Dear Coalition Colleagues,
It is my pleasure to announce the 2025 Kathleen Ethel Welch Outstanding Award Recipients.
Named in recognition of the Coalition’s co-founder and first president, Kathleen E. Welch, the CFSHRC Welch Outstanding Article Award is presented biennially in odd years for refereed work published in Peitho journal that illustrates exceptional scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and/or theory.
I am thrilled to share the news that this year’s award goes to Mais T. Al-Khateeb for her article “Marking the Boundaries of Care in/and Definitions of Refugee Medical Encounters” (Vol. 26, no. 3, Spring 2024). Additionally, honorable mentions were earned by Brynn Fitzsimmons and Pritha Prasad for their article “Coalitional Refusals: Transformative Justice Beyond Repair” (Vol. 25, no 4, Summer 2023) and Abigail Long for “(Re)Turning to the Seams of Composing as a Feminist Orientation” (Vol. 26, no. 4, Summer 2024)
Details about the recipients and their articles appear below, but I first want to offer my deepest thanks to the committee members who carefully read over 25 excellent articles that were eligible for the award and did the difficult work of selecting the winner and honorable mentions. This year’s Welch Award Committee members were Gavin Johnson, Abby Knoblauch, Vee Lawson, Nisha Shanmugaraj, and Carolyn Skinner. THANK YOU for your efforts on behalf of the Coalition and the field of feminist rhetorical studies!
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Winner: Mais T. Al-Khateeb, “Marking the Boundaries of Care in/and Definitions of Refugee Medical Encounters” (Vol. 26, no. 3, Spring 2024)
Mais T. Al-Khateeb (she/her) is Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. Her research engages 20th and 21st centuries contemporary rhetorical theory from a transnational feminist perspective with a focus on refugees, their embodiments, and their mobilities.
The committee members remarked that this article offers an “essential contribution to feminist rhetorical studies and demonstrates an effective synthesis of various bodies of literature to make sense of ‘unexceptional logics of care.’” They praised the article for being “community-engaged in ways that have real-world implications, while foregrounding diverse feminisms and articulating a novel text and novel contribution.” Members also highlighted that the article offers “researchers a useful model for scholarship that is text-based but also situated in real-world consequences for people.”
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Honorable Mention: Brynn Fitzsimmons and Pritha Prasad, “Coalitional Refusals: Transformative Justice Beyond Repair” (Vol. 25, no 4, Summer 2023)
Brynn Fitzsimmons(they/them) is an assistant professor of English – Composition, Rhetoric, and English Studies at the University of Alabama. Their current work focuses on issues of epistemic justice in public discourse, with particular focus on community media and literacies as well as rhetorics of health, embodiment, and access in abolitionist social movements.
Pritha Prasad (she/her) is an assistant professor of English at the University of Kansas (KU). As a scholar and teacher of rhetorical approaches to critical race and ethnic studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, her research focuses on how cultural, political, and educational institutions negotiate the politics of race and racism in the wake of racial unrest and violence.
Committee members found “Coalitional Refusals” to be “extremely important” as the term “‘coalition’ becomes commonplace in the field.” They praised the authors’ “timely critique” concerning the “complicated ways ‘coalition’ can be enacted vs. the shallow deployments of the term,” and they asserted that the article “provides an important challenge to common feminist discussions of coalition.”
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Honorable Mention: Abigail Long, “(Re)Turning to the Seams of Composing as a Feminist Orientation” (Vol. 26, no. 4, Summer 2024)
Abigail H. Long is a PhD candidate at Syracuse University. Her research interests include disability studies, crip composing methods, pandemic rhetorics, material methods, writing pedagogy, feminist research practices, and teacher preparation.
One committee member praised Long’s article for being “innovative and self-reflexive,” as it “turn[s]” a “critical but generous eye onto the work we all do.” Another committee member noted that the article was a “strong example of the materiality of feminist rhetorics – not only in content but also in delivery.” Overall, the article “contributes to our understanding of embodiment in important ways” due to “the strong mix of published theory and personal story.”
Please join me in congratulating these feminist scholars!
Jess Enoch, Immediate Past President
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