Nomination Deadline: August 1
Purpose: The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Lavender Rhetorics Award is presented annually to four works (one book, one article or book chapter, one dissertation, and one nontraditional scholarly text) published within the past two years that best make queer interventions into the study of composition and rhetoric. Works should rise to a high level of excellence in their originality, the significance of their pedagogical or theoretical contributions to the field, their affective impact, and their existing or potential influence.
Eligibility: For the 2025 awards, works must have been published/conferred in calendar year 2023 or 2024. To be eligible for an award, both the author of the work and the individual making the nomination must be members of CCCC and/or NCTE at the time of nomination.
Award Criteria: The Selection Committee will consider the nature of the problem(s) addressed, the contribution’s timeliness, how effectively the work utilizes research or scholarship to fill voids in our existing knowledge, how well the work demonstrates potential for application (pedagogically or in other contexts), affective impact, and what promise the work holds for future exploration and investigation.
Award Specifics: Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged. Nominations must be received by August 1, 2024. Please submit the following items to cccc@ncte.org:
- Book Award: A one-page statement of the work’s contribution to queer scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies. (Note: It is not necessary to send copies of the nominated book.) In the case that an edited collection is selected, editors and contributors will receive the award equally.
- Article or Book Chapter Award: A one-page statement of the work’s contribution to queer scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies as well as an electronic copy of the article. Nominators may, if they choose, put forward an entire special issue. In the case that the special issue is selected, editors and contributors will receive the award equally.
- Dissertation Award: A one-page statement of the work’s contribution to queer scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies as well as an electronic copy of the dissertation.
- Nontraditional Scholarship Award: A one-page statement of the work’s contribution to queer scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies with specific attention to the ways the nominated text breaks with traditional scholarly presentation of ideas as well as a link to or electronic copy of the text.
Individuals may only win one award per year and no more than one award in a two-year period.
Any unanticipated cases facing the awards committee that make selection difficult will be resolved by members of that committee with a rationale provided to the Queer Caucus Co-chairs and CCCC Chair.
Recipients of these awards will be recognized and receive a plaque or, in the case of special issues or edited collections, a certificate at a reception during the CCCC Annual Convention. Winners will be notified in January.
Lavender Rhetorics Award Winners
2024 Winners
Book: J. Logan Smilges, Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence, University of Minnesota Press, 2022
and
Book: Stephanie West-Puckett, Nicole I. Caswell, and William P. Banks, Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment, Utah State University Press, 2023
Book Chapter: Tommy Mayberry, “Teaching Can Be a Real Drag (Show); Or, Move over, Sage! That Stage Is Mine”, Visual Pedagogies: Concepts, Cases and Practices, 2022
Dissertation: Ruby Mendoza, “A Rhetorical, Decolonial, and Cultural Critique on Cistematic Academic Scholarly Practices: Mobilizing Queer and Trans* Formative BIPOC Resistance for Institutional Critique”
2023
Article: GPat Patterson, “Loving Students in the Time of Covid: a Dispatch from LGBT Studies,” Journal of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, 2022
Article Honorable Mention: Timothy Oleksiak, “Composing Consent as a Response to the Challenge of Openness,” College English, 2022
Book: Travis Webster, Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace, Utah State University Press, 2021
Dissertation: Wilfredo Flores, “Toward a Virulent Community Literacy: Constellating the Science, Technology, and Medicine of Queer Sexual Health”
Nontraditional Scholarly Text Award: Jonathan Alexander, Creep Trilogy, WRITING SEX, and Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot
2022
Article: James Joshua Coleman, “Restorying With the Ancestors: Historically Rooted Speculative Composing Practices and Alternative Rhetorics of Queer Futurity,” Written Communication, 2021
Dissertation: Danielle Bacibianco (former Bacigalupo), “Queerstory of Recovery: Literacy and Survival in A.A”
Nontraditional Scholarly Text Award: Jacqueline Rhodes, “Once a Fury,” Morrigan House, 2020
2021
Article: Seth E. Davis, “Shade: Literacy Narratives at Black Pride,” Literacy in Composition Studies, 2019
Book: Ian Barnard, Sex Panic Rhetorics, Queer Interventions, University of Alabama Press, 2020
Dissertation: Gavin P. Johnson, “Queer Possibilities in Digital Media Composing”
2020
Article: Johnathan Smilges, “White Squares to Black Boxes: Grindr, Queerness, Rhetorical Silence,” Rhetoric Review, 2019
Book: William P. Banks, Matthew B. Cox, and Caroline Dadas, Re/Orienting Writing Studies: Queer Methods, Queer Projects, Utah State University Press, 2019
Dissertation: Josie Rush, “Just Between Us Girls: Discursive Spaces from America’s First Gay Magazine to the World’s Last Website for Queer Women, 1947–2019”
2019
Article: Joyce Olewski Inman, “Breaking out of the Basic Writing Closet: Queering the Thirdspace of Composition.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2018.
Book: Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, 2017.
Dissertation: Seth E. Davis, “Fierce: Black Queer Literacies of Survival”
2018
Article: Collin Craig, “Courting the Abject: A Taxonomy of Black Queer Rhetoric.” College English, 2017.
Book: Eric Darnell Pritchard. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.
Dissertation: Stephanie West-Puckett, “Materializing Makerspaces: Queerly Composing Space, Time, and (What) Matters”
2018 Book Award Honorable Mention
Qwo-Li Driskill. Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory. The University of Arizona Press, 2016.
2017
Article: Jean Bessette, “Queer Rhetoric in Situ.” Rhetoric Review, 2016.
Book: Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes. Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics. Routledge, 2016.
Dissertation: Jon M. Wargo, “Connective Compositions and Sitings of Selves: Elastic Literacies, Queer Rhetorics, and the Online/Offline Politics of LGBT Youth Writing”
2016
Book: Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander. Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2015.
Dissertation: Kathleen Livingston, “The Queer Art & Rhetoric of Consent: Theories, Practices, Pedagogies”
2015
Article: R. Joseph Rodriguez, “There Are Many Rooms.” Pennsylvania Literary Journal 6(1), Spring 2014.
Book: Serkan Gorkemli. Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014.
Dissertation: Garrett Wedekind Nichols, “Rural Drag: Settler Colonialism and the Queer Rhetorics of Rurality”
2014
Article: Eric Darnell Pritchard, “For Queer Kids Who Committed Suicide, Our Outrage Isn’t Enough: Queer Youth of Color, Bullying, and the Discursive Limits of Identity and Safety.” Harvard Educational Review, 2013, 83:2, 320-345.
Dissertation: G Patterson, “Doing Justice: Addressing the LGBTQ-Religious Junction in English Studies”
