Alumni Updates - Recent Student News

Rhetoric & Writing PhD Students Have a Strong Record of BGSU Scholarly Awards

Students in the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program have a strong record with two of the University’s major awards for graduate student scholarship, winning an Outstanding Dissertation Award and three Shanklin Awards for Excellence in Graduate Research in the Arts and Humanities since 2005.

In Spring 2008, both finalists for the Shanklin Award are students in the program. Heather Pristash's submission “Craftivism and Protest Knitting” originated as a seminar paper in Sue Carter Woods’ seminar on Women's Rhetorical Practices (ENG 780). Ruijie Zhao's "Feminist Readings of Curse of the Golden Flower" was written in Jolie Sheffer's Theory and Criticism course (ENG 607). Ruije and Heather delivered short versions of their papers for the Shanklin Judges on April 15. The award will be announced at the Shanklin Awards Ceremony late in April.

This is the third consecutive year that the Arts and Humanities Shanklin Award was won by a student in the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program--and the second year that both finalists were from the program.

In 2007, Elizabeth Fleitz won with "The Grammar of Abortion: A Pentadic Analysis of Pro-Choice Rhetoric," which she wrote in John Makay’s graduate seminar on Rhetorical Criticism (COMS 601). And the runner-up was Angela Zimmann, who wrote “A Feminist Alternative to Abandoning the Rhetorical Space of the Pulpit In the Christian Church" in Sue Carter Wood’s seminar in Rhetoric of Written Discourse (ENG 724).

In the spring of 2006, Christine Denecker (now a faculty member at the University of Findlay ) received the Arts and Humanities Shanklin Award for “Spaces of Silence: The Rhetorical Humility of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.”

At the same ceremony, the 2006 BGSU Outstanding Dissertation Award went to another Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program student, Inez Schaechterle (now an assistant professor at Buena Vista University in Iowa ) for dissertation Speaking of Sex: The Rhetorical Strategies of Frances Willard, Victoria Woodhull, and Ida Craddock , directed by Sue Carter Wood. A year earlier, Inez was a finalist for the 2005 Shanklin Award for Arts and Humanities.
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