Submission Deadline September 1
Purpose: The CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee honors a graduate whose dissertation improves the educational process in composition studies, or adds to the field’s body of knowledge, through research or scholarly inquiry.
Eligibility: To be eligible for the 2025 Berlin Dissertation Award, the dissertation must have been accepted by the degree-granting institution, and the writer of the dissertation must have received the degree in 2023 or 2024. A dissertation may be nominated only once during its two-year period of eligibility.
Award Specifics: Applicants must submit to CCCC the following items: (1) title page; (2) abstract; (3) summary of the dissertation (maximum length 10 pages; summary must be in manuscript form); (4) a full copy of the dissertation (please include items 1-3 as one attachment and the full dissertation as a separate attachment to your submission email). Submissions must be received by September 1, 2024. Send submissions to the following address: CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee, cccc@ncte.org.
James Berlin Outstanding Dissertation Award Winners
2024 Winner
Angela D. Mack, “Black Storytelling in Southside Funky Town, Texas: From the 76104 Zip Code to the Life and Legacy of Atatiana Carr-Jefferson as a Mattering of Black Life”
2024 Honorable Mention
Bethany Monea, “Composing Borderlands: The Lives and Literacies of First-Generation, Latinx Youth Transitioning to College Writing”
2023
Dominique McDaniel, “#OnlineLiteraciesMatter: A Multi-case Study Approach of Black and Brown Youths’ Literacy Practices in Social Media Spaces”
2022
María Carvajal Regidor, “’I’ll Find a Way to Make my Voice Heard:’ Transformational Literacies of Latinx Students”
Zhaozhe Wang, “Doing Difference Differently: International Multilingual Writers’ Literacy Practices of Difference”
2021
Suban Nur Cooley, “Carrying Culture: Temporal and Spatial Constructions of Somalia among Women in the Diaspora”
2021 Honorable Mention
Jacqueline Kauza, “Disciplinary Writing Expectations and Pedagogical Practices of History and Social Work Instructors”
2020
James Hammond, “Composing Progress in the United States: Race Science, Social Justice, and the Rhetorics of Writing Assessment, 1845–1859”
2020 Honorable Mentions
Reanae McNeal, “African Native American Women’s Rhetorics of Survivance: Decolonization and Social Transformation”
Sherita V. Roundtree, “Pedagogies of Noise: Black Women’s Teaching Efficacy and Pedagogical Approaches in Composition Classrooms”
2019
Miriam Lizette Fernandez, “Tropes of the Nation: Tracing the Colonial Origins of the Matriarchal Figures of Mexican Nationalism”
2019 Honorable Mention
Liane Malinowski, “Civic Domesticity: Rhetoric, Women and the Space at Hull House 1889-1910”
2018
Katherine S. Flowers, “Local Language Policy: Shifting Scales in the English-Only Movement”
2018 Honorable Mention
Jessica Pauszek, “Literacy and Labor: Archives, Networks, and Histories in Working-Class Communities”
2017
Rachel C. Jackson, “Red State Re-Claimed: The Transrhetorical Recovery of Resistance in Oklahoma”
2017 Honorable Mention
Charles N. Lesh, “Writing Spaces and Places: A GeoEthnography of Graffiti Writing in Boston”
2016
Shauna Wight,”‘Upward Bound is College Bound’: Pre-College Outreach Programs’ Sponsorship of Academic Writing”
2016 Honorable Mentions
Allison Hitt, “From Accommodations to Accessibility: How Rhetorics of Overcoming Manifest in Writing Pedagogies”
Uma Krishnan, “A Cross-Cultural Study of the Literacy Practices of the Dabbawalas: Towards a New Understanding of Nonmainstream Literacy and Its Impact on Successful Business Practices”
2015
Chanon Adsanatham, “‘Civilized’ Manners and Bloody Splashing: Recovering Conduct Rhetoric in the Thai Rhetorical Tradition”
2014
Nancy Bou Ayash, “Translingualism in Post-Secondary Writing and Language Instruction: Negotiating Language Ideologies in Policies and Pedagogical Practices”
2014 Honorable Mentions
Lisa Blankenship, “Changing the Subject: A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy”
Linh Dich, “Technologies of Racial Formation: Asian-American Online Identities”
2013
Heather Brook Adams, “Secrets and Silences: Rhetorics of Unwed Pregnancy Since 1960”
2012
Ana Maria Wetzl, “L2 Writing in the L1 Composition Course: A Model for Promoting Linguistic Tolerance”
2011
Carolyn J. Fulford, “Writing Across the Curriculum Program Development as Ideological and Rhetorical Practice”
2011 Honorable Mention
Dawn M. Fels, “The Vernacular Architecture of Composition Instruction: What the Voices of Writing Center Tutors Reveal about the Influence of Standardized Instruction and Assessment”
2010
Risa Applegarth, “Other Grounds: Popular Genres and the Rhetoric of Anthropology, 1900-1940”
2009
Eric D. Turley, “The Scientific Management of Writing and the Residue of Reform”
2008
Katherine E. Tirabassi, “Revisiting the Current-Traditional Era: Innovations in Writing Instruction at the University of New Hampshire, 1940-1949”
2007
Julie Marie Staggers, “Learning to Love the Bomb: Secrecy and Denial in the Atomic City, 1943-1961”
2006
Jordynn Jack, “Rhetorics of Time: Women’s Role in Wartime Science, 1939-1945″
2005
Haivan Viet Hoang, “To Come Together and Create a Movement: Solidarity Rhetoric in the Vietnamese American Coalition (VAC)”
2004
Jessica Enoch, “Women’s Resistant Pedagogies in Turn-of-the-Century America: Lydia Maria Child, Zitkala Sa, Jovita Idar, Marta Pena, and Leonor Villegas de Magnon.”
2003
Elizabeth Graber, “Old Believer Women in a Postmodern World: Changing Literacy, Changing Lives.”
2002
Wendy B. Sharer, “Rhetoric, Reform, and Political Activism in U.S. Women’s Organizations, 1920-1930.”
2001
Katherine Kelleher Sohn, “Whistlin’ And Crowin’ Women Of Appalachia: Literacy Development Since College”
2000
Elizabeth A. Miles, “Building Rhetorics of Production: An Institutional Critique of Composition Textbook Publishing”
1999
Chris Gallagher, “Composing Inquiry: Rethinking (Progressive) Pedagogy and Literacy”
1998
Jeffrey Maxson, “Multimedia and Multivocality in a Basic Writing Classroom”
1997
Ellen Cushman, “The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner City Community”
1996
Amy M. Lee, “Visions and Revisions of Teaching Writing as a Critical Process”
1995
Margaret A. Syverson, “The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition”
1994
Harriet Malinowitz, “Lesbian and Gay Reality and the Writing Class”
1993
Marguerite Helmers, “The Constitution of Students: Genre and Representation in the Composition Testimonial”
1992
Susan Carlton Brown, “Poetic, Rhetoric, and Disciplinary Discourse”
