May 1, 2020

“I am so honored to receive this award. As a single mom who is also working to support myself through school, I do not have the capacity to participate and lead in extra-curriculars like so many of the excellent students in this department. However, I am devoted to my work in Writing & Rhetoric and I feel extremely grateful and honored to receive this recognition.

“Writing & Rhetoric has been a perfect place for me to develop my writing craft as a creative nonfiction writer as well as a political thinker. I have learned to question my role as a writer, my rhetorical technique, and to understand my own writing process. I have had space to take risks. I have been able to examine the relationships between rhetoric and power.

“Every single writing professor I have worked with has been amazing. I would especially like to thank my advisor Tony Scott, for his ongoing support and encouragement, as well as Stephanie Parker, Krista Kennedy, Lois Agnew, Aja Martinez, Stephen Thorley, Patrick Berry, and professors outside the department, including Blair Proctor and Himika Bhattacharya.”—Amelia Lefevre

In nominating Amelia Lefevre for the 2020 Carol Lipson Outstanding Writing Major Award, Associate Professor Tony Scott writes, "Amelia sees her education as an intellectual does. She is not just doing the work; she genuinely wants to better understand herself and the world through the work. Amelia is also exceptional in the ambition of her writing. In WRT 255, she used an argument from experience assignment to write an expansive piece about cancer, its myriad environmental causes, its impact on her friends and family, and the need for local, community-based action. That piece was published in Intertext and won a Phelps award. In WRT 413, Amelia used an assignment I give that is designed to encourage students to practice deep rhetorical listening to rethink a recent issue that arose at the Syracuse Peace Council, where she is very active.”

Additional words about Amelia:

Amelia is a gifted writer and activist who exemplifies the values and beliefs of our department. I had the pleasure of working with last year when she won the Louise Wetherbee Phelps’ award for her essay, "New Symbols for the Environmental Movement.”—Patrick W. Berry, Associate Professor, Chair, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition

Amelia was a great student, what I call a great “classroom citizen,” invested not only in her own work but that of others in the class. She worked with me in my Creative Non-Fiction course centered around the element of “Place” and the role it plays in CNF. She combined intensely personal “mining” of her own experience with sophisticated awareness of ecological realities of our planet and land today, doing emotional/psychic “mapping” to create her work. She built on some of that work to win a grant while she was in my class. She also knit while in class which was the coolest thing.—Stephen Thorley, Assistant Teaching Professor

Amelia is one of the most original, rigorous thinkers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Her Distinction Project, “The Pharmacist and the Braucherin: How My Family Became White in Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” combines personal narrative, interviews with her family and archival research in her family collections, and Critical Race Theory. The result is a rigorous, fascinating exploration of the rhetorical tensions between Western science, folk healing, and whiteness through more than a century of her family’s history.—Krista Kennedy, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric

Amelia was a joy to work with in my WRT 436 Feminist Rhetorics course. She brought to the table a true feminist spirit of coalition and solidarity with her peers and me as the instructor. Amelia is a single mom who thinks deeply and self-reflectively about the world her children will be living in. Her contributions both in class and to assignments were thoughtful, critically nuanced, and were always something I looked forward to engaging. Congratulation, Amelia, so well deserved!—Aja Martinez, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric

Part of what makes Amelia such an outstanding student and writer is her generosity. Her own work was thematic, engaging, and honest, and our writing community benefitted tremendously from her willingness to share. The encouragement and feedback she offered other writers helped them shape and hone their craft. This award is well deserved.—S.D.C. Parker, Assistant Teaching Professor

Amelia is a joy to have in class. She's a talented, insightful writer and her contributions to course discussions are always thoughtful and productive.—Collin Gifford Brooke, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric

It was a pleasure working with Amelia in my WRT 424 class last fall. Her contributions to class discussions were articulate, engaging, and relevant, and she has a gift for offering her perspective while respectfully encouraging others to share different points of view. Perhaps her most remarkable strength was the ability to explore connections between the course’s focus on disability rhetorics and her experiences with community life in an incisive and nuanced way. I’m pleased that Amelia has received this well-deserved honor.—Lois Agnew, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Associate Dean of Curriculum Innovation and Pedagogy, Arts and Sciences.