Help Us Keep Improving

This image shows a red wall with a roughly cut square hole in the middle, where grey metal mounts for two electrical switches sit partially covered by blue electrical tape.

As a group, we’ve been busy this year with any number of new projects and initiatives. Two important efforts have been led by two recently formed task forces, the Task Force on Digital Media and the Task Force on Mission Articulation.

The TL;DR goes like this: you can help these two groups by taking their surveys:

For readers who would like additional details:

The Task Force on Digital Media was formed to review the Coalition’s scholarly communication needs and goals, study members’ engagement with digital media both in general and specific to Coalition business, and evaluate the organization’s capacity to support new roles (i.e., social media director), resources (i.e., Tumblr), and activities (i.e., regular blog series). Members include Estee Beck, Cristy Beemer, Kris Blair, Jenn Fishman, Mariana Grohowski (Chair), Laurie McMillan, and Alexis Ramsey-Tobienne.

This image shows the tops of three differently sized paintbrushes in a clear glass jar.

The TF on Digital Media survey is currently available online. The group will circulate their report and recommendations to the CWSHRC Advisory Board and interested Coalition members in time for discussion at FemRhet 2015, October 28-31 in Tempe, AZ.

 

The Task Force on Mission Articulation was formed to address Coalition members’ concerns that the organization does not engage the full range of teachers and scholars doing feminist work in rhetoric and composition, including feminist research, histories of women, studies of gender and sexuality, mentoring, and advocacy for gender-based justice both in and beyond higher education. Recognizing the prominence of white, cis-gendered women and feminisms within the CWSHRC, this task force is working to understand how organization can better support more scholars, including (but not limited to) scholars of color, LGBTQ scholars, and scholars with disabilities.

The TF on Mission Articulation includes Risa Applegarth, Jess Enoch, Barb L’Eplattenier, Kate Navickas, and Wendy Sharer (Chair). They have two surveys: one for current Coalition members and one for nonmembers. They will be gathering data through FemRhet 2015 and circulating a report along with recommendations to the CWSRHC Advisory Board and interested members prior to 4C16, April 6-9 in Houston, TX.

This image shows a white peg board with six rows of differently colored drawer pulls.

We welcome your comments and questions as we continue our work, and we look forward to sharing the results of our labors in the future.

 

Image 1: “Switching Color and Light” by Robert S. Donovan: ; Image 2: “DIY” by Alan Cleaver; Image 3: “Home Improvement, 2011” by Marc Gautier.

The Critical Work of the *Peitho* Associate Editor

A guest blog by Peitho editors Jenny Bay and Patricia Sullivan

The call for Peitho‘s assistant editor describes the job in this way:

The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CWSHRC) seeks an Associate Editor for Peitho, its biannual peer-reviewed online journal. The Associate Editor is responsible for book reviews in each issue; for following up with authors who receive revise and resubmits and, if desired, finding mentors to assist them with interpreting reviewer comments and refining drafts; and for coordinating efforts with the journal Editors. Additionally, the selected applicant can expect to participate in Editorial Team meetings, CWSHRC Advisory Board meetings, and the CWSHRC Wednesday night open meeting held annually at the Conference for College Composition and Communication. For full consideration, applications are due 12/10/14.

From our perspectives as editors, the associate editor contributes work that is critical to achieving the feminist goals of the journal in terms of mentoring less experienced researchers and honoring feminine ways of coming to know. Let us say more.

This post addresses two questions from our perspective: what does the above description mean to us, and who should consider applying for the position of associate editor of Peitho?

What is the job?
We are trying in Peitho to serve two mistresses: one that preserves the scholarly double-blind review that is preferred for academic promotions and the second that seeks to mentor scholars by using feminist support. The editor(s) oversee(s) the first role and the associate editor oversees the second.

Mentoring is a major plank for the journal, and it is one of the associate editor’s major responsibilities. The coalition believes in peer mentoring of researchers; thus, we institutionally support scholars by having the associate editor oversee mentoring for those scholars whose article submissions to Peitho call for revision. This does not mean that the associate editor does developmental editing for all submissions that receive “revise and resubmit.” Instead, authors will be advised that mentoring is available and is coordinated by the associate editor. Those who contact the associate editor will be paired with an editorial board member and that person will work together to plan how the revision can go. The “mentor” will ultimately help the author assess when the revision is ready for resubmission. The associate editor keeps this work on track as best she can.

Peitho is also a journal that believes in book reviews. So handling book reviews is the other major part of the associate editor’s job. The associate editor solicits book reviews that are appropriate for the journal and helps manage their submissions and copyediting.

Who is needed?
Our ideal associate editor will be someone with tenure and/or years of experience with the study of women in rhetoric and composition. A wise woman such as Lisa Mastrangelo, our out-going associate editor, is needed.

We also want to solicit someone who has a vision for the future of feminist scholarship and work in the field.

Not all scholars in the Coalition hold positions that include work with graduate students, and those scholars have much mentoring to share. This position would help the associate editor demonstrate the mentoring of less experienced scholars for promotion purposes. It would also provide an outlet to give advice and assistance to newer scholars.

For full consideration, applications are due 12/10/2014. The online submission form is available on the Peitho webiste. Please direct questions to Peitho editors Jenny Bay and Patricia Sullivan.

Situating Composition, Celebrating Lisa Ede

Thanks to our colleagues at Oregon State University, the generous hosts of “Situating Composition,” aka #LisaCon, we can all recognize Friday, October 24th 2014 as Lisa Ede Day. So many of us are so lucky to know Lisa, who is (to quote Twitter) our most wonderful, most fabulous, most magnificent and lovable teacher, collaborator, mentor, and friend. She is also the inspiration for a new Coalition award: the CWSHRC Lisa Ede Mentoring Award. 

Since it’s founding 25 years ago, the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition has been an organization of mentors and mentoring. We might say scholarship is the head of the organization, mentoring is the heart, and teaching is the open hand. While it is true that we look to our colleague Lisa Ede as an example of each of these activities, we cannot think of anything more fitting than to honor her work by establishing an award for mentoring in her honor.
Beginning this fall at the 10th Biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, which will be held at ASU (10/28-10/31/15), we will proudly and with great pleasure give the first Lisa Ede Mentoring Award to a colleague or colleagues who follow Lisa’s example. Specifically, this award will be given 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.

For more information about how to nominate a colleague or colleagues (materials are due 5/1/2015) and how to contribute to the award fund, please download our informational flyer, and don’t hesitate to contact us with questions. Please, too, congratulate Lisa the next time you see or write to her.
(W/thanks to OSU and @WritingAtLaneCC for the first and last images, respectively.)

Count ’em: 5 New CWSHRC Opportunities!


There is a lot going on with the Coalition these days, and as a result we have five new scholarly and volunteer opportunities to announce. Specifically, we are currently looking for 1) a new Assistant Editor to Peitho; 2) a Curator for the Digital New Work Showcase that will appear in Peitho 17.2; 3) volunteers for a new Task Force on Digital Media; 4) volunteers for a new Task Force on Mission Articulation; 5) and FemRhet 2015 liaisons.

Read all about these great opportunities to get (more) involved with the Coalition and volunteer!

1) Assistant Editor, Peitho

A great opportunity for a Coalition scholar who would like to join the Peitho Editorial Team and learn more about Peitho and scholarly editing, the Associate Editor is responsible for book reviews, author correspondence, and (if desired) contributor mentoring. You can read more here. For full consideration, applications are due 12/10/2014.

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2) Curator, Digital New Work Showcase

Attention digital scholars: The Coalition would like to collaborate with you on the digital version of this year’s 4Cs New Work Showcase. The event itself will feature new scholarship by 12 Coalition colleagues, and the digital version of the event will make everyone’s work accessible to Peitho 17.2 readers. Volunteers for this role should be experienced multimedia composers familiar with Word Press. Interested? Volunteer by 10/27

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3) Task Force on Digital Media

Are you a social media maven? Do you research digital scholarly and social communication? If you answered, “Yes!” to one or both of these questions, then you are half way to joining the Task Force on Digital Media, which will help the Coalition develop and use its online resources. Ready to take that next step? Click the link and volunteer by 10/27.

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4) Task Force on Mission Articulation

As many of you know, members of the Advisory Board have become increasingly concerned that the Coalition is failing to engage the full range of teachers and scholars who are doing feminist historical work (broadly defined) in rhetoric and composition. In particular, we worry that our group’s nomenclature, language in our governing documents, and/or our organizational practices contribute to a culture that undermines the CWSHRC mission and alienates scholars we wish to include: scholars of color, LGBTQ scholars, scholars with disabilities, male-identified feminists, and more. Members of this task force will lead an organizational self-study and make concrete recommendations to the Advisory Board. Be part of this important group: volunteer by 10/27.

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5) CWSHRC-FemRhet Liaison Committee

Are you *both* a FemRhet fan and a CWSHRC devotee? Join this committee and help coordinate conference-related communication and projects, including the FemRhet 2015 Book Exhibit. Everyone interested in hosting a future FemRhet conference is especially encouraged to apply (by 10/27).

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With thanks to Michie.ru for “Volunteer.”



KEWOAA!

Coalition scholars had even made up a secret code name . . . a name admired around the world: KEWOAA, the Outstanding Feminist Scholar!*

Every other year, the CWSHRC invites nominations for the Kathleen Ethel Welch Outstanding Article Award (KEWOAA), and the time has come. From now through January 1st, 2005, we are accepting nominations for the journal article or book chapter that demonstrates outstanding scholarship in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and/or theory within the field of composition and rhetoric.

What works are eligible? Articles and book chapters published in the last two years (2013-2014) and composed by current CWSHRC members, whether  individually or collaboratively authored. In addition works should:

  • be broadly situated within and relevant to feminist research in rhetoric and composition;
  • address a research problem clearly couched within existing scholarship of the field;
  • demonstrate a fair and balanced research agenda in the form of feminist inquiry (i.e., archival, historical, classroom-based, community based, empirical, or theoretical);
  • fill a clear and compelling need;
  • provide a framework that can be advanced by other researchers;
  • make a substantial contribution to the field. 

Nominations must be received by January 1, 2015. All must include a brief nominating statement. Electronic nominations should also include a complete, unannotated PDF copy of the nominated work. Hardcopy nominations should include three complete, unannotated photocopies of the nominated work.

Please send submissions to : 

Elizabeth Tasker Davis, Past President and Chair of the Awards Committee
Department of English
Stephen F. Austin State University
PO Box 13007, SFA Station
Nacogdoches, TX 75962-3007
taskerea at sfasu dot edu

*The original passage reads, “Evelyn had even made up a secret code name for herself . . . a name feared around the world: TOWANDA, THE AVENGER!” Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe

Volunteer to Mentor a CWSHRC Scholar

Mentoring is an activity and ethos fundamental to the CWSHRC, and this year Coalition members have a unique opportunity to mentor scholars who are knee-deep in important new work. Read on for details, including the 9/21 deadline for volunteering. 

As you may recall, our Wednesday night session  at the CCCC in Tampa will begin with an hour-long New Work Showcase featuring 12 scholars’ simultaneous, showcase-style presentations of new work. This group will also remediate their presentations for inclusion in the Spring 2015 issue of Peitho.

To prepare, we are matching each scholar with a mentor. Specifically, are pairing presenters with Coalition members

  1. whose scholarly interests and expertise overlap,
  2. who can offer suggestions and feedback on presenters’ mediation plans for the conference;
  3. who can also offer suggestions and feedback on presenters’ remediation plans for Peitho.

Nota bene: Conference presentations include posters, audio-visual laptop displays, brief activities, and so on. Peitho remediations will translate face-to-face presentations into formats that will be meaningful and accessible to online journal readers. The latter are *not* meant to extend conference presentations into full-length articles.

To become a mentor, review the list of Showcase presentations below and email me your request no later than Sunday, September 21st.

Best and looking forward!
Jenn, CWSHRC President (2014-2016)

2015 CCCC/CWSHRC New Work Showcase Presentations

1. From Research to Archive Building: A Model for Feminist Scholars Working with and for “Participants—This project is a prototype for a digital archive I hope to make with and for former unwed mothers. A StoryCorps-style interview will capture two mothers’ memories of being shamed and silenced, hiding their pregnancies, and relinquishing their children for adoption.

2. “Making the Most and Best Use of Eggs”: Producer-Consumers, Modernist Labor Periodicals, and the Rhetoric of The Farmer’s Wife—The Farmer’s Wife (c. 1906) is a periodical as unique as its intended audience. But should it remain a “ladies’ magazine” in scholarship? Or can connections be made to rhetorics of labor? This speaker will confront these questions, exploring 1916 issues of TFW & other magazines.

3. Recasting Aurora in a New Light: Rhetorical Agency, Genocide, and Cinema—The subject of this project is Aurora Mardaganian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and a historical figure in American silent-cinema. As a historiographical recovery effort, it will examine the rhetorics Mardaganian deployed in order to understand what has not been considered or has yet to be theorized about Mardaganian’s rhetorical agency.

4. Madams, Memory, and Myth in a Wide-Open Mining Town—This project examines rhetorical patterns of historic discourse that enabled the open secret presence of brothel-based sex work in a rural northern Idaho mining town from 1894-1991. How do community values negotiated through gossip impact the way we create and change culture?

5. “I Apologize”: Promiscuous Audiences, Surveillance, and the Risks of Televised and Online Black Feminist Discourse—Ironically, successful shows like MSNBC’s “Nerdland” seem to amplify threats against Black women after verbal missteps. By analyzing recent controversies through a reimagining of the “promiscuous audience” (Zaeske 1995), this paper considers how to reduce risks of public activism.

6. Introducing the Digital Archive of the Colored State Normal School of Elizabeth State University, Elizabeth City, North Carolina—Resisting an essentialist view of the New England normal school and southern black industrial school, this presentation employs strategic listening to the journalist writings of young female teachers committed to literacy and community uplift despite legal disenfranchisement.

7. A Decade of Growth: An Overview of Feminist Research Methods and Methodologies—This presentation reports on feminist studies published in six leading journals in rhetoric and composition. This overview presents the types of feminist work valued in the discipline, and it identifies sites of intervention that feminist scholars should attune to in the future.

8. Middle Eastern Feminist Rhetorics—To challenge the persistent silencing of Middle Eastern women and address their exclusion from histories of rhetoric, this presentation reads contributions of Lebanese and Arab feminists to Al-Raida (1976-present) as integral to understanding contemporary transnational rhetorics.

9. Doing it All the Time: A Queer Consent Workshop—In queer and pro-sex feminist communities, sexual consent is an embodied process and a set of teachable practices. This mini-workshop uses the methodology of peer education to teach consent. Participants will learn consent practices and get consent zines as takeaways.

10. Black Feminists Make Online Community not War over Beyoncé and Feminism—In 2013, singer Beyoncé asserted herself as a feminist in her self-titled visual album. This project uses computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004) of blog responses to the album to demonstrate how Black female bloggers build community through both assent and dissent.

11. Conscious Cleansing: Rhetorics of Reconciliation and Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries—This showcase will examine the impact of the Irish government’s apology to Magdalen laundry survivors as an act that alters the rhetorical space afforded to victims. As a way forward, a rhetoric of reconciliation is offered in conjunction with the work of Christine de Pizan.

12. Cross(dress)ing the Mason-Dixon Line: Recovering Rhetorical Histories that Disrupt Normative Notions of Gender—Featuring two memoirs that portray women’s experiences as crossdressing spies and soldiers in the American Civil War, this presentation advocates for recovery and study of histories that illuminate and disrupt assumptions about gender within rhetoric and composition scholarship.

Help Make Coalition History

Dear Coalition Friends and Colleagues,

This blog post is an invitation. It’s addressed not only to current Coalition members, but also to past and future members as well as allied scholars and teachers who have contributed to Coalition events over the past 25 years.

We invite you to help make Coalition history by sharing your CWSHRC media.

What’s the occasion? As you may remember, Alexandra Hidalgo is currently producing a documentary about the first quarter century of the Coalition. She filmed our 25th Anniversary Gala, and she conducted a series of interviews at CCCC 2014. Of course, she could not talk with everyone, nor could she travel back in time to collect footage of past events.

But who needs time machines when you have rhetoric and composition historians?

To contribute to Alex’s efforts as well as the Coalition’s archives, we ask you to share your media (i.e., still images, video, document scans), including but not limited to mementos from:

  • CCCC Coalition meetings and related sessions;
  • Feminisms and Rhetorics conferences;
  •  and informal meet-ups with Coalition colleagues.
To support Alex’s work, upload still pictures and other media over the next 2 weeks: by Friday, September 12th.

This invitation is open to all, and the resulting archive will be available to Coalition members for both scholarly and organizational purposes. If you have any questions, please contact Coalition President Jenn Fishman.

 

[fu-upload-form title=”Upload Coalition Media Here:” suppress_default_fields=”true”][input type=”text” name=”author_name” class=”required” description=”Enter your name if/as you wish to be credited for your contribution:”][textarea name=”post_content” description=”Please indicate the title(s) of the media you are uploading (if any) and offer a brief description of the person(s)/object(s)/occasion(s) represented:” class=”required”][input type=”file” name=”photo”  id=”ug_photo” description=”Your Media” multiple=”true”][checkboxes name=”permissions” class=”checkboxes required” description=”By checking this box I give my permission for the file(s) I upload to be included by Alexandra Hidalgo in her documentary about the Coalition and in related scholarly publications and presentations. I also give permission for my file(s) to be archived in perpetuity by the Coalition of Women Scholars and to be used by Coalition members for organizational/educational/scholarly purposes including public presentations and both print and electronic publications.” values= “value:I agree for my images to be used.”] [input type=”submit” value=”Submit”] [/fu-upload-form]

A Unicorn, Butterflies, and Rainbows, Coalition Style

If you follow the Coalition on Facebook or Twitter then you know May 5th turned out to be a banner day. In the throes of third quarter for some and the end of the semester and academic year for others, the meme to the right turned out to a rallying cry for our membership—along with more than 5000 of our friends, friends of our friends, friends of friends of our friends, and so on.

Oh, how tempting it is to try turning that runaway meme into an ad hoc membership drive. Oh so very, very tempting.

Instead, I offer everyone reading this post a unicorn, a variation on the theme of butterflies, and some rainbows.

To start, a unicorn along with the first rainbow:

This particular unicorn and the figure we now know as Everyprofessor, all revved up to grade all the things, are both the work of Allie Brosh. Although she did not create the meme, she is well known through her website, Hyperbole and a Half, her book by the same name, and all kinds of cool swag. Brosch writes humorously and movingly about any number of subjects, including her own childhood and depression. Increasingly, her work appears on rhetoric and composition syllabi alongside Lynda Barry‘s, Alison Bechdel‘s, and others’. When you have a chance, take a look. Meanwhile, we owe Brosh one heckuva hat tip.

As for butterflies, they’re aspirational. At least here along the shores of Lake Michigan it’s early for caterpillars let alone butterflies. As a substitute, how about a button? Back in March at #4C14 we gave everyone able to attend the Coalition’s 25th Anniversary Gala a keepsake pin. Today we pair it with a button. Specifically, and thanks to Alli Crandell, our most wonderful webmistress, we offer you a  Peitho recommendation button.

Click it and you’ll find yourself on a page with a short form where you can tell Peitho‘s editors about colleagues with as-yet-unpublished projects on feminist research, histories of women, and/or studies of gender and sexuality in rhetoric and composition. If you are attending conferences this summer, starting with RSA in San Antonio, try it out. Please, too, let us know if you have any problems or suggestions for how it can be improved.

Now rainbows, a topic that has at least some of you thinking about 4Cs, Cs the Day, and those ever-sought-after Sparkleponies. (If you missed the post-conference controversy, read all about it herehere, here, and here.) Whether you plan to celebrate the sixth year of the conference’s first (formal) augmented reality game at #4C15 or not, as you get ready to upload your proposals plan to use Joyce Carter’s innovative keyword system to help Coalition members identify—and attend!—your sessions.

So far, three keywords have emerged as Coalition members’ favorites: Coalition, CWSHRC, and FemRhet. If your session addresses feminist research, histories of women, and studies of gender and sexuality in rhetoric and composition, use one or more of these terms, and next spring we’ll be there.

As promised, then, a unicorn, butterflies (more and less), and rainbows. Check this space again in a week or two for news about the Coalition’s 2014-15 volunteer survey among other things.

#CWS25: Gratitude, Congratulations, and an Invitation

Last night and early this morning, a lunar eclipse. Today, the start of a new term for the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. Since good things so often come in threes, my first President’s Blog offers gratitude, congratulations, and an invitation.

First, gratitude. As many of you know, at #4C14 in Indianapolis, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Coalition. Our gala, hosted by Elizabeth Tasker Davis, planned by the 2012-14 Executive Board, and supported by the 2012-14 Advisory Board, featured speakers, nearly a dozen mentoring tables, and cake!

If you were at the conference or following our Twitter feed then you already know that Kathleen Welch, Shirley Wilson Logan, and Barb L’Eplattenier delivered thoughtful and provocative talks, calling on all of us not only to look back at the organization’s history but also to look ahead, consider the future of the Coalition, and get involved in not only sustaining but also strengthening a group that offers so many scholars in rhetoric and composition a professional home.

Perhaps the best thanks we can offer to everyone who has served the Coalition over the past quarter century is to work with with equal commitment and care—for each other, for feminist work in our field—for at least another 25 years.

In this spirit, congratulations! At the Coalition business meeting, which takes place on 4Cs Wednesdays just before the Coalition evening session,  the Advisory Board voted to expand, increasing elected membership on the board from 25 to 30. This decision reflects both a recognized need and a collective desire to see the organization grow in different ways in order to fulfill its mission: not only to support women in the profession but also to support all teachers and scholars who do feminist work, who research and write histories of women, and who study and teach gender and sexuality in rhetoric and composition.

Our decision was followed by an election. Thirty-four colleagues were nominated for open seats on the CWSHRC Advisory Board, and I am delighted to welcome the following newly elected members to the Coalition’s leadership: Jane Greer, Gwen Pough, Cristina Ramirez, Dora Ramirez-Dhoore, Rebecca Richards, Bo Wang, and Hyoejin Yoon along with #FemRhet15 co-chairs Maureen Goggin and Shirley Rose.

These fine colleagues join ongoing board members Lisa Mastrangelo (Vice President), Marta Hess (Treasurer), Tarez Graban (Secretary), Elizabeth Tasker Davis (Immediate Past President), Nancy Myers (Member at Large), Roxanne Aftanas, Kate Adams, Risa Applegarth, Lindal Buchanan, Kirsti Cole, Jess Enoch, Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Cheryl Glenn, Patti Hanlon-Baker, Nan Johnson, Andrea Lunsford, Jacqueline McLeod Rogers, Whitney Myers, Wendy Sharer, and Hui Wu as well as ex officio members Jenny Bay, Alli Crandell, Shirley Wilson Logan, Arabella Lyon, Joyce Irene Middleton, Kris Ratcliffe, Pat Sullivan, and Kathleen Welch.

Last, an invitation: I invite you to get ready. As our Gala speakers underscored and our converation during the following Q&A period made clear, we have work to do.

Over the past several years, the Coalition has transformed. You may not know, but the CWSHRC is now a 501c3. Online, we have not only a dynamic website but also a growing social media network, and we co-host not only the biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference but also Peitho, which is now a twice-annual  peer-reviewed journal. Our work is to make the most of these still new resources—and then make even more. Some questions to consider: How can we max out our current potential for scholarly communication about subjects of shared interest and concern? How can we build more working relationships both within our membership and beyond, “coalitioning” with other professional groups? How can we be more representative and, at the same time, better represent?

To address these questions is to keep transforming, and my invitation to you—whether you are a new or long-time Coalition member or a non-member willing to coalition with us—is to get ready to get involved. New initiatives and new opportunities on the horizon will give you new ways  to contribute, to mentor and to be mentored, to collaborate, to coalition. So, I encourage you to watch this space, like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, and contact me or any members of the Advisory Board with questions, comments, and ideas.

Last Preview of Remastered Documentary

With only a couple days before the CWSHRC Gala, see these last three clips of the remastered documentary. See original post describing the documentary herethe second round of clips, and the third.