#TheFeministsAreComing To RSA 2018

#TheFeministsAreComing

#TheFeministsAreComing

The Rhetoric Society of America‘s 18th biennial conference promises to celebrate the past and build towards the future for scholars of rhetoric and composition. And feminist scholars are occupying important roles in these conversations. We are delighted and overwhelmed to see that the conference will include a robust range of feminist rhetorical scholarship, which you can find on each page of the program. We offer you this list of sessions featuring research, methods, theories, and performances that are of particular interest to feminist scholars in the history of rhetoric and composition. This is not a complete list, and we welcome recommendations from our members and readers.
The optimal way for me to begin this new (2018-2020) term is with the following six gratitudes and platitudes, calling attention to a collaborative leadership structure in which the Coalition has made an important and long-term investment.
The Coalition is pleased to announce that Jen England, assistant professor of professional writing and rhetoric at Hamline University, now serves as Peitho journal’s first web coordinator. Given the journal’s growth and emerging need to become a platform that accommodates a range of web-based formats for publishing scholarly work, the time seemed right to create and fill this role.
The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award honors its namesake by recognizing outstanding, book-length contributions in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory in rhetoric and composition. For the 2018 award, the Coalition received an unprecedented 16 nominations, reflecting the great breadth and diversity of feminist academic work, from subject matter and research methods to modes of delivery and exigences addressed. We want to thank everyone who nominated publications this year as well as the publishers of the print and digital books that were nominated. In addition, we want to thank all of this year’s authors for their inspiring contributions to feminist work in our field. The Coalition is pleased to announce that Jean Bessette’s Retroactivism in the Lesbian Archives is the recipient of the 2018 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award.
The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition is pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the Feminist Research Grant (FRG). This grant is designed to support the research of feminist scholars and teachers, especially to support archival research, translation, interview transcription, digital archivization and/or digital project development. Join us in congratulating the inaugural recipients of the Feminist Research Grant: Christine Garcia, Krystin Gollihue, and Nancy Henaku.
It is a strange and wondrous thing to be stepping down as the Coalition President without our annual meeting at CCCC to mark the occasion. I would like to thank all of you for your support as I moved into position as the President—I certainly had no idea when I agreed to the task that we would be moving through such politically turbulent times.

As we polish our presentations, print our posters, and pack our bags, CFSHRC has prepared a list of sessions that may be of particular interest to feminists and to CFSHRC members. This is just a sampling of the feminist sessions. Let us know what we should add by commending on facebook or twitter!
Before the conference, follow our facebook and twitter pages for updates and reminders. We will also highlight a few sessions. During the conference, you can also follow along to the #CFSHRC hashtag on twitter. And after the conference, check our website for summaries of feminist presentations at the conference. We will see you in just a few weeks! #TheFeministsAreComing!
As an organization of dedicated individuals and groups, we seek to cultivate a dynamic, intellectually challenging, and professionally nurturing community. We welcome and sustain all who do feminist work, inclusive of all genders, sexualities, races, classes, nationalities, religions, abilities, and other identities, in their research and/or classrooms.
Most importantly, we are a busy and growing organization, offering many opportunities for involvement. Advisory Board members contribute to the Coalition in the following ways:
Please submit all nominations to Tarez Graban (tarez.graban@gmail.com) by March 11, 2018. Initial nominations should include the nominee’s name, current institutional affiliation, and e-mail contact information.
With thanks,
Tarez Samra Graban
Vice-President, CFSHRC
**Nominees need not already be members of the Coalition, but they will be asked to join upon accepting their nomination.

In October, the Advisory Board met and voted to cancel the Coalition’s annual Wednesday SIG. We chose not to call colleagues to meet at 4C18 both in protest of the convention location and to signal our solidarity with colleagues of color under threat in Missouri due to the circumstances that led the NAACP to issue their travel advisory. Simultaneously, we began discussions with and among various ad-hoc committees, the CCCC Task Force on Social Justice and Activism at the Convention, the KC Local Arrangements Committee, and the Coalition membership at large. Throughout, we sought concrete strategies for supporting one another, including ways of mobilizing both on- and off-site in Missouri for the annual convention.
