Florianne “Bo” Jimenez (PhD '21) has recently been awarded the 2021 Outstanding Dissertation Award by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR) for her dissertation, Echoing and Resistant Imagining: Filipino Student Writing Under American Colonization. The dissertation was directed by Dr. Rebecca Lorimer Leonard (UMass Amherst, English), and with advising from Dr. Haivan Hoang (UMass Amherst, English), Dr. Richard Chu (UMass Amherst, History), and Dr. Amy Wan (Queens College - CUNY, English).
Jimenez's dissertation is an archival and qualitative research project on Filipino students' rhetoric at the turn of the 20th century in the American colonial classroom. Using rhetorical analysis and close reading, as well as grant-supported historical research at the American Historical Collection in Manila, Philippines, the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Jimenez established a theory of rhetorical production that siultaneously accounted for the pressures on students to acquiesce and assimilate under American colonial control, and the articulation of Filipino self-determination. A version of one chapter of the project has appeared in a recent issue of the Journal for the History of Rhetoric, and Jimenez has two more chapters in edited collections in process. Jimenez is also working on a book proposal for a monograph based on the dissertation.
Currently, Jimenez is an assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Co-Director of the Writing Center. Her teaching and research areas are writing center theory and practice, first-year writing, global Englishes, and writing and race.