Jennifer Freyd, UO Department of Psychology

Psychology professor Jennifer Freyd’s paper “Exposure to Betrayal Trauma and Risks to the Well-Being of Girls and Women” is now available online in the Fall 2009 issue of CSWS Research Matters.

“Women are diagnosed with a host of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) more often than men,” Freyd writes. Her article explores the “whys.” Click here to access a PDF of Freyd’s article.

Freyd is the breakthrough researcher who developed Betrayal Trauma Theory. She is the author of the award-winning book Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse (1996) and numerous other publications. See her website for more information. CSWS has supported Freyd’s work through faculty research grants.

Mary Rothbart

UO developmental psychologist Mary K. Rothbart received two significant awards in 2009, the Gold Medal for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation, and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Rothbart is a distinguished professor emerita of psychology and one of the founding members of the Center for the Study of Women in Society.

This description of her work comes from the UO Department of Psychology website: “Dr. Rothbart studies the development of individual differences in temperament using methods that range from questionnaire to laboratory observations. She has developed parent- and self-report questionnaires for assessing temperament in infancy, childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood. She has also developed standardized laboratory assessments of temperament, and she has done extensive laboratory work on the early development of the emotions, activity, and attention.”

CSWS supported Dr. Rothbart’s work with several faculty research grants during the 1980s. “My work greatly benefited from the CSWS support,” she said. Read more about Dr. Rothbart and her work in InsideOregon.

Editor’s Note: Ingrid Nelson is one of eight UO students to receive a U.S. Student Program Fulbright award this year.  She has also received funding from CSWS for her research in Mozambique. This story is used by permission of the author and taken from her personal blog.

Ingrid Nelson

by Ingrid Nelson, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography

October 10, 2009—A couple of days ago I was rushing around the city to get several errands done before sunset. I walked a fast 1.5 miles to an old friend’s office to give him a report by a Mozambican research institute about the coal mining situation and community resettlement fiasco up north in Moatize in Tete province (a Brazilian company has won the rights to run the expansion of the mine). I dashed to the bakery to pick up some bread and then walked across the city to my neighborhood. Traffic had doubled. One really needs to develop a sense of how fast a car is traveling and if it is accelerating or risk being run down. I dodged a large 4×4 as I crossed one side street and then turned to cross the main road. A group of young girls in their green and white school uniforms were giggling as they headed home. One of the girls held the hand of what I assumed to be her little brother who was only a toddler. As I thought to myself about how responsible the girl was, about how the burden of taking care of younger siblings often rests upon girls in the family, I suddenly heard the girls erupt in laugher and one of the girls said something I couldn’t quite hear followed by something that sounded like “nee-haw,” which didn’t sound particularly Portuguese or Xitsonga, Cicopi or other languages of the region. I looked up and suddenly saw what they were on about. A flatbed truck drove by that was carrying a crew of 15 Chinese construction workers all in salmon-red work suits and hardhats. Yikes, I had just witnessed this group of little girls yelling racist remarks to this group of Chinese workers.

Lynn Fujiwara

CSWS was awarded a Ford Foundation grant in March 2008 from the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). “Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research Centers,” was meant to promote the leadership of women of color from historically underrepresented groups in the United States within NCRW and within its women’s research, policy, and advocacy member centers. CSWS and the UO Office of the Vice President for Research provided matching funds.

Lamia Karim

Originally formed as a CSWS Research Interest Group, Women of Color has now emerged as a CSWS project under the leadership of Lynn Fujiwara and Lamia Karim. Fujiwara is an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. Karim, recently tenured associate professor of anthropology, received CSWS support for her work on feminist legal reform in Bangladesh.

“The project specifically designed for CSWS was to address the current and historical absence of women of color in leadership positions at the center,” said Professor Fujiwara.

Actress Amami Yuki (left) accepts an award for helping to popularize “Ara-fo.”

by Alisa Freedman, Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature and Film

Editor’s Note: In 2009, Professor Freedman received a CSWS Faculty Research Grant of nearly $4,000 to support her research in Japan. On October 28, she will offer a CSWS Noon Talk in the Jane Grant Room, Hendricks Hall, to discuss her research.

Thanks to the help of a CSWS grant, I spent the summer in Tokyo, conducting research for my books on changing images of workingwomen on Japanese television, Modern Girls in Motion: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, and Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road. In general, my interdisciplinary work explores how the city shapes culture and psychology, giving rise to gender roles that characterize Japan. My research takes two forms. The first involves analyzing stories—those told in literature, television, journalism, cinema, and other popular media—that capture Japanese women’s experiences in a creative and thought-provoking way. The second entails wandering Tokyo to observe patterns of daily life and dominant trends and pondering the reasons behind them.

Shannon Bell, front center, with the Harts Photovoice Group at their exhibit in West Virginia, April 2009.

Shannon Elizabeth Bell is a sociology graduate student with an activist’s heart. In her first grant application to CSWS, Bell noted that women are at the fore of the anti-coal movement in central Appalachia, stepping out of their traditional Appalachian gender roles to take an active leadership position in fighting the coal industry. Her scholarship has a mission—to help these women in low income coal-mining areas of West Virginia find more effective ways to use their voices through grassroots action.

“Mobilizing for Environmental Justice in the West Virginia Coalfields: Uncovering the Process of Cognitive Liberation through the Feminist Methodology of Photovoice” is a hefty title for a weighty project. Bell’s doctoral work caught the attention of the Center for the Study of Women in Society grant committee, earning Bell CSWS graduate student research grants totaling more than $4600.