We celebrate with Dr. María Carvajal Regidor (PhD, 2021), whose dissertation, “‘I’ll Find a Way to Make My Voice Heard’: Transformational Literacies of Latinx Students,” is a winner of the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s 2022 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award.
CCCC Chair Dr. Holly Hassel announced the award on March 11 at the organization’s annual convention. In presenting the award, Dr. Hassel noted that Dr. Carvajal’s dissertation “makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions that add to field’s body of knowledge, including in counterstory, archival and ethnographic research, and in the language and literacy practices—both classroom and extracurricular—and ways of knowing of Latinx students within a specific context. The selection committee admired the care with which this project was undertaken, the use of form to make space for listening, and its powerful and situated call for trauma-informed research practices that was well connected with language and literacy research. In addition, the committee found the project well defined, expressed a clear methodology, and was substantially grounded in the literature of the field, especially Latinx rhetorics, literacy studies, and critical race theory.” Assessing the achievement of Dr. Carvajal’s dissertation, Dr. Hassell quoted the selection committee, which observed that the study “effectively represents ‘a rethinking of current educational practices as they relate to writing, literacies, and language to create more socially and racially just approaches to the teaching of writing and the research that informs it.’” Dr. Carvajal is currently Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of the Writing Center at University of Massachusetts Boston.
Congratulations, María!