Event: Intersectional Feminism & Digital Aggression: Research Experiences and Approaches

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Join the Coalition for an online roundtable discussion of digital aggression and feminist research methods on Wednesday, December 9 at 3pm EST featuring Bridget Gelms (San Francisco State University), Leigh Gruwell (Auburn University), Vyshali Manivannan (Pace University), and Erika M. Sparby (Illinois State University). Digital aggression can take many forms, most commonly bullying, harassment, and doxxing. In all of its forms, gendered digital aggression creates barriers to equality for communities and people who are also marginalized in physical spaces.

Each of these feminist scholars will discuss their research methods and the challenges they’ve encountered researching digital aggression. In addition, speakers will offer insights on resisting digital aggression informed through intersectional feminist practices.

Key questions to be discussed:

  • How can researchers prepare themselves to study digital aggression?
  • What do feminist methodologies look like when researching digital aggression?
  • How can researchers prepare for/prevent aggressive attacks?
  • What resources are available for digital aggression researchers?
  • How do axes of privilege or oppression influence initial approaches to researching digital aggression and/or preparations for/responses to aggressive attacks?
  • What do mentors need to know about working with a digital aggression researcher?
  • How can institutions support digital aggression researchers?

Wednesday, December 9 at 3pm EST
In order to receive the zoom link, please RSVP in advance here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intersectional-feminism-and-digital-aggression-roundtable-tickets-128565541997

Presenters:

Bridget Gelms,(she/her) Assistant Professor of English, San Francisco State University
Leigh Gruwell, (she/her) Assistant Professor of English (Rhetoric and Composition), Auburn University
Vyshali Manivannan, (she/her) Lecturer in Writing Studies, Pace University, Pleasantville
Erika M. Sparby, (she/her) Assistant Professor of Digital Rhetoric and Technical Communication Department of English, Illinois State University

Inclusivity Survey

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During these months while the pandemic limits our interactions, several task forces within the Coalition are leading efforts to critically assess our organizational structures and practices, to identify how those structures and practices have been informed by white supremacist culture and other exclusionary traditions, and to initiate changes such that we might become a more inclusive organization that attends to equitable, intersectional, and truly coalitional feminist practice.

To further these endeavors, we need your help. We invite all who are interested in the work of the Coalition (members and non-members alike) to complete our Inclusivity Survey at the following link:

CFSHRC Inclusivity Survey

Response times will vary, but the survey should take approximately 10 minutes.

Thank you for your input!
CFSHRC Feminisms and Rhetorics Alternative Interactions Task Force
CFSHRC Feminisms and Rhetorics Workflow, Process, and Format Task Force
CFSHRC Graduate Student Outreach Task Force

Honoring Kate Ronald

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Late yesterday, we received the shocking news that Kate (Katharine J.) Ronald passed away. Whether you are a former student or colleague of Kate’s at Miami U of Ohio or the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, or whether you enjoyed her grand and generous mentoring in other ways, we invite you to pay tribute with us to a woman whose absence will be keenly felt but whose work will continue to forward our field. As former Roger and Joyce L. Howe Professor of English, and former Director of the Howe Writing Initiative at Miami of Ohio, Kate married her interests in rhetorical history with WAC and critical thinking in meaningful ways. She was co-editor with Joy Ritchie of Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetorics and Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice. With Hepzibah Roskelly, she co-edited Farther Along: Transforming Dichotomies in Rhetoric and Composition and co-authored Reason to Believe: Romanticism, Pragmatism, and the Teaching of Writing. She also contributed dozens of articles and book chapters that helped raised the profile of women’s historical and theoretical contributions to rhetorical studies and to pragmatics. For years she was a regular feature at the biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics (FemRhet) conference, making her rounds between panels to offer emerging scholars her immense support, often building their confidence at moments when they needed it the most. At the 2011 FemRhet conference at Minnesota State University, she keynoted with Rebecca Dingo and Eileen Schell, deferring in her characteristically humble way to the other scholars for their work in transnational feminist studies.

Kate modeled a feminist ethic through how she produced her scholarship—collaboratively and generously—and what she produced—texts that valued equally theory and practice. She’s likely best known for Reason to Believe and the foundational Available Means, the best-selling book in the U of Pittsburgh Press’ Series Composition, Literacy, and Culture. Her scholarship also shows her gifts and skills as a teacher and mentor. The peer mentorship and respect Kate modeled is palpable in Lisa Shaver’s Peitho piece, “The Making of Available Means,” as Kate and Joy discuss their professional alliance and deep friendship that sparked the anthology and the sinew between the creation and teaching of the text. Kate did no less than help shape our field, and she did so in ways both charismatic and unassuming. No wonder she will be sorely missed, and how grateful we are for all she shared with us.

We invite all who knew Kate to share their memories and tributes by commenting on this blog post. We begin with a tribute from Charlotte Hogg, Coalition Advisory Board member and co-editor of the recently published Persuasive Acts (U of Pittsburgh P, 2020), an anthology that builds on the foundation Kate helped to lay in Available Means.

Tribute to Kate Ronald by Charlotte Hogg

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I took Advanced Composition from Kate Ronald, who insisted we call her Kate. I still recall so much from this class, in particular how this riveting teacher put our writing front and center and insisted we do the same. I remember her talking about how she would read while blow-drying her curly hair—sharing productivity pro-tips years before it was the thing to do. To this day I use an adaptation of an assignment she had in that class. Even then, before I knew that rhet/comp was a field, I knew I wanted to be like her. I visited her office wondering what to do with my life; she told me about the field of rhetoric and composition, made a list of programs for me to apply to (this was before one could look them up online), and I did exactly as she advised. We didn’t really keep in contact over the years except for a few serendipitous occasions, and yet she continued to be a touchstone along my career. She happened to be on my panel at my first national conference (the inaugural Feminisms and Rhetorics in 1997). When drafting an article, I found just what I needed in one of her lesser-known pieces. My admiration culminated in co-editing (with Shari Stenberg) Persuasive Acts, a follow up to Available Means, and dedicating the text to Kate and Joy Ritchie. When I would run into Kate at a conference, I was reminded how she modeled what to me is the perfect academic: unpretentious but whip smart, generous with guidance without taking over, and witty as hell. She’ll remain unmatched in these qualities but still made me—and I’m sure countless others—strive to achieve them ourselves, which is what made her such an exemplar.

Expanded Mentoring Program Begins!

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At a time of particular isolation, and in response to several requests that we continue our online mentoring program, the Coalition is happy to announce an expanded mentoring project. The program is a way for us to share knowledge about research, teaching, activism, and professional development by matching mentor-mentee pairs who will collaboratively establish a schedule whereby the mentee can make good progress on an agreed-upon project (i.e., job market/prepping application materials; planning research projects/fieldwork; writing/revising materials for publication; developing a syllabus; applying for grants; etc.) within six months or less. Mentors and mentees may continue to work together beyond one six-month cycle if desired.

Our pilot program in 2019 focused its mentoring around a publication goal; however, this expanded program need not be circumscribed in that way. Although we want to be as flexible as possible so that mentoring pairs can figure out what works best for them, we offer some suggestions for getting started:

  • Determine which specific project you would like to work on with a mentor, or whether you would like help with less tangible things, such as gaining confidence in coursework or dealing with challenges in your workplace.
  • Determine how long you plan to commit. You may wish to start with a six-month commitment, and see how it goes.
  • Determine how often you would like to check-in with your mentor/mentee. Do you want to engage weekly, bi-weekly, monthly? What makes the most sense for your goals and schedules
  • Determine which medium works best for your relationship (FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, email, phone, etc.).

We are seeking both mentors and mentees. If you are interested in participating either as a mentor, a mentee, or both, please fill out this registration form [https://forms.gle/zbvF3yqAmmZ3Bz276] by November 1, indicating your interest. We will continue to share information and requests for help on an ad hoc basis.

-Tarez Samra Graban,
Immediate Past President

In the Coalition Archives: The Feminisms and Rhetorics Collection

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I am pleased to share this post on behalf of Alexis Ramsey-Tobienne, Coalition Archivist and Historian.  -Wendy

If you, like me, are missing the community of our C’s Wednesday night SIGs or are pining for the quick hallway conversations between sessions at Fem/Rhet, I invite you into the CFSHRC archive where we have a collection devoted to the Fem/Rhet conferences. From the program for the inaugural conference at Oregon State University in August of 1997 to the student-created archive for the latest conference at James Madison, the Coalition archives has some great materials to browse. 

To access the archives, please visit the finding aid on the archives page of the Coalition website. The finding aid is regularly updated with processed materials from the collection. If you are interested in any materials, please contact Alexis Ramsey-Tobienne, the current archivist and historian for the Coalition to access the holdings (ramseyae@eckerd.edu). 

In addition to programs from nearly every year, the collection also features planning documents and FAQ for institutions considering hosting Feminisms and Rhetorics Conferences, conference hosting proposals, emails among liaison committee members, book exhibit information, and photographs and videos from various conferences. 

The collection takes us through the evolution of the conference and the Coalition, as we see in the variation of themes: 

  • From Boundaries to Borderland (Oregon State University, 1997) with plenaries including Jacqueline Jones Royster on “Borderlands and Common Spaces: Care and Maintenance in our Neutral Zone” and Nancy Tuana “Fleshing Rhetoric: Speaking Bodies/ Reconfiguring Sex/Gender.” 
  • Cross-Disciplinary Sites of Feminist Discourse (Univeristy of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1999) with exhibits from a variety of feminist art collectives, bookstores, and non profits  in Minneapolis.  The conference featured Voices of Women Writers, a series of readings by novelists and non-fiction writers Judith Katz, Barrie Jean Borrich, Sandra Benitez, Aurora Levins Morales, and the Tight Spaces Collective. 
  • Millikin University, 2001.There was no stated theme for this conference. Featured Keynote speakers at this conference included Krista Ratcliffe “Silence and Listening: Rhetorical Arts for “Resisting Disciplines,” Elizabeth Birmingham “Marion Mahony and Milliken Place: Gender, Erasure, and Architectural Attribution,” Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford “Feminism(s) and the Politics of Style” (read by Nancy DeJoy), Elizabeth Flynn “What’s in a Name?: Reconfiguring Feminist Traditions,” Joyce Irene Middleton “The Rhetorical World of Black Women Filmmakers: Camille Billops, Julie Dash, and Cheryl Dunye,” Nan Johnson “A Feminist Writes the History of Rhetoric: What does THAT Mean,” and Susan Applegate Krouse “Transforming Images: American Indian Women’s Narratives in Academia” and Jacqueline Jones Royster and Ann Marie Mann Simpkins “Marking Trails: Race, Gender, and Culture in the History of Rhetoric.” 
  • Intersections: Critical Locations of Feminist Rhetorical Practice (Ohio State University, 2003), where the introductory note highlighted participants from “46 states and 10 nations.” Featured panels included Feminist Historiography with Patricia Bizzell, Cheryl Glenn, Laura Gurak, Winifred Bryan Horner, Jan Swearingen, Kathleen Welch; “Feminist Pedagogy” with Nancy DeJoy, Lisa Ede, Hildy Miller, and Krista Ratcliffe; “Clearing the Clouds, Learning to Speak, and I Got Thunder” with Jacqueline Jones Royster, Shirley Wilson Logan, and Joyce Irene Middleton; and plenary addresses from Andrea Lunsford “All Available Means of Persuasion for Feminists,” Marcia Farr “Speech Play and Verbal Art: New Perspectives on Feminist Rhetorics” and Susan Jarrett “A Sustaining Meloncholy: Feminist Theories and Public Rhetorics.” 
  • Affirming Diversity (Michigan Tech, 2005) with Keynotes including Min-Zahn Lu “Class Matters: Gender, Critical Literacy, and the Global Restructuring of Capitalist;” Donna Harraway “We Have Never Been Human: Companion Species in Naturecultures;” Jacqueline Jones Royster “Gender, Race, and Nation;” Andrea Lunsford “Women Against War;” and Helena Maria Viramontes reading from selected works. 
  • Civic Discourse (University of Arkansas–Little Rock, 2007) where the proposal called for presentations beyond the read-aloud academic essays to more interactive and alternative formats and included a note for graduate students on how to approach the conference. Featured panels included those from outside of academia:  “The Women of Central High” and another “When Worlds Collide: Feminist Art vs. Images of Empire;” Wendy Kline “Bodies of Evidence: Activists, Patients, and the FDA Regulation of Depo Provera; Dr. M. Joycelyn Elders, former US Surgeon General, and a panel on Civil Rights/Civic Discourse. Keynotes included:  Malea Powell “Making NDN Culture: American Indian Women Civic Materialities;” a welcome address from Krista Ratcliffe “Unwilling to Listen: How do you Engage in Civic Dialogue When Each Side Isn’t Civil?” a moderated panel with each of the past conference chairs; Carol Mattingly “A Habit of Civic Engagement: Nineteenth-Century Nuns Dispelling Prejudice; Jessica Rayman “Copyright, Feminism, and Digital Discourse; Hui Wu “Whose Feminism is It? The Rhetoric of Post-Mao Chinese Women Writers;  Shirley Wilson Logan “Daisy Bates and Ida Wells: Talking Across Gender.” Another highlight was a reception and tour at the Clinton Presidential Archives. 
  • Enabling Complexities: Community/Writing/Rhetoric (Michigan State University, 2009). Featured speakers included Gwendolyn D. Pough “On Prince Charming and the Strong Black Woman: Race, Representation, Rhetoric and Romance;” Ceclia Rodriquez Milenas “My English is Not Very Good Looking–Accents and Identities;” Rochelle L. Harris “From Zombies to Writing Groups and Motorcycle Rallies to Memoir: My Search for the Fifth Trope of Rhetoric;” Resa Crane Bistro “Diagnosing Intergenerational Post Traumatic Disorder: Or, a Fat Old Indian Woman Fistfights the American Psychiatric Association in East Lansing;” Terese Guinsatao Monberg “Pinay Peminists: Listening for New Locations and Re/visions of Rhetorical Theory;” and Dora Ramirez-Dhoore “Racial and Scientific Rhetoric in Eco-Political Matters: Third World Women Workers in Helena Maria Viramontes Under the Feet of Jesus and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood.” This conference also opened with a community event “A Legacy of Conflict and Possibility: an Examination of Racism Between Women of Color and White Women” hosted by M. Carmen Lane from the Lane-Leota Group. 
  • Feminist Challenges or Feminist Rhetorics?: Locations, Scholarship, and Discourse (Minnesota State Mankato, 2011). Keynote speakers included Gayle Salamon, AlisonPiepmeier, as well as a number of keynote roundtables from Kate Ronald, Eileen Schell and Rebecca Dingo who discussed who feminist methodologies and practices. Mumbi Mwangi and Kyoko Kishimoto discussed Women of Color Feminisms, and Sondra Perl and Betsey Sargent revisited the intersections between felt sense, the body and feminism in pedagogy. A lunch time keynote roundtable included Jenn Melby, owner of Mankato’s Coffee Hag, and a cohort of local feminist and LGBTQI business owners. 
  • Networks and Connections: Feminisms, Rhetoric, and Local/Global Communities (Stanford University, 2013). The conference program is not currently in the archives, but it is available here. 
  • Women’s Ways of Making (Arizona State University, 2015). Currently the archive does not have the conference program in its processed holdings, but it is available here. This folder holds a variety of materials related to securing publisher tables. 
  • Rhetorics, Rights, (R)evolutions (Dayton University, 2017). Currently the archive does not have the conference program in its processed holdings, but the program is available here. 
  • Redefining Feminist Activism (James Madison University, 2019). Currently the archive does not have the conference program in its processed holdings, but the program is available here.

The programs and accompanying materials from the collection also highlight the importance of community engagement to the conference–with exhibits featuring local non-profits (such as at University of Minnesota–Minneapolis) or with community leaders offering plenaries (such as at University of Dayton) or with a roundtable with local feminist business owners (such as at the University of Minnesota Mankato). The welcome message from the 2009 Michigan State  conference directors Malea Powell and Sue Webb and conference assistant co-directors Kendall Lion and Jennifer Sano makes this connection explicit: “we have created a conference that both examines the knowledge work we already do as scholars and community activists and that creates more space for the complicated, difficult work that must follow if we want to adequately reflect the deep structure of connections/intersections/overlaps that are critical to our shared future.” They then continue by encouraging participants to “reach across the category” they identify with to forge new connections and new possibilities. 

The idea of blurring binaries was again present at the ASU conference in 2015 where organizers expressly worked to “collapse several impoverished binaries: mind/body, producer/consumer, passive recipients/active consumers, public/private, male/female, and craft/art.” The conference featured artists, weavers, knitters, and other artisans and crafters who presented alongside the more traditional conference format to showcase different ways of making.  That said, throughout all the conference programs, you see the conference encouraging broad understanding of what it means to participate in the conference–from locals housing grad students, to online reading rooms, to performing in plays. The blurring of practice and theory was also evident during the Dayton Conference where attendees helped to raise funds for Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. 

A long-standing feature of the conference that we can observe evolving through the conferences are the shared meals. From the early conferences where nearly all the meals were shared, to the more recent iterations of the conference with fewer shared meals and more emphasis on shared experiences. These experiences include the archival collection highlighted at the 2019 JMU Conference featuring exhibits on the ERA and women’s activism on campus, to the opening cocktail and hors d’oeuvres celebration at the 2017 Dayton Conference featuring a rare book collection, that included first editions of noted feminist texts, to the performance of the award-winning Scottsdale Chorus at the 2015 ASU Conference, to the catered dinner in the Rodin Sculpture Garden at the 2013 Stanford Conference, to the visit to the Clinton Presidential Library during the 2007 ULAR Conference. For me, first as a master’s student and now as a professor, these moments beyond the presentation rooms where I got to metaphorically (and sometimes literally) play with fellow conference attendees is where the magic of feminisms and rhetorics happen. 

The Feminisms and Rhetorics Collection is a reminder that the hard work of feminist rhetorical theory, practice, teaching, and learning can be extended and enriched when we gather to ask critical questions of ourselves and each other in a spirit of inclusivity and encouragement

-Alexis Ramsey-Tobienne, CFSHRC Archivist and Historian

Welcome to Peitho’s Advertising Coordinator Intern, Timothy Ballingall!

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The Coalition is pleased to welcome Timothy Ballingall as our first Advertising Coordinator Intern for Peitho! Timothy is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric & Composition at Texas Christian University, where he teaches courses in composition, argument, and gender. His dissertation, Rhetoric to the Lovelorn: Women’s Newspaper Advice Columns between the Wars, uses feminist historiography, archival research, feminist interpretations of ethos, and qualitative content analysis to examine advice columnists in the 1920s and 30s. His work has appeared in Peitho.

As the Advertising Coordinator Intern, Timothy will be responsible for assisting in generating advertising revenue for Peitho (contributing to and maintaining a contact list of potential advertisers, soliciting ads, collecting revenue, and assisting with the publication of the ads within Peitho, etc.) over the next 11 months.

Many thanks are due to the Peitho Editorial Board members who served as the search committee for this position: Dr. Suzanne Bordelon, Dr. Lisa Mastrangelo, and Dr. Temptaous McKoy.

Exciting Feminisms and Rhetorics News!

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I am pleased to share news that the Advisory Board of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition recently passed the following motion regarding the 2023 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference:

That the Coalition delay of the re- release of the call for 2023 Feminisms and Rhetorics site hosts until the spring of 2021 and require within this call that potential site hosts front themes of anti-racist activism and center the work of feminists of color.

I also want to make you aware that several members of the Advisory Board and the broader Coalition have started work in two task forces: one that seeks to “fill the gap” left by the cancellation of the 2021 FemRhet Conference, and one that aims to investigate and propose potential structural and procedural changes to the FemRhet Conference.

In the remainder of this post, you will find background information about the timing of the call for FemRhet 2023 site hosts and the decision to front anti-racist activism and the work of feminists of color at that conference. In addition, you will learn more about the task forces. As you read and consider these items, please know that your input is strongly encouraged and most welcome. Please contact me (mailto:president@cfshrc.org) or the coordinators of the task forces (their contact information is below) with any ideas, recommendations, or feedback. Members of the Executive Board are also happy to talk through ideas with you if you are already thinking about submitting a site proposal for the 2023 conference. Please direct communications about possibly hosting the FemRhet 2023 to me or to Tarez Graban, Immediate Past President, at tarez.graban.gmail.com.

Background and Task Forces Details

During its virtual annual business meeting in March 2020, the Coalition Advisory Board voted not to co-host a Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in 2021. At that same meeting, the Board also decided to temporarily suspend site-host proposals for the 2023 Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. These decisions were made in response to ongoing conversations about the workflows, formats, and processes associated with the conference and in light of COVID-related uncertainty regarding the possibility of planning for and holding a large gathering in the near future.

With these decisions and situations in mind, the Coalition established two task forces:

  1. An “Alternative Interactions” (AI) task force that is investigating ways to enable conversations, education, mentoring, and other activities that would have occurred at our CCCC 2020 Wednesday evening action hour and during the FemRhet 2021 conference. Lisa Shaver (lisa_shaver@baylor.edu) is coordinating this task force.
  2. A “Workflow, Process, and Format” (WPF) task force that is reviewing past practices and future possibilities related to these aspects of the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference and building on the work of the Coalition’s FemRhet Policies Task Force from last year. Jessica Enoch (jenoch1@umd.edu) is coordinating this task force.

To ensure that our WPF task force members have time to complete their work and that we can, as desired, incorporate changes that they might recommend, and to allow more time for clarity with regard to how institutions and communities will resume life and business in the wake of the pandemic, it seemed advisable for a revised call for site-hosts for FemRhet 2023 to be released in the spring of 2021.

We also felt that the second part of the motion is an essential part of larger Coalition efforts to amplify voices of scholars of color, interrogate white privilege, and promote anti-racist organizational change. While many members and supporters of the Coalition have critiqued white supremacy and engaged in racial justice work in the past, current events and the enduring, centuries-long oppressions and injustices that inform them make it undeniably clear that this anti-racist emphasis for the next FemRhet gathering is not just reactive but is necessary to promote the Coalition’s mission. There are many ways to accomplish this focus in a conference gathering, and members of the Executive Board, as noted above, are glad to make themselves available to discuss ideas in advance of the re-issued call for site-host proposals.

With gratitude and hope,

Wendy Sharer, President CFSHRC

In Response to Racial Injustice and White Supremacist Violence

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Friends,

We are repulsed and heartbroken by the recent violent, racist, and transphobic actions taken by police officers and civilians in Minnesota, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, and other areas of the country, and we grieve for the victims: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Monika Diamond and so many others who have been killed as a result of systemic racism and interlocking systems of oppression. We condemn these acts, and we stand in solidarity with those across the nation, particularly Black Americans and other communities of color, who are rightfully protesting the conditions and policies that enable such atrocities.  

Statements of denunciation and expressions of solidarity, while valuable, are, on their own, inadequate as agents of change. Thus, we want to amplify calls to speak out against racism and to support organizations that are working on the front lines of the battle against systemic oppression. There are many ways to promote the essential work of community activists–leaders and community members–who are already using their experiences and expertise in educational, political, and health care contexts to create change. Below is a list of opportunities: 

Compilations:

Partial list of additional organizations (with brief descriptions from their websites):

  • Color of Change— “We design campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, and champion solutions that move us all forward. Until justice is real.”
  • Center for Black Equity – The vision of this organization is to “build a global network of LGBTQ+ individuals, allies, community-based organizations and Prides dedicated to achieving equality and social justice for Black LGBTQ+ communities through Economic Equity, Health Equity, and Social Equity.”
  • Circle of Mothers— “Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, created the Circle of Mothers as a way to empower women. The purpose of the Circle of Mothers is to bring together mothers who have lost children or family members due to senseless gun violence for the purpose of healing, empowerment, and fellowship towards the larger aim of community building.”
  • Dream Defenders—”The Dream Defenders was founded in April 2012 after the tragic killing of 17-year old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. That Spring, young Black, Latinx, and Arab youth marched from Daytona Beach Florida to Sanford Florida where Trayvon Martin was killed. With that fire in their bellies, they then went back to their communities and campuses to organize. Dream Defenders is a multiracial group of young people who are organizing to build power in our communities to advance a new vision we have for the state. Our agenda is called the Freedom Papers. Through it, we are advancing our vision of safety and security –  away from prisons, deportation, and war – and towards healthcare, housing, jobs and movement for all.”
  • Know Your Rights Camp—”A free campaign founded by Colin Kaepernick to raise awareness on higher education, self- empowerment, and instructions on how to properly interact with law enforcement in various scenarios.”
  • National Coalition on Black Civic Participation—”The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation is a 501 (c) 3 non-partisan civic engagement organization that strives to cultivate institutional base-building capacity and intergenerational leadership models at the local, state and national levels. NCBCP is committed to nurturing a climate where new thinking, innovative and traditional strategies of empowerment are respected and freely expressed; and strategic partnerships and alliances are welcomed. By educating, motivating, organizing and mobilizing our communities, the NCBCP seeks to encourage full participation in a barrier-free democratic process. Through technology, educational programs and civic leadership training, the Coalition works to expand, strengthen and empower Black communities to make voting and civic participation a cultural responsibility and tradition.”
  • LIVE FREE – “With over 118 million people attending weekly services in over 350,000 congregations across the U.S., we believe that a social justice revival within our faith institutions would transform our nation’s hearts and minds, and ultimately, the policies and practices that perpetuate these evils. With hundreds of congregations as well as countless leaders and movement partners throughout the country, the LIVE FREE Campaign is working to end the scourges of gun violence, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of Black and Brown bodies that tears at the soul of our society.” This group is currently running a “Masks for the People” campaign, “a humanitarian effort to address the lack of preventive care and resources being made available to our loved ones in jails, urban neighborhoods and poor rural communities. Every $10,000 dollars create 5,000 kits that include masks, hand sanitizer, garments, PPE, etc.”

–Executive Board, Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition 

Welcome Our New Advisory Board Members and Executive Officers

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We are proud to announce five new members to the Coalition Advisory Board for the 2020-2022 term. These new board members will contribute to the Coalition by advising the Executive Officers and serving on a range of different task forces and committees related to the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference, our journal Peitho, mentoring programs, awards, and guiding future Coalition endeavors to support feminist scholars.

Join us in welcoming Heather Brook Adams, Tamika Carey, Patricia Fancher, Sherita Roundtree, and Patrick Thomas to the Coalition Advisory Board.

Heather Brook Adams

Heather Brook Adams is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research performs feminist historiography of the recent past and investigates rhetorics of reproduction, pregnancy, and motherhood in relation to affect, gender, race, and class. Her book project, “Rhetorics of Shame: A Recent History of Righteous Reproduction” explores rhetorical shaming and blaming practices, both private and public, that have shaped—and that continue to shape—discussions of women’s reproduction and sexual wellbeing. Dr. Adams’s scholarly and pedagogical interests also include rhetorics of health and medicine; visual rhetorics; ethnographic methods; decolonial and intersectional theories; and undergraduate research.

Tamika L. Carey

Tamika L. Carey is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She holds a doctorate in Composition and Cultural Rhetorics and a Certificate in Advanced Studies in Women and Gender Studies from Syracuse University. An interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Carey’s primary field is Rhetoric and Composition and her specific research and teaching focuses on African American Rhetorics and Literacies, Feminist Rhetorics, Black Women’s Writing and Intellectual Traditions, and the memoir. Dr. Carey is the author of Rhetorical Healing: The Reeducation of Contemporary Black Womanhood ​(SUNY 2016), a feminist critique of Black women’s self-help and wellness culture.

Patricia Fancher

Patricia Fancher is a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she teaches
and researches digital media, technical rhetoric, and feminist rhetorics. Her research on gender
and digital media has been published in Rhetoric Review, Present Tense, Composition Studies,
Computers & Composition, Enculturation and Peitho in addition to several edited collections. She is currently complete a book project entitled “Embodying Computing,” which locates a queer techne in the history of the invention of digital computing.

Sherita Roundtree

Sherita V. Roundtree is an Assistant Professor of English at Towson University. She studies ways to develop diverse representation and equitable access for students, teachers, and scholars who write in, instruct in, and theorize about writing classrooms. Her current work centralizes the teaching efficacy, pedagogical approaches, and “noise” of Black women graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) who teach or have taught first- and/or second-level composition courses. Considering Black women GTAs’ feelings of preparedness and approaches to teaching composition, Roundtree explores the networks of support they utilize and how they do or do not use resources to navigate pedagogical challenges.

Patrick Thomas

Patrick Thomas is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Dayton University. He teaches and studies Digital Literacies and New Media. His research intersects literacy studies, writing technologies, empirical methodologies, and computer-mediated communication. His current research projects include a study of mobile technologies’ effects on students’ writing practices and an investigation of transcontextual writing practices – that is, how people write across time and space – among professional writers. With Pamela Takayoshi, he has edited the collection Literacy in Practice: Writing in Private, Public, and Working Lives (Routledge Press). He has published in the journals Computers and Composition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.

Executive Board

We are also proud to announce the Executive Board for the 2020-2022 term. Join us in thanking these stellar feminist scholars and mentors for their leadership.

President: Wendy Sharer
Vice President: Jessica Enoch
Treasurer: Jane Greer
Secretary: Cristy Beemer
Member at Large: Mudiwa Pettus
Immediate Past President: Tarez Samra Graban

Wendy Sharer, President

Wendy Sharer, Professor of English at East Carolina University is very excited to take on the role of President and hopes she can live up to the leadership standards set by her predecessors. She joined the Coalition in the late 1990’s, and, in 2008, she and Michelle Eble collaborated on “In Their Own Words: The History & Influence of the Coalition,” a video in honor of the Coalition’s 20th anniversary. She is author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, including Reclaiming Accountability (Utah State UP, 2016); Working in the Archives (SIUP 2010); 1977: A Cultural Moment in Composition (Parlor 2007); Vote & Voice: Women’s Organizations and Political Literacy, 1915–1930 (SIUP 2004), and Rhetorical Education in America (Alabama 2004). Beginning in 2001 and ending just this past fall, she held Writing Program Administrator roles at East Carolina, including Director of Composition and Director of the Quality Enhancement Plan. At home, she has 9 cats (some were inherited!) and a very old pup named Nittany.

Vice President, Jessica Enoch

Jessica Enoch, Director of Academic Writing at the University of Maryland, specializes in feminist rhetorics and pedagogies, rhetorical education, histories of rhetoric and composition, and literacy studies. Author of Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students 1965-1991 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP), and editor of Burke in the Archives: Using the Past to Transform the Future of Burkean Studies (with Dana Anderson, Columbia: U of South Carolina Press), her articles have appeared in places such as College Composition and Communication, College English, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Her most recent book Domestic Occupations: Spatial Rhetorics and Women’s Work was awarded the Coalition’s Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award.

Jane Greer, Treasurer

Jane Greer is Professor of English and Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and she has been named a University of Missouri Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor. She is the editor of Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present (ABC-Clio 2003); Pedagogies of Public Memory: Teaching at Museums, Archives, and Memorials, coedited with Laurie Grobman (Routledge 2015); and The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies, coedited with Dominic DelliCarpini and Jenn Fishman (Parlor Press 2020). Her scholarship has appeared in College English, CCC, Peitho, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She served on the Advisory Board of the CFSHRC from 2015 to 2018, and on the Executive Board as Member-at-Large from 2018-2020. At UMKC, she teaches composition courses as well as classes on the rhetorical practices of girls and women.

Cristy Beemer, Secretary

Cristy “Cris” Beemer is an Associate Professor of English, Director of Composition, and Coordinator of the Professional and Technical Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire where she was awarded a College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015. Cris’s research focuses on feminist rhetoric in classical, early modern, and contemporary contexts. She has published articles in Peitho, Rhetoric Review, and Teaching English at a Two-Year College, among others. Cris is currently working on her book project, “From the Margins of Healthcare: Breast Cancer and the Rhetoric of the Online Peer-to-Peer Healthcare Community.” Cris has been involved with the Coalition since 2003 presenting and serving on several task forces, and is thrilled to join the Executive Board to give back to the community that has made such an impact on her work.

Mudiwa Pettus, Member at Large

Mudiwa Pettus is an Assistant Professor at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York. Her research interests are located at the intersections of rhetorical education, public intellectualism, and racial politics, with a focus on the Post-Reconstruction/Pre-Harlem Renaissance era. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the National Review of Black Politics, Rhetoric Review, Rhetorica, and A Gathering of Tribes.

Tarez Samra Graban, Immediate Past President

Tarez Samra Graban, Associate Professor of English at Florida State University, joined the Coalition as a graduate student, and has served the Advisory Board since 2010. At FSU, and at Indiana University before that, she has held roles in L2 curriculum coordination, writing program administration, and co-directorship of a fellowship program in the data humanities, and completed a research fellowship with the University of South Africa. Her research and teaching is centered in histories of rhetoric, histories and theories of composition, global and comparative rhetorics, feminist rhetorical theory, and digital humanities. Lately, her work attends to rhetoric as epistemology, writing as text technology, and alterity as cultural apparatus. In her term as Coalition President, she expanded opportunities for mentoring, saw the establishment of new awards, spearheaded the redesign of the organization’s website, and hosted the celebration of the Coalition’s 30th Anniversary, among many other projects to support the Coalition’s expanding membership and mission.

#thefeministsareinplace … but plans are still moving forward

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Coalition Friends,

Carving out a shared moment from pressing institutional demands, family crises, juggled responsibilities, and compulsory homeschooling, members of The Advisory and Executive Boards met virtually as scheduled on March 25 to address a full and timely meeting agenda. Some of us were still reeling from the slew of cancellations announced the week prior. Some of us were caring for relatives who are ill. Some of us were still navigating conflicting and uncertain missives from our local or state governments about how to conduct ourselves and our lives on a day-to-day basis. But most of us were glad for the opportunity to “see” one another, and to think and talk focusedly about concerns that are still pressing in the midst of our altered realities.

Uncertainties aside, I’m excited for the good that is ahead. We discussed and voted on several initiatives, moved some to the back burner and promoted others to the front. We began preparations for a new and incoming leadership team. We made some decisions about the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. We established our priorities for programs and campaigns that we know our students and colleagues need, and some need fairly urgently. Most importantly, we considered how, when, where, and how quickly we should act on those initiatives with an ethic of care, and how to do this as transparently as possible. Please watch for additional posts in the days and weeks that follow, with relevant announcements and profiles of our incoming leadership team, and know that we’re rolling things out as quickly as we can, but thoughtfully. Distinctive of the Coalition is our marked interest in communicating openly and honestly about what we want to do, what we need to do, and what we can do.

As with anything we do, this upcoming slate of needs and desires requires more labor than our small group of leaders can reasonably take on, and because we take you and your burdens very seriously and very much to heart, we’ll soon be putting out our regular calls for your help and your involvement. When you see those calls circulate, I hope you’ll recognize that they are calling for you, and that you’ll feel both enabled and compelled to respond.

With gratitude for your engagement,
-Tarez Graban
CFSHRC President 2018-2020

p.s. – If you haven’t already, come browse our new site; check out awards and other initiatives, Peitho journal, and let us know what else you’d like to see.