Nomination Deadline: May 1
Purpose: The CCCC Outstanding Book Award is presented annually for work in the field of composition and rhetoric.
Eligibility: A work eligible for the 2025 award will have been published in calendar year 2023 or 2024. To be eligible for the award, nominees must be members of CCCC and/or NCTE at the time of nomination. To nominate a volume for the award, the author, editor, publisher, or reader must be a CCCC and/or NCTE member.
Award Specifics: Each year two awards will be given: one award for a single-authored or multi-authored work and one award for an edited collection of scholarly work. Both categories will be evaluated for scholarship and research in the areas of pedagogy, practice, history, and theory.
Nominations must be received by May 1, 2024, and must include a brief statement of the book’s contribution to the profession (Note: You do not need to send copies of the nominated book with the nomination.). Please send the statement of the book’s contribution to the CCCC Outstanding Book Award Committee at cccc@ncte.org.
Outstanding Book Award Selection Committee Review Criteria and Timeline (pdf)
Outstanding Book Award Winners
2024 Winners
Annie S. Mendenhall, Desegregation State: College Writing Programs after the Civil Rights Movement, Utah State University Press, 2022
Christine Denecker and Casie Moreland, The Dual Enrollment Kaleidoscope: Reconfiguring Perceptions, of First-Year Writing and Composition Studies, Utah State University Press, 2022
2024 Honorable Mentions
Stephanie West-Puckett, Nicole I. Caswell, and William P. Banks, Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment, Utah State University Press, 2023
Gesa E. Kirsch, Romeo García, Caitlin Burns Allen, and Walker P. Smith, Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives, Southern Illinois University Press, 2023
2023
Aja Y. Martinez, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory, National Council of Teachers of English
Laura Gonzales and Michelle Hall Kells, Latina Leadership: Language and Literacy Education across Communities, Syracuse University Press
2022
Louis M. Maraj, Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics, Utah State University Press
Patrick Sullivan, Sixteen Teachers Teaching: Two-Year College Perspectives, Utah State University Press
2022 Honorable Mentions
Rosanne Carlo, Transforming Ethos: Place and the Material in Rhetoric and Writing, Utah State University Press
Elizabeth Kimball, Translingual Inheritance: Language Diversity in Early National Philadelphia, University of Pittsburgh Press
2021
Shui-Yin Sharon Yam, Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship, Ohio State University Press
Vivette Milson-Whyte, Raymond Oenbring, and Brianne Jaquette (Eds.), Creole Composition: Academic Writing and Rhetoric in the Anglophone Caribbean, Parlor Press
2020
Jessica Restaino, Surrender: Feminist Rhetoric and Ethics in Love and Illness, Southern Illinois University Press
Romeo García and Damián Baca, Rhetorics Elsewhere and Otherwise: Contested Modernities, Decolonial Visions, National Council of Teachers of English
2019
Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Writing on the Move: Migrant Women and the Value of Literacy, University of Pittsburgh Press
Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg, and Sheridan Blau, Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom, National Council of Teachers of English
2018
Rasha Diab, Shades of Sulh: The Rhetorics of Arab-Islamic Reconciliation, University of Pittsburgh Press
Tammie M. Kennedy, Joyce Irene Middleton, and Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education, Southern Illinois University Press
2018 Honorable Mention
Iris D. Ruiz, Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy, Palgrave Macmillan
2017
Asao B. Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future, Parlor Press
David S. Martins, Transnational Writing Program Administration, Utah State University Press
2017 Honorable Mentions
Kate Vieira, American by Paper: How Documents Matter in Immigrant Literacy, University of Minnesota Press
Lisa King, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson, Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics, Utah State University Press
2016
Risa Applegarth, Rhetoric in American Anthropology: Gender, Genre, and Science
Elizabeth Losh, The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University
2015
Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes, On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies
David Bleich, The Materiality of Language: Gender, Politics, and the University
2014
Thomas Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being
Asao B. Inoue and Mya Poe, eds., Race and Writing Assessment
2013
Susan H. Delagrange, Technologies of Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in a Digital World
Margaret Price, Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
2012
David Fleming, From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957-1974
Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda, Cross-Language Relations in Composition
2011
Xiaoye You, Writing in the Devil’s Tongue: A History of English Composition in China
2010
David Gold, Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947
2009
Charles Bazerman, Handbook of Research on Writing: Society, School, Individual, Text
John M. Duffy, Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community
2008
Sharon Crowley, Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism
2007
Norbert Elliot, On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America
Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness
2006
Morris Young, Minor Re/Visions: Asian American Literacy Narratives as a Rhetoric of Citizenship
2005
Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Embodied Literacies: Imageword and a Poetics of Teaching
Catherine Prendergast, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education
2004
Mary Soliday, The Politics of Remediation: Institutional and Student Needs in Higher Education
2003
Deborah Brandt, Literacy in American Lives
Eileen Schell and Patricia Lambert Stock, Moving a Mountain
2002
Paul Kameen, Writing/Teaching: Essays Toward a Rhetoric of Pedagogy
2001
Halasek, Kay, A Pedagogy of Possibility: Bakhtinian Perspectives on Composition Studies
2000
Susan Miller, Assuming the Positions: Cultural Pedagogy and the Politics of Commonplace Writing
Barbara Couture, Toward a Phenomenological Rhetoric: Writing, Profession, and Altruism
1999
Marilyn Sternglass, Time to Know Them: A Longitudinal Study of Writing and Learning at the College Level
1998
James A. Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies
1997
John Brereton, The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925: A Documentary History
1996
Susan Peck MacDonald, Professional Academic Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences
1995
Thomas L. Kent, Paralogic Rhetoric: A Theory of Communicative Interaction
1994
Lester Faigley, Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition
1993
Richard Bullock, Charles Schuseter, and John Trimbur, The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary
1992
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
Susan Miller, Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition
1991
Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary, The Struggles and Achievements of America’s Underprepared
