Kendall Gerdes Receives 2025 Outstanding Book Award from CCCC

Kendall Gerdes, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, has received a 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award for Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism.

Wanda Pillow, Acting Dean of the College of Humanities, says, “Writing a book of this magnitude involves such tremendous expertise and labor, and it is wonderful to see Kendall receiving this award for the scholarship she has contributed to the discipline.”

Sensitive Rhetorics, published by University of Pittsburgh Press, explores public arguments about students’ sensitivity in tension with arguments for academic freedom. This timely book was inspired by the “moral panic and generational discourse surrounding trigger warnings,” Gerdes says, the book “analyzes and engages ongoing public conversations about the scope of academic freedom in the context of controversial student activism.”

According to a press release from the National Council of Teachers of English, the selection committee offered praise for Gerdes’ work: “Kendall Gerdes’s Sensitive Rhetorics is grounded in the spirit of our field: a deep commitment to supporting students and the work they hope to do in the world. Throughout Sensitive Rhetorics, Gerdes makes a powerful case against the dismissive and belittling claims that students are too sensitive and argues that it is our sensitivity that enables rhetorical transformation in the first place. We believe Sensitive Rhetorics is a vital and necessary advancement in how rhetoric and composition theory help us imagine new ways of being, thinking, and responding to the world around us.”

Jennifer Andrus, Chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, also speaks highly of Gerdes’ work. “Dr. Kendall Gerdes is an excellent colleague, scholar, teacher, and friend who joined the Department of Writing and Rhetoric studies in 2020,” says Andrus. “Her award-winning book explores the complex relationship between academic freedom and the rise of campus activism. Gerdes examines how activists navigate the tensions between protecting free expression and addressing social justice issues on university campuses. Through a nuanced analysis, the book highlights how rhetoric shapes and is shaped by these crucial debates, offering insights into contemporary struggles for equality, inclusion, and intellectual freedom.”

While the book itself discusses topical issues and recent events, “It’s also a book about rhetorical theory,” says Gerdes, “[positioning] sensitivity as a rhetorical term of art and discussing how language and rhetoric enables us to effect each other and be vulnerable in ways that we can’t necessarily preclude.”

The College of Humanities is thrilled that our talented colleague’s accomplishments have been recognized with this award. Please join us in congratulating Professor Gerdes!