About Us
We are a class of 18 upperclassmen at James Madison University. In Professor Jen Almeld’s Feminist Rhetorics course in the Fall 2019 semester, most of our class curriculum focused on thinking about how we wanted to approach the curation and eventual archival of the 2019 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. Leading up to the event, we practiced curating others' words by reading the work of great feminist rhetors (including Sappho, Queen Elizabeth I, Gloria Anzaldúa and bell hooks) and created snapshots of their work in a collaboration space housed on our class Canvas site. Like descriptions at any museum, our short summaries are limited, biased and flawed, but they provided us with practice for telling stories with the words and works of others. Other in-class collaborations included "Curate v Archive," "Things to Consider for Our Archive" and "Our Plan of Attack" and all helped move us closer to our goal of creating a pop-up, fast archive of the national conference
About Conference
The 2019 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference sought to highlight and redefine feminist activism in a time of polarizing politics, exciting grassroots movements and social change. The “DIY Feminist Activism” theme called for intersectional, self-supported work that prioritizes inclusion and diversity (see CFP here).
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Instances of DIY feminist activism can be seen everywhere: in Pinterest crafts, clothing, classroom assignments, archival work, artwork and more. A popular example of this is the pink pussyhats that first premiered at the 2017 Women’s March and was the topic of four conference presentations. Most acts of DIY feminism take place in everyday life. This conference worked to highlight these acts, both big and small, and celebrate the power of individuals to create innovative solutions to a variety of issues plaguing our society. The conference also invited feminist activists and scholars to perform and recognize such work in hopes of inspiring and equipping others to take up DIY feminist activism in their own spaces. Presentations at the conference included 30 how-to workshops, 28 roundtables, 8 interactive installations, 14 posters, 248 individual presentations and 50 panels.
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How to Navigate the Archive
We've designed several "reading" paths for the archive to allow each user's experience to be a bit more tailored. Under the "Digital Collections" tab you will be directed to six collections housed in charts by category (Images, Flyers, Session Materials, Videos and Miscellaneous) and organized by date they were submitted. This approach to archiving offers a collection of items, but asks users to curate the experience for themselves.
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Under the "Curated Exhibits" tab, visitors will find six exhibits that present a story based on the curators' experiences and point of view and built around artifacts donated and created. One highlight of these exhibits is the Feminists of the Conference exhibit presented in Adobe Spark. Students in our class talked with a variety of conference goers about their feminism, conferences, research and community. We also added a reading by each spotlighted feminist when possible.
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Finally, each curated exhibit and speaker page includes a "Suggested Readings" page to help highlight the work of feminist scholars and also invite archive visitors to dive deeper into topics of interest.
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Special thanks to
The JMU-WRTC conference committee extends deep gratitude to the following individuals and groups who helped make this conference possible:
• The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition
• JMU Libraries
• The Makery
• The Cohen Center for the Humanities
• JMU Office of Disablity Services
• JMU Institute for Stewardship of the Natural World
• JMU Her Campus chapter
• Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance
• Manuscript Mentoring volunteers
• Abstract readers
• Dr. Mary Thompson
• Students enrolled in WRTC 300: Professional Editing, WRTC 354: Document Design, WRTC 420: Feminist Rhetorics, and SCOM 447: Facilitating Public and Organizational Engagement Processes