Awards

NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Award

Application Details

2023 Recipient: Aja Y. Martinez

University of North Texas

Aja Y. Martinez (she/her) is an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas and author of the multi-award-winning book Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory. Her scholarship engages with both public and academic audiences in a series of new projects that include several critical academic journal essays and book chapters, a CRT theoretical introductory chapter for a Routledge collection, a special College English double issue on CRT, CRT symposia in three academic journals, and four book-length projects. Two of the book projects, co-researched and -written with historian and Indigenous studies scholar Robert O. Smith, are under contract with New York University Press and University of California Press—kicking off Cal UP’s new series on CRT. Within these projects Martinez and Smith draw on mixed methods, ranging from archival, to ethnographic, to literary and rhetorical analysis. These books reframe the histories of CRT’s origins in legal studies while making provocative claims concerning CRT’s storytelling pedagogy, methodology, and theory. Additionally, Martinez is coeditor and cofounder, with Michele Eodice and Sandra Tarabochia (University of Oklahoma), of the transdisciplinary, digital, open-access and multimodal journal Writers: Craft and Context. Last, Martinez is coeditor, with Stacey Waite (University of Nebraska) of the University of Pittsburgh Press’s series Composition, Literacy, and Culture. 

“It has not always been the popular choice to say, ‘I am a critical race theorist,’ but it was never as dangerous a choice as it is today. To be a critical race theorist in this era is to defiantly struggle for literacy rights against legislative bans on our histories, our languages, our bodies, our lives. CRT founder Richard Delgado recently wrote, ‘the world is a vale of tears, but nevertheless’ it is ‘worth struggling to make it better.’ As CRT literacy scholars and activists, we understand America may suffer from an incurable, potentially fatal disease called racism. However, we also know the literacy tools provided by CRT help lay bare what we’re up against, and as Michelle Alexander has said, CRT ‘offers the opportunity to clarify our goals and to ask yourself if you’re willing to commit to the struggle for racial justice even if the battle can’t ever be won.’”

2023 Honorable Mention: Ashley Hope Pérez

Award Details

Established in 1997 by NCTE and SLATE—Support for the Learning and Teaching of English—this award is given to individuals, groups, or institutions that merit recognition for advancing the cause of intellectual freedom. A subcommittee of the NCTE Standing Committee Against Censorship selects the recipient(s).

PURPOSE
The purpose of the NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Award is to honor individuals, groups, or institutions that merit recognition for advancing the cause of intellectual freedom. Award categories are (1) a national award and (2) an NCTE affiliate-based award.

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE
Any member of the National Council of Teachers of English may make a nomination for the national award by following the specifications below.

FREQUENCY/NUMBER OF AWARDS
One national award will be given each year, with up to two honorable mentions.

AWARD SPECIFICS
The national award winner will receive a plaque from NCTE; honorable mention winners will receive certificates. Awardees will be acknowledged at the NCTE Annual Convention during the NCTE Awards Session on Saturday. The winner will receive complimentary Convention registration and will be mentioned in appropriate Council publications.

AWARD CRITERIA AND JUDGING
The eligibility criteria for the national NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award are as follows:

• the awardee has shown courage in advancing the cause of intellectual freedom or fighting censorship;
• the awardee can be an educator or noneducator;
• the awardee can be an individual, group, or institution;
• the awardee’s activity can be related to particular recent events (e.g., as in a censorship dispute) or it can be ongoing (e.g., as in leadership demonstrated over a period of years);
• the same awardee may not be named for two years in succession.

The procedural rules for the NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Awards are as follows: description of the activities or events that merited the award must be submitted by June 15. Please fill out the Intellectual Freedom Award nomination form (below), and include concise documentation and/or testimony of not less than one single-spaced page and not more than three double-spaced pages and three pages of attachments. This documentation can be uploaded in the form or emailed to NCTEAwards@ncte.org.

EXAMPLES

• a nationally syndicated columnist who has taken a stand for intellectual freedom
• an organization that has been active in censorship cases
• a legislator who has opposed censorship legislation
• an author or film producer whose work focused on intellectual freedom

Judges for the national NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award will be members of the Standing Committee Against Censorship.

The permission of the potential awardee must be obtained in advance by the nominator. This specification acknowledges that many who act in defense of intellectual freedom remain under continued scrutiny and pressure. They sometimes choose to avoid public notice which, however supportive, places them under further duress.

Application Deadline: June 15

Please contact NCTEAwards@ncte.org with any questions.