2012 Richard Ohmann Outstanding Article in College English Journal Award Recipient:
Amy J. Wan
Amy Wan’s article “In the Name of Citizenship: The Writing Classroom and the Promise of Citizenship” (College English 74.1 [Sept 2011]) has been selected as the recipient of the 2012 Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English. Professor Wan’s article provokes needed critical reflection on the terms of composition’s recent public, or civic turn by interrogating the conflicting assumptions underlying pervasive invocations of citizenship as a goal of writing instruction. Those assumptions, Professor Wan shows, define participatory citizenship and its relation to literacy in multiple, contradictory, and often problematic ways. Against beliefs conflating participatory citizenship, economic and political equality, and literacy as achievements, Professor Wan suggests that, citizenship, like literacy, can best be understood as a practice, one that may be “better integrated into the fabric of literacy teaching . . . as the cultivation of habits of citizenship.”
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In challenging dominant assumptions about citizenship as a goal and outcome of writing instruction, Professor Wan’s article contributes to a robust scholarly tradition interrogating ideologies of literacy in the teaching of English in the U.S.—a tradition in which Richard Ohmann’s own work figures prominently. It is thus especially fitting that Professor Wan’s article is the recipient of this year’s Richard Ohmann Award.
--Bruce Horner
2011 Nancy Welch, "We're Here, and We're Not Going Anywhere: Why Working Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter," January 2011 issue of College English
2010 Susan C. Jarratt, "Classics and Counterpublics in Nineteenth-Century Historically Black Colleges," in the November 2009 issue of College English.
2009 Christopher Carter, "Writing with Light: Jacob Riis's Ambivalent Exposures", appearing in the November 2008 issue of College English
2008 Mary Queen, “Transnational Feminist Rhetorics in a Digital World” appearing in the May 2008 issue of College English.
2007 LuMing Mao, “Studying the Chinese Rhetorical Tradition in the Present:
Re-presenting the Native’s Point of View” appearing in the January 2007 issue of College English.
2006 Paul Kei Matsuda, “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition” appearing in the July 2006 issue of College English.
2005 Eli Goldblatt, “Alinsky's Reveille: A Community-Organizing Model for
Neighborhood-Based Literacy Projects” appearing in the January 2005 issue of College English.
2004 Susan Romano, "Tlaltelolco: The Grammatical Colonial Indios of Colonial Mexico" appearing in the January 2004 issue of College English.
2003 J. Blake Scott, “Extending Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis: Transformations of Home HIV Testing” appearing in the March 2003 issue of
College English.
2002 Candace Spigelman, "Argument and Evidence in the Case of the
Personal" appearing in the Sept. 2001 issue of College English.
2001 John Alberti, "Returning to Class: Opportunities for Multicultural Reform at
Majority Second Tier Schools" appearing in the May 2001 issue of
College English.