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.
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.
In response to the NAACP Travel Advisory in effect for the state of Missouri, in response to the Coalition’s decision to cancel its appearance at the 4C18 SIG, and subsidized in part by a generous gift from an anonymous donor, the Coalition would like to announce that there are funds available for a small scholarship program this year.
Specifically, these funds are available to support undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled in an English/Composition or Women’s Studies undergraduate or graduate program in the state of Missouri with demonstrated financial need to travel to other conferences in 2018. Conferences may include (but are not limited to) RSA, WPA, Computers and Writing, Watson, Conference on Community Writing, or Cultural Rhetorics. The Coalition is pleased to offer three (3) travel awards at $300 apiece.
Nominations for scholarships are due by May 1, 2018 to Lisa Mastrangelo (lmastrangelo919@gmail.com).
1) A brief cover letter and cv
2) A brief statement of eligibility/support from a current professor or advisor.
Twenty-five years ago, in “Mapping the Margins,” Kimberlé Crenshaw provided feminist academics and activists with the critical vocabulary they needed to define identity politics at various intersections of sexism and racism, in turn equipping us with structural, political, and representational “frameworks” for thinking about the fraught or hybrid spaces we occupy. Emphasizing frameworks over “totalizing theor[ies] of identity” (Crenshaw 1244), the Coalition’s 2019 Wednesday evening session dedicates itself to an interrogation and exploration of how those intersections look today, and of where intersectionality has led us as a Coalition, and as a field.
We invite proposals for brief critical talks to form the basis of a roundtable discussion on any of the following questions: Read more
As our coalition expands, we are delighted that the number of our awards have also expanded to celebrate the outstanding work of our members at all stages of their careers. Join us as we celebrate the winners recognized the 2017 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. Additionally, we hope that you will consider nominating yourself or someone you know for our upcoming awards: the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award and the Feminist Research Grant. Read more
As most of you know, the Executive Committee of CCCC has made the decision to keep the annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri. As you also know, the Coalition hosts their annual SIG on Wednesday night of the Cs. The Coalition has been and remains committed to feminist principles and practices of social justice, and we work to ensure the safety, dignity, and equity of our membership. We realize that it seems as if we have been quiet in response to the Cs Executive Committee decision of September 11. In reality, we have been organizing spaces to hear your voices on the issue.
Coalition and Community Members,
The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition bases its teaching, scholarship, and activism on feminist commitments to equality, education, and social justice.
In light of recent events, including (but unfortunately not limited to) the incidents leading up to the NAACP travel ban for Missouri and the white supremacist march in Virginia, the Coalition reaffirms its support for non-violent efforts (whether academic, pedagogical, or community-based) to confront systemic racism and the violence it engenders. We stand in solidarity with those engaged in the difficult work of principled action and with the members of our community who are actively seeking opportunities to speak up and out, to march, to write, to call, to teach. Right now is the time to put our rhetorical training to use. We urge everyone, in whatever way they can: Be safe. Be feminist. Be heard.
Please also consider joining us the 2017 Feminisms and Rhetorics: Rhetorics, Rights, and Revolutions, in Dayton, Ohio (where the Dayton Peace Accord was signed). The conference will feature multiple sessions regarding activism in its various forms. Many of the special sessions can be located here: http://femrhet2017.cwshrc.org/
From your CFSHRC Executive Board
