Director of Gender Studies Wins Outreach Award From Southern States Communication Association

University of Arkansas

Lisa M. Corrigan,

Award-winning author Lisa M. Corrigan, director of the Gender Studies Program and professor in the Department of Communication in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has won the 2021 Outreach Award from the Southern States Communication Association.

The award will be presented in April at the yearly meeting of the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA) Convention.

The award "honors SSCA members who have made significant contributions to the profession by facilitating the success and access of under-represented populations or the integration of specific groups of students, professionals, or scholars into the communication discipline or professional organizations." 

Corrigan has been a member of SSCA for 14 years and has served the association in many roles. In 2016, she served as the chair and planner of the largest division of the organization — Rhetoric & Public Address — at its annual convention. She has also served the Cleavinger Undergraduate Honors Conference for many years.

In 2018, she was awarded the association's John I. Sisco Excellence in Teaching Award.

And in 2019, she helped to create SSCA's new standing committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Consequently, she has been appointed to serve as a member for the committee's first term.

Of the award, Corrigan said, "I'm honored and humbled to receive this service award for my career-long commitment to inclusion, equity, diversity, and access, and to serving underrepresented groups here at the University of Arkansas, in the city of Fayetteville, across the state of Arkansas, and in the field of communication more broadly."

Corrigan is also an affiliate faculty member in the U of A's African and African American Studies Program and the Latin American and Latino Studies Program.

Her first book, Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation received the National Communication Association's 2017 Diamond Anniversary Book Award and 2017 African American Communication and Culture Division's Outstanding Book Award, making Corrigan the first U of A professor to win these awards.

Her second book, Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties, was just published in 2020.

Her newest edited collection, titled #Me Too: A Rhetorical Zeitgeist, will be available in June from Routledge.