07/18/2019
President's Message
Leslie Harris
Greetings ORWAC members,
I hope you are having an enjoyable summer. If you missed our earlier letter on diversity, equity, and inclusion in ORWAC, you can find it in this newsletter.
Our 2019 convention in Seattle was eventful. We were able to thank Diane Keeling and Melissa Harris for their service (as membership officer and student representative). Tiffany Lewis was elected to be the new membership officer, and Danielle Biss was elected as the new student representative. We also voted on an update to our bylaws, which can be found on our website. One significant update to the bylaws is that we added a debut paper award. We were also able to congratulate our 2019 award winners:
~Top Paper: Tiffany Lewis, Baruch College, CUNY, “Political Mobility as Stunt-Girl Entertainment: The Newspaper Coverage of New York’s Suffrage Hike to Albany, 1912”
~Top Student Paper: Cassidy D. Ellis, The University of Denver, “Epistles on Evidence: Evidentiary Futility in Abortion Advocacy”
The 2020 Western States Communication Association Convention will be in Denver, CO (February 21-24, 2020). Following our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we will dedicate the ORWAC President’s Roundtable at the upcoming WSCA convention to this issue. We will discuss what, as an organization, we have done and what we could be doing to ensure that our actions align with our commitments. I hope that you will be able to join us. You can find the ORWAC call for papers in this newsletter. We anticipate that this year’s theme, “Communication, Agitation, & Justice,” will be especially provocative for ORWAC members. Please consider submitting! If you are a faculty member, also consider reviewing ORWAC submissions for WSCA. Part of how we support strong feminist scholarship is by providing helpful feedback to all submissions, and we need your help to do this. Sign up for reviewing by sending me a quick email: HarrisL@uwm.edu
The year 2020 is also the 100 anniversary of the 19thamendment, and ORWAC will be marking this occasion by hosting a conference in Milwaukee, WI. “Citizenship at the Intersections: 100 Years Since the 19thAmendment” will be March 5-7, 2020, and the call for proposals is in this newsletter. I hope that you will be able to join us! Keep an eye on our website and social media for more information, including workshop opportunities.
Find us online! ORWAC now has three channels of social media:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ORWAC
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orwac_
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/orwac_
Warmly,
Leslie J. Harris