Spring Issue of Peitho (27.3 2025)

We’re proud to announce the spring 2025 issue of Peitho! This is a special issue on Transnational Feminist Rhetorical Studies, and it features a foreword by Chandra Talpade Mohanty. The articles blend personal writing and scholarship in autoethnography, counterstory, and poetry, and the contributors inspire us to transnational solidarity in a world gripped by nationalism and war. It’s our (Rebecca and Clancy’s) last issue as co-editors, and we appreciate all the people who’ve made our editorial term a success: authors, reviewers, artists, readers, and more. Thank you!
Cover for Current Issue
Alt Text: A street sign with a poster pasted on it that reads, in French, “SOS Iran, Femme Vie Liberté” and that has the Peitho 27.3, Spring 2025 included on it.

DEMYSTIFYING ACADEMIC EDITORIAL WORK: A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH PAST, CURRENT, AND FUTURE PEITHO EDITORS

DEMYSTIFYING ACADEMIC EDITORIAL WORK:

A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH PAST, CURRENT, AND FUTURE PEITHO EDITORS

Flyer contains the same information as the content in this annoucement.

Monday, June 9, 12:00 p.m. EDT

Register at https://tinyurl.com/PeithoEditors

Peitho is transitioning to a new editorial team, and we are taking this opportunity to reflect on editorial work. Please join us for — and please spread the word about — a webinar/roundtable conversation, via Zoom, with Jen Wingard, Rebecca Dingo, Clancy Ratliff, and the new incoming editorial team: Jamie White-Farnham, Bryna Siegel Finer, and Cathryn Molloy.
This roundtable is for faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, independent scholars, and anyone else who’s curious about editing academic journals. We will discuss questions including the list below, and please bring your own questions:
* When is a good time in my career to do editing work?
* What kinds of institutional support do editors need to have?
* When a journal is seeking new editorship, should I apply individually or with a co-editor?
* What are some ways to try out editorial work without making a long-term commitment?

CFP: Topic Proposal for Summer 2026 Peitho Special Issue

CFP: Topic Proposals for Summer 2026 Peitho Special Issue

Topic Proposals and CVs Due: April 7, 2025
Decision from Editorial Board: May 12, 2025
Please email proposals and CVs to peitho-editorial-team@cfshrc.org, and any questions can be directed to Peitho Co-Editor Clancy Ratliff at clancy.ratliff@louisiana.edu.

The Peitho Editorial Team invites those interested in serving as guest editors to send topic proposals for the Summer 2026 special issue of Peitho. We invite topic proposals on a wide range of topics related to feminist theories and gendered practices, including but not limited to:

  • archival scholarship
  • digital interventions
  • emerging pedagogies
  • feminist methodologies
  • global rhetorics
  • historical research
  • Indigenous studies
  • institutional critiques
  • issues of embodiment
  • LGBTQ+ studies
  • minoritized rhetorics
  • rhetorical theory

Special issues can include traditional scholarly articles as well as other kinds of projects, such as video content (with captions), Recoveries and Reconsiderations pieces, manifestos, and book reviews. Guest editors are expected to adhere to the practices expressed in the Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors statement.

Examples of past special issues of Peitho:

Fall/Winter 2014, “The Critical Place of the Networked Archive”

Fall/Winter 2015, “Looking Forward: The Next 25 Years of Feminist Scholarship in Rhetoric and
Composition” (25th anniversary of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition)

Summer 2019, “Rhetorical Pasts, Rhetorical Futures: Reflecting on the Legacy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and the Future of Feminist Health Literacy”

Summer 2020, “Transgender Rhetorics”

Summer 2021, “On Race, Feminism, and Rhetoric”

Summer 2023, “Coalition as Commonplace: Centering Feminist Scholarship, Pedagogies, and Leadership”

Summer 2024, “Small and Subtle Feminist Rhetorical Doings”

Topic proposals for special issues should include the following:

An editorial board-facing description (1000-1500 words) of the idea for the special issue, along with an explanation of why the guest editors (you) are interested in the topic. What needs will this special issue meet — in research, teaching, academia, and/or community work? Have other journals had special issues on this topic? Have scholarly presses published edited collections on this topic? If so, how would this special issue build on the previous work? This description should include a brief review of the previous scholarship on the topic and a bibliography.

A public-facing call for article proposals (500-750 words): this can use some of the same language as the description for the editorial board, but it should also include a timeline and criteria for review of proposals and brief explanation of the review process. Invited submissions are acceptable if there is transparency about these decisions, so invited submissions need to be addressed in the public-facing call for proposals if guest editors plan to invite submissions. Book reviews and Recoveries and Reconsiderations pieces should be addressed in the public-facing CFP as well, if those are planned as part of the special issue.

CVs from the prospective guest editors. If this is a collaboration, please provide a brief note about previous collaborative projects and/or how and why you decided to form a partnership together for this proposal.

The editorial board and editorial team will review topic proposals using the following criteria from our reviewer guidelines:

  • Timeliness of or need for research on the topic (new or little-known material? New understanding of known material?)
  • Engagement with current scholarship in rhetoric and feminist studies
  • Commitment to methods and practices of feminist scholarship

Please email proposals and CVs to peitho-editorial-team@cfshrc.org, and any questions can be directed to Peitho Co-Editor Clancy Ratliff at clancy.ratliff@louisiana.edu.

Topic Proposals for Summer 2026 Special Issue Due: April 7, 2025
Decision from Editorial Board: May 12, 2025

Fall 2024 Peitho Issue is Live!

The Fall 2024 issue of Peitho is now live! This issue features articles advancing feminist rhetoric-propaganda studies, critiquing an exhibit, and reflecting on writing center work. We also have a Cluster Conversation on intersectional and queer approaches to surveillance studies, plus three Recoveries and Reconsiderations pieces dealing with archives and translation.
A collage of photos of roses created by Talitha May, taken at the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon. Emerging from the lower left corner are roses in variegated colors: pink, white, yellow, red. The upper right corner and background of the image are burgundy, with 'Peitho 27.1 Fall 2024' in a yellow sans serif font in all caps. May remarks, 'The piece takes inspiration from a fragment by Ibycus in which she nursed a baby among rose blossoms as well as the ideas of rhetoric and context.'
Alt text: Peitho 21.7, Fall 2025 Cover featuring a bouquet of roses.

Peitho Announces Incoming Co-Editors in 2025!

Welcome to the new Peitho Editors!

The Coalition is thrilled to early-announce the next co-editors of Peitho: Bryna Siegel Finer, Jamie White-Farnham, and Cathryn Molloy! Bryna, Jamie, and Cathryn will shadow the current editorial team until June 2025, when they officially begin their term with issue 28.1 (the Fall 2025 issue). They are a long collaborating team with years of experience, an interest in cross-disciplinary synergy, innovative ideas to help maintain and grow the journal’s reputation, and a strong desire to mentor current and future generations of its contributors. Individually, they have each served in editorial positions; collectively, they have co-edited three scholarly volumes—Writing Program Architecture with Utah State Press (Jamie and Bryna, 2017), Women’s Health Advocacy with Routledge (Cathryn, Bryna, and Jamie, 2019), Confronting Toxic Rhetoric with Peter Lang Publishers (Cathryn, Bryna, and Jamie, 2025)—and collaborated on a fourth, Rhetorics of Menopause (forthcoming in 2025).


Image 1: Photo of Bryna Siegel Finer
Bryna Siegel Finer is professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Writing Programs at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her academic interests include writing across the curriculum, rhetorics of health and medicine, writing teacher education, first-year writing, and developmental/basic writing. She is currently co-editor of the Writing Spaces book series, where she has worked with contributors to the series’ Activities and Assignments Archive and is collaborating with other editors on the new seventh volume. She is also associate editor of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) journal, where she manages much of the journal’s web content and the Graphic Medicine column. She spent three years as the book reviews editor for Composition Studies, soliciting and managing submissions and pitching review essays to well-known scholars in the field. Her published work has appeared in Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Rhetoric Review, Teaching Writing in the Two-Year College, Praxis, Composition Studies, and the Journal of Teaching Writing, among others. She is also co-author of the book Patients Making Meaning: Theorizing Sources of Information and Forms of Support in Women’s Health (Jamie White-Farnham and Cathryn Molloy)​.


Image 2: Photo of Jamie White-Farnham
Jamie White-Farnham is professor of writing and Director of the Jim Dan Hill Library and Markwood Center for Learning, Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC) at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where she provides oversight for a collaborative team of 13 professionals and 15 student employees, and facilitates strategic initiatives at the university level. Her research areas include feminism and rhetoric, women’s health rhetoric, grammar and language change, and higher education administration. From 2018-2022, Jamie served as an Associate Editor at Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, managing desk-reviews and giving vital first-round feedback to the editors on submissions from a variety of disciplines on the authors’ engagement with relevant literature, research methods and methodologies, manuscript organization. In this role, she mentored first-time scholars and offered one-on-one guidance to all contributors through the revision process. She is also author or co-author of 18 academic articles, and co-author of the book Patients Making Meaning: Theorizing Sources of Information and Forms of Support in Women’s Health (with Bryna Siegel Finer and Cathryn Molloy)​.


Image 3: Photo of Cathryn Molloy
Cathryn Molloy is professor of writing studies at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include rhetoric of health and medicine, mental health rhetoric, feminist methodologies, and disability studies. Prior to joining the Department of English in 2023, Cathryn was a faculty member and associate director of the School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication at James Madison University for eleven years. She has been on the editing team of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) journal since 2017, stepping into the lead co-editor position in 2020. During her term as co-editor, she has worked with her team to get the journal indexed at Scopus and has worked to implement anti-racist reviewing and editing practices that align with feminist ideologies. She is also author of the book Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine: Patient Credibility, Stigma, and Misdiagnosis (2020) and co-author of the book Patients Making Meaning: Theorizing Sources of Information and Forms of Support in Women’s Health (with Bryna Siegel Finer and Jamie White-Farnham)​.

The incoming co-editors will join Jennifer Nish, who continues as Associate Editor, and Hannah Taylor, who continues as Web Coordinator. While it is still too early to bid goodbye to our current editors, Rebecca Dingo and Clancy Ratliff (they’re not going anywhere just yet!), we are excited for this next chapter in the journal’s history. The current editorial team have done much to foster Peitho’s legacy of cutting-edge feminist scholarship, introducing new features and collaborating with WAC Clearinghouse in vital ways; we know that vital work will continue with Bryna, Jamie, and Cathryn at the helm.

Peitho’s Editorial Board would like to acknowledge the other outstanding applicants for this position and to thank them, sincerely, for sharing their materials with us and for investing so much heart into the application and interviewing process. We wish them our very best and look forward to collaborating in other ways!

Spring 2024 issue of Peitho Live at the WAC Clearinghouse!

Dear friends,

On behalf of the editorial team, I’m happy to announce the spring 2024 issue of Peitho, now at its new location, the WAC Clearinghouse! Three cheers for the co-editors, Rebecca Dingo and Clancy Ratliff, for overseeing this exciting transition.

https://wac.colostate.edu/peitho/archives/v26n3/

The issue has some great articles and book reviews, plus a Cluster Conversation on feminist new materialisms, featuring undergraduate research!

Oh, and for those on the Editorial Team: we choose the bear.

A print (etching and aquatint) showing an elf woman in a tree. She is nude and is using a long branch to point downward at a bear who is looking up at her. In the background are other leafy branches and a scenic cove. The print has a pink tint, and at the top left is the word Peitho. At the top right is written '26.3 Spring 2024.' Around the whole image is a black frame. The original art is by Max Klinger and is titled Bear and Elf (Bär und Elfe). It was created in 1881 and is in the National Gallery of Art’s public domain collection of images.

Happy reading!

Becca Richards, President CFSHRC

Call for Applications: Peitho Journal Editor(s)

Call for Peitho Editor/Co-Editors

The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CFSHRC) is seeking an editor–or a pair of co-editors–for Peitho, our quarterly peer-reviewed online journal, beginning June 1, 2025, with early onboarding to begin on or around January 1, 2025.

In supporting the Coalition’s mission, Peitho seeks to publish research that advances the feminist study of our profession, including

  • Peer-reviewed scholarly texts (i.e., essays, webtexts, standalone videos);
  • Book reviews;
  • Recoveries and Reconsiderations;
  • Special edited content, including scholarship presented at the Coalition’s Wednesday night CCCC session.

In cooperation with an associate editor (Jennifer Nish will hold this position until Summer 2026) and Peitho’s editorial team, the editor has purview over the editorial content and production process of the journal, including forming the editorial board, issuing calls for papers, refining the journal’s submission process, and publishing the journal. The editor also has the support of its Editorial Board and of the Coalition’s Executive Board for all matters requiring approval.

Qualifications: A strong candidate or candidate team will have:

  • A strong record of feminist academic work, including research and scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and service;
  • A strong record of affiliation with the Coalition (i.e., membership, Coalition-related service work, participation in Feminisms and Rhetorics conferences, involvement in Peitho);
  • Working knowledge of available resources for digital scholarship and digital publication;
  • Demonstrated skill or relevant experience with information management and task delegation;
  • Relevant editorial experience and a vision for the future of the journal;
  • A career record of collaboration or coalition-building, as well as outstanding planning and communication skills;
  • A firm commitment of support from their home institutions (i.e., release time, interns or research assistants).

Responsibilities:

  • Serve as editor for four years, assuming responsibility for Peitho 27.1 (Fall 2025) through Peitho 30.4 (Summer 2029);
  • Manage the submission, editorial, and online publication processes for four issues of Peitho per year (Fall launched by December; Winter launched by March; Spring launched by June; and Summer launched by September) in coordination with the Associate Editor;
  • Maintain and model good communication with members of the editorial team and with authors;
  • Participate in the search for a new Associate Editor and Web Coordinator when needed;
  • Serve as an ex officio (nonvoting) member of the CFSHRC Advisory Board and attend regular Board meetings at the Wednesday afternoons at CCCC and during the biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics conference.

Compensation

Upon approval from the Coalition’s Executive Board, the Editor(s) shall be allocated an annual operating budget of up to $3,000 per year, in an account established by the Editor(s), to provide funding for software and technology, training, interns, stipends, publicity, and other costs associated with the development of regular and special issues. In addition, Editors receive a $250 courtesy remuneration each year, as well as free conference registration (up to $250) each year.

Applicants should email a CV and cover letter, describing their qualifications and detailing how their institution will support their editorship, to Tarez Graban, tgraban@fsu.edu, by September 30, 2024. Application review and interviews will be completed by November 30. Sample application letters are available upon request, and several members of Peitho’s editorial team and editorial board are on hand to answer questions about the role or to offer ad-hoc mentoring in advance of the application deadline. Please send all queries to Tarez Graban at tgraban@fsu.edu.

 

Call for Proposals for a Special Issue of Peitho, Summer 2025

Hello All-
We are thrilled to announce a call for submissions to a summer 2025 special issue of Peitho focusing on Girlhood and Menstruation. Proposals are due Sept. 1, 2024 to editors Jen Almjeld and Sarah Hagelin at peithosummer2025@gmail.com. Acceptances to authors will go out Oct. 1, 2024 with full manuscripts due Jan. 15, 2025.

Find the full CFP below.

We look forward to reading your wonderful insights on this topic!
-Jen and Sarah

Call for Proposals for a Special Issue of Peitho, Summer 2025:

Girlhood and Menstruation

Girls seem to be having a moment. Big screens and streaming services are filled with reboots like Mean Girls (Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr., 2024) and the recent adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2023), girls are featured both in front of and behind the camera for any number of YouTube tutorials and TikTok reviews, and girls’ bodies – like women’s bodies and the bodies of trans and nonbinary folks – are being regulated in terrifying ways by courts and legislatures. While girls’ bodies are seemingly everywhere right now, meaningful discussion of the innerworkings of those bodies seems more difficult to find. Similarly, which bodies count as “girl” bodies and how menstruation affects trans and nonbinary kids is both central to the political discourse and curiously under-studied. While our culture seems happy to surveil, sell to, and offer advice on a myriad of body issues for girls (weight loss, skin care, hair maintenance, etc.) talking about menstruation remains largely metaphorical and often downright shameful.
              This special issue invites interdisciplinary approaches to our understanding of the cultural narratives surrounding menstruation, period shaming, bodily regulation, and the girl as category. While menstruation is not directly tied to girlhood, as many trans and nonbinary bodies menstruate, popular culture generally links the two. Mainstream media has a long history of portraying menstruation as either terrifying and monstrous, as it is in Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) or as a joke that others women and girls while treating the male body as “normal.” The growing visibility of trans children and their fight for gender-affirming care further complicates notions of maleness and femaleness that rely upon biological sex, which makes the “period wars” an especially fruitful site for feminist cultural analysis at this moment. We are interested in submissions that offer a nuanced understanding of the importance of this physical, emotional and liminal space between childhood and adulthood and that might make explicit the connections and differences between feminist work and girlhood work.
              With legal and political battles raging around definitions of gendered bodies and childhood itself, feminist work on girlhood is necessary. Nearly two decades ago, girlhood scholars Natalie Adams and Pamela Bettis explained that “Girls’ Studies scholars, who often draw from mass and popular culture in their research, are perceived as engaging in less-weighty feminist scholarship” (2005: 3). Just three years later, the Girlhood Studies journal was established by Claudia Mitchell, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, and Jackie Kirk and the journal remains dedicated to girls’ experiences, practices and literacies. During this same period, rhetoric scholars worked to reclaim the literary contributions and literacy practices of women (Glenn 1997; Ritchie and Ronald 2001), but the relevance of girls’ texts as objects of study often receive less consideration. This is particularly true of menstruation literacies, practices, and depictions related to girlhood. Feminist scholarship like that found in Peitho, focusing on subjectivities that are often marginalized and ignored via traditional and non-traditional texts, is the perfect place to take lived menstruation experiences seriously.
Topics might include:
  • Girls and menstruation in popular culture
  • Menstruation in literature                   
  • Menstruation and trans bodies
  • Menstruation online and on social media
  • #period content as “tactical technical communication” (Kimball, 2017) for/by girls
  • Period health and education
  • Socioeconomic impacts of periods on girlhood
  • Material rhetorics of menstruation
  • Health and medical rhetoric approaches to pediatric periods
  • Menstruation as a rite of passage
  • Period stigma, shame and resistance
We welcome proposed essays in a variety of genres and using a range of methodological approaches, including archival research, film and television analysis, memoir, essays that blend creative and scholarly work, etc. Proposals of up to 500 words are due to peithosummer2025@gmail.com by September 1, 2024. An approximate timeline for this project follows. Collaborations are welcome.
·       Proposals due: September 1, 2024
·       Acceptances to authors: October 1, 2024
·       Draft manuscripts due to editors: January 15, 2025
·       Receive feedback from editors: February 15, 2025
Revised manuscripts are due April 1, 2025.
Please contact the co-editors with questions:
        Jen Almjeld, James Madison University
        Sarah Hagelin, University of Colorado Denver

Send questions to: peithosummer2025@gmail.com

Welcome Hannah Taylor to the Peitho Editorial Team

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Hannah Taylor will serve as Peitho‘s next Web Coordinator.

A head, shoulders, and torso shot of Hannah Taylor. Hannah is standing outside near a brick wall with some greenery behind her. She is smiling. She wears a white blouse dotted with clusters of pink cherries, and has shoulder-length brown curly hair. She wears a small gold nose piercing.

Hannah Taylor, incoming Web Coordinator

Hannah is a Lecturer in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. Hannah’s research focuses on the intersections of public health, feminist rhetorics, and reproductive rights. Specifically, she analyzes the material, technological, and public discourses that shape the ways we discuss reproductive processes, bodies, and freedoms.

Peitho’s Web Coordinator supports the journal in significant ways, including building or uploading all issues of the journal to its Web-based platform, converting all issues to accessible PDFs, and archiving past issues. We have been fortunate to have excellent and caring folks serve us in this role, and we know Hannah will continue this tradition of excellence and care. She has a demonstrated commitment to accessibility, both at the front- and back-end of journal production, has worked collaboratively on establishing Communication Design Quarterly as a stand-alone journal, and assisted with multiple publication projects at Clemson University’s Pearce Center for Communication while in graduate school.

Finally, when she is not working, Hannah likes to bake, read, and craft alongside her dog and cat. She is excited to join the editorial team of Peitho, and we could not be more pleased to welcome her to the team!

Welcome Jennifer Nish to the Peitho Editorial Team

Jennifer Nish is a white woman with short brown hair. In this photo, she smiling, wearing a green crew-neck blouse and in front of a grey backdrop.

Dr. Jennifer Nish, incoming Associate Editor

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Jennifer Nish will serve as the next Associate Editor of Peitho.

Dr. Nish is Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include transnational feminism, activist rhetoric, disability, and digital media. Her book, Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics, was recently published by the University of South Carolina Press. She has published and forthcoming work in Peitho, Genre and the Performance of Publics, and College Composition and Communication. Her ongoing research explores writing program administration, crip community, and the pandemic-era rhetoric and activism of ME/CFS and Long Covid communities.

Peitho’s Associate Editor supports the journal in several ways, but two very important ones: assisting with the author mentoring program, and managing all aspects of book reviews in each issue. Dr. Nish is a long-standing and dedicated manuscript reviewer for Peitho, and she brings to her new role innovative ideas for diversifying the journal’s pool of book reviewers and reviews, in order to highlight the work of underrepresented, multiply marginalized, and/or first-time book authors. She also brings extensive experience with and a deep commitment to mentoring, in and between institutions, within organizations, and across the profession. Finally, she brings prior editorial experience on first-year writing textbooks and conference proceedings.

We could not be more pleased to welcome her to the journal’s editorial team!