Congratulations to Shirley Logan on her Retirement!

Congratulations and thank you to Shirley Logan, who has served as Associate Chair of the Department, Chair of the Campus Writing Board, and a dedicated professor of English.

Logan's scholarship focuses on nineteenth-century African American rhetoric, with an emphasis on women's oral and written performances.

She is the author of With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African American Women (Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), “We are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), and Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). Logan is the co-editor of Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms, a series that has published seventeen titles on the relationships between rhetoric and feminism within genres, cultural contexts, historical periods, methodologies, theoretical positions, and methods of delivery.

In addition to serving the department as Associate Chair, and Chair of the Campus Writing Board, Logan has been the chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the president of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Compositon and has served on the editorial board of CCC and Rhetoric Review, and Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.

In 2014, Logan co-chaired the 2014 Maryland Conference on Academic and Professional Writing, which brought together leading scholars in rhetoric and composition in order to examine critical issues in theory, research, and best practices in academic and professional writing courses.

More recently, in 2015, Logan presented “Risks, Rewards, and Failures of Passionate Feminist Teaching” at the CCCC, and chaired a roundtable discussion titled "Taking Risks in Feminist Methods and Methodologies."

Heather Lindenman remembers Logan as an influential mentor.

"When I first started at UMD, and I was struggling to find my way, Shirley offered to teach an independent study where I could explore different areas of composition studies. It was in that independent study that I got to explore service-learning, and Shirley encouraged me take my theorizing about service-learning and turn it into an actual class. I never could have done that without Shirley's support and trust. She treated me like I was capable, told it like it was (especially when I was wrong), and championed my project and work," said Lindenman.

In 2017, the department will hold a conference in honor of Logan and Jane Donawerth.

Logan's positive influence on her colleagues and students will be greatly missed by the Department and we extend our congratulations to her for a sucessful career.