BRAWN 2024 Research Grant Recipients

Congratulations to this year's BRAWN 2024 research grant recipients! 

This year BRAWN granted $500 to four projects that contribute to the NACR. Below are the descriptions of those projects. 

María Carvajal Regidor, PhD
Assistant Professor of English & Writing Center Director
University of Massachusetts Boston
"Documenting the History of the UMass Boston Writing Nook"
This project seeks to continue to archive artifacts related to the UMass Boston Writing Nook, the English Department-based Writing Center that was sunsetted when the university-wide Writing Center was established in 2022. A small in-progress digital archive was started in 2021 to document some of the history of the Nook and the transition to a centralized Writing Center. This grant will help the collaborators expand this archive. It will also contribute to the eventual writing of a history of the Nook, and potentially to a larger history of the Writing Centers and non-classroom writing instruction at UMB.  

Katherine Corbett
PhD student in History
University of New Hampshire
"Archiving the John C. Brereton Papers"
For my BRAWN research grant project, I will be creating an archive for the collections of John C. Brereton. I will work with the archivists at the University of New Hampshire’s Dimond Library to create an accessioning process for the project and develop plans for the material’s storage and digitization. I will also create an accessible finding aid for the collection, highlighting the items in relation to the places Brereton taught, what he wrote, the conferences he presented at, and who he collaborated with. I will also create an organizational system for categorizing the items in the collection, such as oral histories, documents, books, video interviews, interview transcripts, objects, and awards. Once the website for the National Archives of Composition & Rhetoric (NACR) is up and running, I will also work with the website’s design team to create an online archive for the Brereton collection. Additionally, I will assist that design team in creating an accessible online database for the other items already in the NACR collection.

Jennifer Daly
PhD student in Composition & Rhetoric
University of New Hampshire
"Accounting for the Student: Feminist Administrative Practices and First Year Writing"
Working with the Freshman English Files, 1955-1968, I will be looking at correspondence between department chairs and administration. In addition to processing, cataloguing, and creating finding aids, I am interested in the way that students are addressed during discussion of program policies and goals. I’m interested in feminist administrative practices and understanding the role of student voice in First Year Writing. Some research questions I have are:
·  Are students mentioned in these documents? How are they characterized?
·  What policies still exist today? Is there any information on how these policies were crafted, such as drafts or proof of collaboration?  
·  Is there any correspondence from students, groups or individual? How has the program responded to students?

Ryan J. Dippre
University of Maine
The University of Maine’s College Composition program has a long history. Thanks largely to the work of Pat Burnes, who served as director of the program for nearly a half century, a considerable segment of the program’s documentary history has been preserved. I [wish] to establish a digital copy of these archives... by establishing the archive and beginning the process of digitization, the work would continue over the course of the next several years. The existing records of UMaine’s composition program are considerable, and offer an interesting slice of history for the field and the region. The program has been actively involved with the field of composition since the 1960s, and the ebb and flow of positions, approaches to teaching, and programmatic goals would be of massive interest both in and beyond New England.