Dear Coalition Colleagues,
I hope this email finds you well. I’m writing again with the happy news of announcing the award announcements for the Presidents’ Dissertation Award, the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award, and the Nancy A Myers Feminist Research Grant. Please see descriptions online and on our webpage. Please consider nominating and applying! See more information on our awards on the Coalition’s web page.
Presidents’ Dissertation Award
In recognition of the close relationship between scholarly excellence and professional leadership, the CFSHRC Presidents Dissertation Award is given to the author(s) of a recently completed doctoral dissertation that makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of feminist histories, theories, and pedagogies of rhetoric and composition. This award is adjudicated every year and carries a $200.00 honorarium.
Eligibility: Any doctoral dissertation that engages feminist histories, theories, and/or pedagogies of rhetoric and composition and is completed within appropriate time frames (see below) is eligible for this award.
- For the 2025 Award: Any PhD dissertation completed (defended and filed/deposited with the institution) between 6/1/2023 and 5/31/2024 is eligible.
Review Criteria: The doctoral dissertations that receive this award will not only rigorously engage extant feminist research and scholarship in rhetoric and composition, reflective of the many cultural and intellectual traditions that comprise our field; they will also enhance our understanding of feminist academic work in rhetoric and composition through the methods and methodologies they employ, the critical praxes they model, and the conclusions they draw along with the invitations they offer for subsequent inquiry and exchange.
Submission Procedures: The deadline for nominations for the next award cycle (the 2025 Award), including self-nomination, is October 15, 2025. Nominees should submit an electronic copy of the completed dissertation in its final form, as it was submitted to the author’s (or authors’) home institution to Jess Enoch, Immediate Past President, at jenoch1@umd.edu. Please also provide documentation of completion, including date of submission/deposit to the institution.
The 2025 award recipient(s) will be invited to receive their awards at the 2026 Conference on College Composition and Communication.
The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award
The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award is presented biennially in even years for work in the field of composition and rhetoric to recognize outstanding scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory. The award carries a $200.00 honorarium and is presented at the Wednesday evening meeting of the Coalition at the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
Eligibility: An eligible work must have been published in the two years previous to the year of the award. Work eligible for the 2026 award will have been published in calendar year 2024 or 2025.) Single or multiple authored books, as well as edited volumes, are eligible. We welcome nominations from authors, editors, publishers, or readers. To be eligible for the award, a nominee must be a member of Coalition at the time of nomination.
Review Criteria:
- Is the work relevant to and may it be situated within the broadly defined fields of feminist research in Composition and Rhetoric?
- Does the work demonstrate a fair and balanced research agenda in the form of feminist inquiry: archival, historical, classroom-based, community based, empirical, or theoretical work?
- Is the need for this research within the field clear and compelling?
- Is this research problem couched within existing scholarship of the field?
- Does the scholarship provide a framework by which the field may be advanced by other researchers?
- Does the work make a substantial contribution to the field?
Nominations and Contact: The nomination deadline for the 2026 award is October 15, 2025. Nominations must include five (5) copies of the book and a brief (500 words) nominating statement. Electronic submissions are accepted. Alternatively, please send all materials to:
Jess Enoch,
Immediate Past President, CFSHRC
Department of English
University of Maryland
2119 Tawes Hall
College Park, MD 20742
Contact Jess Enoch (jenoch1@umd.edu) to submit nomination materials for the award or for additional information.
The Nancy A Myers Feminist Research Grant
The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition offers a biennial research grant of up to $700 for researchers to pursue or continue feminist projects that require funding to conduct such activities. These include but should not be limited to archival research, translation, interview transcription, and digital archivization and/or digital project development. The award is announced at the annual Coalition event at the Conference of College Composition and Communication in even years.
Eligibility:
- Applicants must show evidence of a solid project/proposed project that relates to the mission of the Coalition (see below) and necessitates this additional research support activity.
- Preference will be given to scholars with no other documented source of funding
- Applicants may be at any stage of a research project that necessitates the supporting activity the grant would propose.
- Applicants must be members of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.
How to Apply: The submission date for applications is January 9, 2026. Applicants should submit a completed application form and two confidential letters of recommendation to Jess Enoch, Immediate Past President (jenoch1). Questions should be directed to this address as well.
[Download research grant application]