Histories and Harms, Beginning Restorative Practices”—and/or to the mission of the Coalition.

If you have questions or are interested in donating an item, contact Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Development Team Chair, at sharerw@ecu.edu. If you are considering donating an item, please provide the following in your email:

  • a brief description of the item
  • a photograph of the item (if possible)
  • a reasonable opening bid amount for the item

Thank you for your efforts to assist fellow feminist scholars and teachers. I look forward to seeing everyone at Spelman in a couple month!

-Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President
 sharerw@ecu.edu

The Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship
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.

The Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award
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.

FemRhet 2023: Awards Committees Volunteers Needed

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Hello Coalition!

By now you have likely seen the exciting CFP for Feminisms and Rhetorics at Spelman College, September 30- October 3. In anticipation of this amazing event, the Coalition needs your help reviewing submissions for a handful of awards to be presented in Atlanta.Are you able to help by serving on an award committee? If so, please follow this link and complete the brief survey of interest: https://forms.gle/oj8JZG7vUct5yiAo9Awards to be made at FemRhet 2023 are described briefly below. More details about each award, including submission and past recipient information, can be found on the CFSHRC website’s Awards page: https://cfshrc.org/awards/.

  • The 2023 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. 
  • The Shirley Wilson Logan Diversity Scholarship Award is intended 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 and 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.
  • The Nan Johnson 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.
  • The Lisa Ede Mentoring Award is presented biennially in odd years to 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. The award carries an honorarium of $200.00 per person or $500.00 for a group of three or more people and is announced at the biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference.

My thanks in advance for your willingness to help, and feel free to contact me at sharerw@ecu.edu if you have questions. -Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Awards Coordinator