Feminist and Gender Studies Division
article type:
Interest Group Awards
2025
Listed here are awards given by the Interest Group to its members. Interests Groups are smaller communities within NCA’s large membership that provide a range of resources including networking opportunities, Annual Convention programming, leadership opportunities, awards, and specialized information dissemination channels, among others.
Bonnie Ritter Outstanding Feminist Book Award
| Year | AWARD WINNER |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Sherri Williams, “Black Social Television: How Black Twitter Changed Television” |
| 2024 | Leland Spencer, Rape, Agency and Carceral Solutions: From Criminal Justice to Social Justice |
| 2023 | Diana Leon-Boys, “Elena, Princesa of the Periphery Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl” |
| 2022 | Jessica Furgerson, The Battle for Birth Control: Exploring the Lasting Consequences of the Movement’s Early Rhetoric, published by Lexington Books in 2021. |
| 2021 | Raquel Moreira; Bitches Unleashed: Performance and Embodied Politics in Favela Funk |
| 2020 | Stacey Sowards,¡Sí, Ella Puede! The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers |
| 2020 | Elizabeth Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress |
| 2019 | Jillian M. Báez, In Search of Belonging: Latinas, Media, and Citizenship |
| 2018 | Leandra Hinojosa Hernandez and Sarah De Los Santos Upton, Challenging Reproductive Control and Gendered Violence in the Americas: Intersectionality, Power, and Struggles for Rights |
| 2017 | Sara L. McKinnon, Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics |
| 2016 | Bonnie J. Dow, Watching Women’s Liberation |
| 2015 | Sarah Projansky, Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination & Celebrity Culture |
| 2014 | Cara Wallis, Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones |
| 2013 | Tasha Dubriwny, The Vulnerable Empowered Woman: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Women’s Health |
| 2012 | Laura L. Ellingson and Patricia J. Sotirin, Aunting: Cultural Practices that Sustain Family and Community Life |
| 2011 | Jane Sutton, The House of My Sojourn: Rhetoric, Women, and the Question of Authority |
| 2010 | Emily Chivers Yochim, Skate Life: Re-Imagining White Masculinity |
| 2009 | Helene A. Shugart & Catherine Egley Waggoner, Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture |
| 2008 | Mary E. Triece, On the Picket Line: Strategies of Working-Class Women During the Depression |
Top Paper Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Guan Wang & Shaheen Kanthawala, “‘Douyin is taming us’: Visibility, governance, and feminist discourses on Douyin” |
| 2024 | A. Haiwei Huang, “Transnationality of Chinese Digital Feminism on Globally Accessible Social Media: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Emergent Social Construction of Gendered Collective Memory on Instagram” B. Jialu Sun, “Bodies That Pain: An Emergent Resistance in Neo/Non-liberal China — Exploring Weibo Hashtag Activism #facingbirthinjuries from an Affective-ethical Perspective” |
| 2023 | Rico Self, “‘Let’s Set(te) the Scene’: How Black Women Use Dance to Challenge Normative Ideals of Femininity” |
| 2021 | Theresa Kulbaga and Leland Spencer, “Outrage Epistemology: Affective Excess as a Way of Knowing in Feminist Scholarship”; |
| Meng Li, “Articulating Maternal Guilt: Migration, Motherhood, and Changing Ideologies of Childrearing in China”; | |
| 2020 | Casey Ryan Kelly and Chase Aunspach, “Incels, Compulsory Sexuality, and Queer Un/Makings” |
| 2019 | Victoria Newsom and Lara Lengel, “Forty Years of In/visibility: MENA Women Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, 1979-2019” |
| 2018 | Michelle Coplean, “Problematizing Punjammies: Rescue Branding, Global Sisterhood, and Sexual Labor” |
| 2017 | Kate Lockwood Harris, “Yes Means Yes and No Means No, but Both These Mantras Need to Go: Communication Myths in Conesnt Education and Anti-Rape Activism” |
| 2016 | Alison Novak and Julia Richmond, “’The phrase has been hijacked:’ Studying generational communication on Feminism through social media” |
| 2015 | Melinda Weathers and Jimmy Sanderson, “From Silence to #WhyIStayed: Locating Our Stories and Finding Our Voices” |
| 2014 | Dana Schowalter, “’A Deal with the Devil’: International Governance Organizations, Transnational Corporations, and Investments in Women” |
| 2013 | Kristan Poirot, “SlutWalks, Difference, and Memories of Feminism” |
| 2013 | Sarah Blithe and Jenna Hanchey, “Fleshing Out Bodyism: Illuminating Connections between Gender Verification Testing and Witch-Hunts” |
| 2012 | Margeaux Lipmann, “Redefining ‘Slut’: Identification and Perspective by Incongruity at SlutWalk Toronto” |
| 2012 | Michelle Rodino Colocino, “Post-welfare Mothers in Wi-Fi Zones: Dreams of (Im)mobile Privatization in a Neo-post World” |
| 2011 | Deborah Ballard Reisch, Jackie Silveria Sater, Alyssa Ballard Reisch, Wichita State University, “In the Transition from Childhood to Womanhood: Constructing Coming of Age Rituals in Contemporary U.S. American Culture” |
| 2010 | Danielle Stern, “It takes a classless, heteronormative utopian village: A feminist exploration of family on Gilmore Girls” |
Top Student Paper
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Sumeyya Akdilek, “Standing Together or Standing Apart? Feminist Identity and Relational Negotiation” |
| 2024 | *Two students were awarded Top Paper, so no Student Top Paper award was given.* |
| 2023 | Courtney Fallon, “r/childfree: An Intersectional Feminist Rhetoric” |
| 2021 | Leah Brooks-Hall, “Queer Digintimacy: Transforming AI-Human Relationality Toward Queer Futurity” |
| 2020 | Sarah F. Price, “The Authentic Woman: Transnormative Health Narratives in Television” |
| 2019 | Ashley Mattheis, ”Motherhood as a Cultural Infrastructure: Developing a Cultural-Infrastructural View” |
| 2017 | Hailey Otis, “An Inflammatory Femme and a Queer Black Feminist Form: Ashleigh Shackelford’s Queering of Fat Activism Through the Polemic” |
| 2016 | Mick Brewer, “On the Run Towards or Away From a Feminist Ethos?: Ambivalence and Liminal Feminism in the Beyoncé Concert Documentary On the Run” |
| 2015 | Bridget Sutherland, “Affective Scripts of Intimate Violence: Writing Pain and Fear on to Bodies and into the Law” |
| 2014 | Haneen Al Ghabra, “Weaving Intersectionality through Narrative Criticism: Western Feminism and the Marginalization of Third World Feminism” |
| 2013 | Hillary Palmer, “Mexico’s Drug War, Feminized: The New York Times and Visual Narratives of Dichotomized Women” |
| 2012 | Dana Schowalter, “10,000 Women Save the Bottom Line: Philanthrocapitalism and the Corporate Media Environment” |
| 2011 | Lexie Kite, “Victoria’s Secret: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Self-Subjectification” |
| 2010 | Andrea Ellison |
Outstanding Article Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Lore/tta LeMaster & Michael Tristano Jr., “Performing (Asian American Trans) Femme on RuPaul’s Drag Race: Dis/orienting Racialized Gender, or, Performing Trans Femme of Color, Regardless” |
| 2024 | Mehri Yavari, ” ‘Sewed girl’ pronounced “virgin”: hymenoplasty and the shift in rhetoric of virginity in Iran” |
| 2023 | Rico Self, Ashley Mack and Bryan McCann, “ BbyMutha’s Refusal as Black Queer Feminine Fugitivity” |
| 2022 | Dr. Michelle A. Holling, “Intersectionalities in the Fields of Chicana Feminism: Pursuing Decolonization through Xicanisma’s ‘Resurrection of the Dreamers’,” published by Lexington Books in 2020. |
| 2021 | Joëlle M. Cruz, Gloria Nziba Pindi, Godfried Asante, Jenna N. Hanchey, & C. Nthemba Mutua-Mambo, “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions”; |
| 2020 | Jade D. Petermon and Leland G. Spencer, “Black queer womanhood matters: searching for the queer herstory of Black Lives Matter in television dramas” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36:4, 339-356. |
| 2019 | Caitlin Bruce and Elise Homan, “Crossing Borders, Building Solidarity: Affective Labor in Shaping Coalitional Murals,” Women’s Studies in Communication, 41, no 3 (2018): 224-245. |
| 2018 | Haneen Al-Ghabra and Bernadette Marie Calafell, “From failure and allyship to feminist solidarities: negotiating our privileges and oppressions across borders” Text & Performance Quarterly, 30 no 1/2 (2018): 38-54. |
Scholar Activist Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Raisa Fernanda Alvarado |
| 2024 | No Award Given |
| 2023 | Bernadette Calafell |
| 2022 | Carrie Murawski |
| 2021 | No award given |
| 2020 | Satarupa Dasgupta |
| 2019 | Roslyn Satchel |
| 2018 | Nina Maria Lozano |