Disability Issues Caucus
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.
Top Paper Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Chuck Kaminski & Lynn Harter, “The Socio-Material and Narrative Nature of Inclusive Place-Making” |
| 2024 | Abigail Cunningham, “Fleeting Focus, Lasting Impressions: The Effects of Attention Span Decline on First Impressions of People Who Stutter” |
| 2023 | Martin Law, “Leroy Moore’s Krip Hop Delivery as a Rhetorical Theory of Ineloquence” |
| 2022 | Jacqueline Gunning, Valerie Rubinsky, Ashley N. Aragon, Monica Lynn Roldán, Taylor McMahon, & Angela Cooke-Jackson, “Creating a Safe PLACE for Intimacy: A Preliminary Investigation into Intersections of Sexual Communication in BDSM and Disability” |
| Siddharth Karnala & Marie C. Haverfield, “Inclusion in the Paralympics: Incorporation of Power Soccer for Redefining Disability Rhetoric in Society” | |
| 2021 | Jacqueline Gunning, “Memorable Messages in Emerging Adulthood Autoimmune Disease” |
| A. Adams, “No Future for Academic Crips: An Autoethnographic Account for Neuroqueer Futurity” | |
| 2020 | Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock, “An Autoethnography of Disabled Athletic Identity: Communicating Inescapable Vulnerability and Contextuality Through our Mortal Bodies” |
| 2019 | Claudia Garcia Mendoza & Thomas J. Socha, “Romantic Relationships of Characters with Disabilities in Film: A Content Analysis” |
| 2018 | Adam Davidson, “Stasis-Maintenance- (Un)productive-Presence: Parenting a Disabled Child as Crip Time |
| 2017 | Julie-Ann Scott, “There’s No Center without the Margins: My Disabled Bodies’ Journey to HyperEmbodiment |
| 2016 | Sarah Parsloe and Avery Holton, “#Boycottautismspeaks: Communicating a Counternarrative through Cyberactivism” |
| 2015 | Erin McAloon, “Privacy Boundaries and Visible Disabilites” |
Top Student Paper Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Kendal Catherine Lyssy, Evan Kirksey, “Participant observation and academic disablement: A duoethnograpic exploration of the experiences of disabled scholars” |
| 2024 | Jack Cross, “Unmasking Character: How Critical Role Neuroqueers Identity Creation” |
| 2023 | Isabelle Stahrfisher, “Surviving Pandemic Pedagogy: An Autoethnography of a Graduate Instructor with a Disability” |
| 2020 | Benjamin W. Mann, “Theorizing Intersectional Stigma Management Communication at the Crossroads: LGBTQIA+ and Autistic Subjectivities” |
| 2019 | Brooks Oglesby, “The Veiled Productions of Debility in Professional Wrestling” |
| 2018 | Jessica Rauchberg, “‘I Promise I’m Not Stupid’: An Autoethnographic Interrogation of Learning Disabilities and the Social Construction of Academic Identity” |
| 2017 | Hillary Ash, “Bound by Heredity: Disability and Reproductive Justice in “Buck v. Bell” |
| 2016 | Brandon Fletcher, “Parrhesia’s Parrhesia: Tropological Labor of the Dys-/Disarticulate” |
| 2015 | Isaac Remier and Patrick Seick, “The Intersection of Disability: A Co-constructed Autoethnography of Friendship” |
Jim Ferris Award for Outstanding Achievement in Disability and Communication
The Jim Ferris Award recognizes an individual whose career as a whole has had an enduring and significant impact in/on the field of disability and communication. Preference will be given to nominees who demonstrate excellence in research-based and/or creative scholarship, teaching, mentorship, and/or service in/to the discipline, but the award may be given to an individual not directly associated with the field whose work has had an exceptional influence on its growth and development.
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2024 | Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock |
| 2022 | Laura L. Ellingson |
| Terry Galloway | |
| 2021 | jw Smith |
| 2020 | Beth Haller |
| 2019 | James L. Cherney |
| 2018 | No Nominations |
| 2017 | Kurt Lindemann |
| 2016 | Simi Linton |
| 2015 | Dawn Braithwaite and Theresa Thompson |