Spring Issue of Peitho (27.3 2025)

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:
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:
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
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!
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.
Happy reading!
Becca Richards, President CFSHRC
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
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:
Responsibilities:
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.
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
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Hannah Taylor will serve as Peitho‘s next Web Coordinator.
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!
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!