Welcome to the current edition of the Center's expanded Grant Awardees section of our online newsletter, our
way of making more information available. For more information about applying for CSWS grants (UO faculty, staff, and granduate students only) please go to CSWS Grants.
The Center for the Study of Women in Society congratulates the awardees of our grants and fellowships and sincerely thanks the members of each year's review committees.
CSWS 2008 Grant and Fellowship Awardees
Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship:
Alison Altstatt, graduate student, School of Music and Dance, Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship, $12,500, “The Music and Liturgy of Kloster Preetz: Ritual Practice in a North German Women’s Community, 1350-1550.” Alstatt says, “My dissertation examines music and liturgy from the convent of Kloster Preetz, a Benedictine women’s convent located near the city of Lübeck, between the years of 1350 – 1550. This study presents an unusual opportunity to examine a women’s monastic community from which significant manuscript evidence remains.” Her research will also analyze the musical repertoire of the convent, exploring its relationship to Benedictine and regional traditions, and to the late-fifteenth-century Bersfeld reform. She will “seek to assess Anna von Buchwald’s role as a reformer, and examine the role of gender in the convent’s music and liturgy.” She will also “present a reconstruction of the rich and unique ritual life of the nuns of Kloster Preetz, supported by original transcriptions and translations from manuscript sources.”
Laurel Research Award:
Gennie Thi Nguyen, graduate student, anthropology, CSWS Laurel Award, $2,250, “From War to Hurrican Katrina: Women’s Untold Stories. ( Mentor is Lamia Karim who receives up to $250.) Nguyen says that “Policy Makers must understand that women face disasters differently from men. My research will contribute in the following ways: (1) Effective policy can be made to address differences affecting women’s evacuation, displacement, and resettlement; (2) This research will address why women’s experiences, tragedies, and efforts towards diasters are often invisible to the public; (3) Recognition will be give to Vietnamese women’s experiences and history concerning the Vietnam/American War, Vietnamese Diaspora, and Hurricane Katrina. My research takes a multidisciplinary approach creating bridges between immigration, diaspora, and refugee studies, disaster studies, women’s studies, and cultural anthropology.”
Research Support Grants:
Sarah Jaquette, graduate student, environmental studies, $2,500, “Indians, Invasive Species, and Invalids: The ‘Ecological Other’ in American Culture and Literature.” In her dissertation, Jaquette investigates “how notions of the fit, pure body shaped early environmentalism in order to elucidate the links between environmentalism’s exclusions.” (such as disabled, immigrant, native, and female – that threatened to pollute the ‘national body politic’. She argues that “what unites environmentalism’s “ecological others” is their shared status as corporeally impure outsiders. Conservation, masculinity, and eugenics were interrelated, and together helped to define the ideal white, American male against a bodily category of “others”: disability.” She plans to build on an historical analysis to critique and revise contemporary environmentalism.
Sarah LaChance Adams, graduate student, philosophy, $2,500, “charity is a Mother: The Nature of Nurture in Maternal Ethics.” In her dissertation she will argue that “… mothering is a rich ethical exemplar…to see its true complexity, we must first overcome the myth of the perfect mother…by providing a psychologically rich account of maternal ambivalence – mothers’ simultaneous feelings of love and hate toward their children.” Adams maintains that “…because of, not in spite of, the tensions inherent to mother, that it is an instructive case for ethics.”
Tam Nguyen, graduate student, linguistics, $2,500, “Women’s Speech in a Matriarchal Society: a Sociolinguistic Study of Rhade (or Ede).” Nguyen says, “Women play an important role in Ede society, but there are not many studies about them and their society. By providing products such as videos, audios, and texts which show activities, social and cultural events in the ede community, in their matrilineal extended families and in their long-house, this documentation project will contribute to the understanding of women’s role, their relationship with men, and their power and influence in Ede society.…By operating within the community, the project will enhance the awareness of the value of the Ede language among community members.” The fact that texts, CDs, and video tapes are available in the community will (hopefully) increase the number of Ede speakers in the future and prevent the language from disappearing in future generations.
Christina, W. O’Bryan, graduate student, anthropology, $2,500, “Gender and Self: Sociospatial Mobility among Afghan Women in Vancouver, B.C.” In her project, O’Bryan examines Afghan women in relation to perceptions of self and identity in the Vancouver, B.C. metropolitan area. Her project “…explores ideas about freedom and mobility for women by examining the lived lives of a population which is uniquely qualified to comment on the experience of limited mobility for women in both Afghanistan and a liberal western democracy.”
Irmary Reyes-Santos, visiting assistant professor, ethnic studies, $2,500, “Women, Migration, and Globalization in the Caribbean.” Reyes-Santos is considering several questions including: “How does the globalization of the Caribbean affect populations marked not only by their assumed racial difference, but also by gender and sexual conventions? How is the racial imagination of Dominican migrants shaped by discourses on gender and sexuality?” She further states that “The examination of women’s experiences is often treated as an addendum to intellectual and public policy analysis that seek to explain what the transnationalization of capital has meant for the Caribbean.” Through this particular book chapter “Beyond One Migrant Experience: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Dominican-Puerto Rican Relations” she signals that “considering gender and sexuality is essential as academics, activists, and state officials grapple with public policy regarding migration and economic globalization.”
Kelley Totten, graduate student, folklore, $2,500, “Performance and Visual Representation in Craftswomen’s Souvenir Production.” Totten says she will examine the process of souvenir production through the perspectives of local craftswomen to explore the dynamics and implications of gender performance, visual representation, stereotypes and communication in tourism interactions. “My goal is to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of tourism and local women’s experiences by examining the meaning-making, perspectives and multiple voices of craftswomen as they produce handicrafts for tourists’ souvenirs. …The aim of my study is to participate in a broader dialogue on gender and agency in craft production for souvenirs by focusing on this understudied region.”
Lynn Fujiwara, assistant professor, women’s and gender studies, $8,460, “The Politics of Removal: Forced Deportations, Exclusions, and the Impact on Immigrant Families.”
She writes that…“Contemporary immigration in the U.S. remains a pertinent, often volatile, and policy driven matter. Immigration policies passed in the 1990s in conjunction with the post 9/11 USA Patriot Act and the emergence of Homeland Security, have led to the drastic increase of forced removals of both undocumented and legally residing immigrants. While the conditions of forced removals and massive deportations has raised some awareness among immigration, civil, and human rights scholars, very little attention has focused on the conditions and experiences of the families who remain behind. Through this research I will be looking at Cambodian and Latino families, two groups who have been particularly targeted through recent legislative policies, and whose community organizations have engaged in support, services, and advocacy for families who have lost parents, spouses, children, or siblings.”
Lamia Karim, assistant professor, anthropology, $8460, “Gender Jihad: Feminist Reform in Bangladesh.” She writes…”My project analyzes the role of feminists as reformers in the encounter between democracy and Islam. …The results from this project will provide new information related to bottlenecks that women face in accessing democracy and human rights in Bangladesh, and will assist feminist scholars, activists, and policy makers to develop more culturally specific policies to increase the human security of Muslim women.”
Sharon R. Sherman, professor, folklore, $6,000, “Whatever Happened to Sulay? Entrepreneurship and Globalization among Indigenous Andean Women.” This project examines how academic research and a film have changed the lives of the participants over a 20-year period. It is a story of why one indigenous woman chose to move out of her traditional roles and by extension, represents the story of many women who live between the 21 st century and their own cultural, traditional, ethnic identities.
Carol Silverman, professor, anthropology, $8460, “Gender, Race and Family: Issues of Education and Sexuality among Balkan Romani Migrants in New York City. Silverman says, “My research (from 1990s to present) has shown that female education is outpacing male education in the second generation and that females are more likely to enter professional labor markets. Placing my work in the literature on gender and power in relation to immigrant family, school and community dynamics, I investigate the reasons for this trajectory…. Using the insights of long-term ethnography, I explore how changes in education and the management of sexuality have profoundly influenced gender relations during the last 20 years.”
Yizhao Yang, assistant professor, planning, public policy and management, $6000, “The Built Environment, Social Justice, and Gender.” “Progress in feminist studies of the built environment has been made in two parallel themes – the success in revealing the victimizing effects on women from the traditional environmental design of American housing, and the continuing search for spatial solutions for the improvement of women’s equality and wellbeing….This research attempts to demonstrate that the beneficial effects of such spatial strategies on supporting women’s lives are contingent upon other social and economic qualities associated with the built environment. …This research tries to highlight the fact that gender inequality is embedded in the production, allocation, and consumption of the built environment; the spatial approach to redressing gender equality is constrained by a market-based allocation system which access to housing is fundamentally related with social status and economic power.”
CSWS 2007 Grant and Fellowship Awardees
Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship:
Courtney P. Smith, graduate student, political science, $7,500 for AY 2007-08, “Politics of the Marked Body: An Examination of Female Genital Cutting and Breast Implantation.” Smith says the main argument of her project is that across the globe, the female body has been altered, modified, and/or transformed by members of society so that women are forced into a subordinate, easily controlled, or at least unmistakably distinguishable form. The main question she seeks to answer is how the actual physical markings of women’s bodies serve to reify oppressive and normalizing sex and gender roles in various societies in both Western and non-Western cultural contexts.
Laurel Research Award:
Yossa Vidal-Collados, graduate student, Romance languages, $2250 for AY 2007-08, “Family and the State in the New Generation of Chilean Women Writers.” Her advisor and mentor, Juan Armando Epple, professor, Romance languages, will receive up to $250. In her project, Vidal-Colossa says she is interested in analyzing the notion of family and power in the new female narrative style, and in a sense, how the family is represented in terms of symbolical representations of the political and national reality fulfilled by women protagonists. Part of her project involves traveling to Chile to interview Chilean women writers and to compile a secondary bibliography on Chilean narrative.
Research Support Grants:
Shannon Elizabeth Bell, graduate student, sociology, $2106, “Feminism and the Fight against King Coal: Re-building Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields.” Bell says that what is notable about the anti-Coal movement is that women are at the fore, stepping out of their traditional Appalachian gender roles to take an active leadership position in fighting the coal industry. Bell plans on conducting 20 in-depth interviews with local activists and engaging in participant observation with a grassroots activist organization. She says she will explore the movement and the ways in which it (1) builds social capital among those involved; (2) specifically affects the lives of women activisits; and (3) is a feminist movement, and how this feminist character interacts with the traditional patriarchal Appalachian culture.
Gina Bolles, graduate student, dance, $2485, “Experiential Research on Women and Dance in India.” Bolles hopes her project will generate a discussion on the global roles of women in dance. She proposes to integrate ethnographic research on women in India and women in movement by exploring the role of women in the dance of different societies.
Tina Boscha, research analyst and instructor, intoCareers and education, $6000, “River in the Sea” (a novel in progress). Boscha’s manuscript focuses on the last six months of World War II in Fryslan, Netherlands when her mother was 15 years old. During this time period, her mother experienced some of the most traumatic events of her life to this day: the loss of a sibling, a parent gone into hiding, and making difficult decisions of loyalty. Boscha says that her book in progress explores themes and questions concerning the consequences of defying traditionally defined ideas and norms concerning gender and differentiating between home and homeland during mid-1940 in the Netherlands.
Melissa Hart, adjunct instructor, journalism and communication, $4568, “Confessions of a Queerspawn: Stories of a Mother Lost and Found.” Hart says that during the 1960s and 1970s hundreds of lesbian mothers lost custody of their children in the U.S. – a tragedy which is only now gaining public recognition. Hart’s new book of literary nonfiction will explore the different states of growing up with a lesbian mother forbidden to parent full-time in the 1970’s. Her book examines the conflicted setting and its effects on her as an adolescent coming to terms with her own sexuality.
Gwendolyn Lowes, graduate student, linguistics, $2500, “Women’s Speech in Ghutan: a Sociolinguistic study of Kurtoep.” Lowes proposes to fill the gap of this undocumented language by contributing its documentation, and more specifically, examining the relationship between ‘gendered speech’ (Tannen 1990) and women in Bhutanese society. Gendered speech refers to the observation that women embrace a style of speech different from that employed by men.
Gabriela Martinez, assistant professor, journalism and communication, $5378, “Women, Media and Rebellion in Oaxaca.” Martinez is in the process of producing a 30-minute documentary on the Oaxacan social movement known as the Popular Association of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). This documentary will feature key women activists who seized the public television and radio network COR-TV in August 2006.
Karen McPherson, associate professor, Romance languages, $8,460, “Realizing Life: Reflections on Aging in the Works of Contemporary Francophone Women Writers.” McPherson will examine the texts of four francophone women writers (Marie-Claire Blais, Nicole Brossard, Abla Farhoud, and Maryse Condé), now in their sixties. She will focus on three main questions: (1) what are these writers saying about the relationship between aging and identity, the ways in which one comes to know oneself differently through time; (2) how are these writers looking at legacies (literary, philosophical, human) in the light of shifting perspectives and priorities that come with age; and (3) how does gender play into the scenarios of connectedness, that is, is there something particular about women’s experiences and articulations of aging?
Ellen McWhirter, associate professor, counseling psychology and human services, $5996, “ Latina girls’ perceived barriers, supports, and future expectations.” McWhirter says that together with a team of three Latina doctoral students, she will conduct focus groups with local Latina high school girls to help illuminate connections between the barriers they perceive, the supports they experience for pursuing their aspirations and plans, and their expectations for the future. McWhirter anticipates the project’s findings will have local implications for supporting Latina girls’ career development with appropriate interventions and also inform the theoretical and empirical work of colleagues at the national levels to understand the complex role of perceived barriers in the lives of ethnic minority girls.
Emily Taylor Meyers, graduate student, comparative literature, $2485, “Transnational Romance: The Politics of Desire in Caribbean Novels by Women.” Meyers states her work will contribute to understanding how cultural products, specifically novels, that emerge during an era defined by globalization, respond to political concerns by foregrounding gender.
Kathleen Ryan, graduate student, journalism and communication, $2,500, “When Flags Flew High: Propaganda, Memory and Oral History for World War II Female Veterans.” Ryan, using oral history and cultural studies, will explore the answers to the following questions: (1) why would women choose to join the military rather than explore the options which may have been offered by more traditional work; (2) how did they find out about the opportunities available to women in the military; (3) why did they willingly leave these newfound jobs after the war; and (4) how did the experience impact their lives?
Lara Skinner, graduate student, sociology, $2493, “Urban Sustainability: Social Equality.” Skinner states that her study will identify the social mechanisms that inhibit or promote the inclusion of gender, race, and class equity in sustainability initiatives with the goal of providing knowledge and methods for raising the quality of life for all urban dwellers. She will be using Eugene, Oregon as her primary case study.
Ann Tedards, associate professor, music, $5457, “Concert Tour of Songs by Women Composers on Texts by Women Authors with an Emphasis on Libby Larsen.” Tedards states that the canon of classical song in the western art music tradition comprises largely male composers who have set texts by male authors. Female singers of her (Tedards’) generation and earlier have typically performed music and texts from the male perspective as a matter of course, successfully making the gender transference on stage because performers and audiences are used to the idea. With the emergence of 21 st century women composers, the expanded repertoire often includes texts by female authors. Tedards believes one of the best ways to encourage these female composers to enter the profession is to perform their music as widely as possible.
Britta Torgrimson, graduate student, human physiology, $2500, “Hormone Exposure, Contraceptive Choices, and Vascular Function in Women.” The goal of Torgrimson’s study is to evaluate vascular health in women using the vaginal ring, low-dose oral pills, and DMPA injectable contraception so they can make better informed hormone choices. Her hypothesis is that differences in dose and route of hormone delivery cause variations in vascular health and risk factors. The study utilizes the two predominant clinical evaluations of vascular health: (1) testing vascular function and (2) measuring blood and urine markers.
CSWS 2006 Grant and Fellowship Awardees
CSWS Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship:
Mandolin R. Brassaw, graduate student, English, $7500 for AY 2006-07, “Divine Heresy: Feminist Revisions of Sacred Texts.” In her analysis, Brassaw says, she will reveal how contemporary women writers are actively resisting patriarchy and other hegemonic practices through revision of sacred texts. She suggests that these revisions will show the potential for social and cultural change.
CSWS Laurel Research Award:
Amarah Y. Niazi, graduate student, international studies and planning, public policy and management, $2250 for AY 2006-07, “Bringing Gender Sensitive, Sustainable Redevelopment to Earthquake Ridden Pakistan.” The focus of her project is the wellbeing of women and children and how women can be incorporated in the rebuilding process. Her aim is to identify the cultural and social challenges to the redevelopment plans in terms of the altered gender roles that a disaster like this creates in traditional societies. She will also assess the level and nature of change occurring in the surviving communities towards women’s participation in life outside the household.
Research Support Grants:
Alison Altstatt, graduate student, music history, $2355, “Reconstructing Monastic Women’s Musical and Liturgical Life in the Northern Middle Ages.” Altstatt will be working with manuscripts from two women’s Benedictine reformed houses in order to understand the musical life of these two houses and also to develop a more complete picture of the individual and corporate ritual practices of the communities.
Sean M. Laurent, graduate student, psychology, $2250, “Gender Identification, Sex Roles, and Gender Role Conflict Measurement: Development and Refinement of the Gender Traits and Behaviors Scale and the Gender Role Conflict and Traditionalism Scale.” Laurent created the scale in early 2005 and is now working on further validation of the scale. When validation is completed, the scale will be made available, free of charge, to anyone who wishes to measure gender identification.
Lillian Darwin López, graduate student, comparative literature, $2220, “Women’s Hip-Hop in Brazil.” This project seeks to address the gap in U.S. scholarship regarding Latin American, and specifically Brazilian, feminist hip-hop by conducting on-site interviews with the artists and activists. “These interviews will provide essential socio-historical context for a larger literary project examining the representation of mothers in hip-hop in the Americas…thus it will add to the growing corpus of knowledge on the feminist aspects of this vibrant international poetic movement,” says Lopez.
Jessica Meendering, graduate student, human physiology, $2400, “Oral Contraceptives and Vascular Health in Young Women.” In her study, Meendering hypothesizes that oral contraceptives containing different progestins have different effects on vasculature.
Robyne Erica Miles, graduate student, art history, $1000, “Two for Tea: The Tearoom Designs of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and Charles Bennie Mackintosh.” In her research, Miles plans to examine the role Margaret played as an artistic partner including the scope of her influence, which Miles thinks has been marginalized.
Juyeon Son, graduate student, sociology, $1650, “Immigrant Health Effect? The Intersection of Gender, Class and Race in Immigrant Health Status.” Her research focus is to uncover methodological and theoretical limits on existing studies by suggesting an alternative research framework that takes into consideration both the homogeneity and heterogeneity of immigrants. Son states that “…more recent immigrants to the United States are mostly racial minorities [with] about a half of that group being women, [a] critical examination that focuses on women and racial minorities in the immigrants is essential.”
Michaelle “Mickey” Stellavato, graduate student, English (folklore), $447, “Personal Resistance through the Body Aesthetic.” This video project is an attempt to bring women’s unfiltered stories out into the public eye to compensate for the collective historical archive that is missing on the majority of its population – that of women.
Sharon Shin Shin Tang, graduate student, psychology, $2100, “Feminist Perspectives on Gender Differences in Traumatic Stress.” In this study, Tang proposes to investigate several factors that may mediate the observed gender difference in responses to trauma, including the relationship between the victim and perpetrator, gender role socialization, and social shame as defined by loss of face.
Monique Balbuena, assistant professor, Clark Honors College, $6000, “‘The Self Between Languages and Places’ as part of Diasporic Seephardic Identities: A Transnational Poetics of Jewish Languages.” The grant money will be used to finish a book that evolved out of her Ph.D. dissertation. According to Balbuena, her book is a potential bridge between the debates on poetics, minor literatures and postcolonial studies, and the field of Jewish studies.
Yvonne Braun, assistant professor, sociology, $6000, “Impacts and Perceptions: Gender, Dams, and Development in Lesotho, Southern Africa.” All data has been collected, so Braun will be using the grant funds to facilitate data analysis and writing. “The further analysis of my data will allow me to explore and expand my contributions to the areas of inequality, social change, and development, and to the understanding of how these institutions and processes are gendered in the development context,” Braun writes.
Bryna Goodman, professor, history, $6000, “Emotional Appeal: Newspapers, Political Parties, and Public Adjudication of Love in 1920s China.” The topic Goodman proposed developed, she says, “as a result of my encountering a surprising volume of material in party journals on the topic of love at this moment of state formation and political crisis in China.”
Sangita Gopal, assistant professor, English, $6000, “No Place to Hide: Gender, Conjugality and Nationalism in Contemporary Hindi Film.” Gopal says that her project “will explore how the disappearance of the romantic duet is linked to this emergence of a privatized domesticity where the female subject is at risk.”
Bonnie Mann, assistant professor, philosophy, $6000, “Sex, Style and War: Aesthetics and Politics in Post 9/11 America,” the draft title of her second book, which she hopes to complete during this research leave. Mann believes her work “exposes the deployment of postmodern sensibilities in the project of reconstructing a hyper-masculine and racialized national identity, which is at the heart of the project of U.S. empire building.”
Fabienne Moore, assistant professor, Romance languages, $6000, “Across Genres and Gender, Anne Le Fevre Dacier, a Reformist Translator in Late 17 th Century France.” Moore says about her research, “By analyzing her effort to translate, define, and illustrate Greek and Latin poetics, this study reveals how her work overcame the chasm between antiquity and modernity. …Dacier challenges the modern/ancient polemic by questioning the established notices of prose and poetry and crossing genres.”
Dorothee Ostmeier, associate professor, Germanic languages and literatures, $6000, “Poetic Encounters: Gender Constructs in German Literature of the Early 20 th Century.” Ostmeier says about her book manuscript, “The book in its entirety sets the stage for a cultural history of ‘gender troubles’ of the twentieth century and outlines the complex and intimate issues heterosexual women intellectuals faced—and still face—whenever the break with the gender and sex stereotypes of their male partners.”
CSWS 2005 Grant and Fellowship Awardees
CSWS Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship:
Hee-Jung “Serenity” Joo , graduate student, comparative literature, $7,500 for AY 2005-06, “Speculative Fiction and the Spectacle of Race: The Nation as Utopian Be/longing in the 20 th Century Asian-American and African-American Futurist Narratives.” Joo says that her project examines the ways certain speculative fiction texts, written by people of color, deliberately engage in an antagonistic genre to reveal the ways race and gender complicate the politics of utopia.
CSWS Laurel Research Award:
Jessica Leigh Murakami , graduate student, psychology, $2,250 for AY 2005-06, “Beyond Gender Differences in Rates of Depressions: Issues of Comorbidity.” Murakami’s project is designed to examine ideas about gender and comorbidity in adolescents, especially the increased prevalence of depression among women. Her advisor and mentor: Anne Simons, professor, psychology, will receive up to $250.
Research Support Grants:
Elizabeth A. Bohls , associate professor, English, $6,000, “Caribbean Crossings: Gender, Place, and Identity in the British West Indies, 1770-1833.” Bohls says that her project is unique in applying a feminist analysis to colonial identity construction in writings by men and women occupying diverse positions in West Indian slave society.
Tina Boscha , instructor, English, and research analyst, intoCareers, $450, “River in the Sea: A Novel,” is a historical novel based on her mother’s experiences living in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.
Katy Brundan , graduate student, comparative literature, $2,500, “Mysterious Women: Memory, Trauma, and Madness in the 19 th Century Sensation Narrative.” Brundan investigates how female insanity and the sensational were used to address fundamental questions concerning the nature of the human mind and personal identity issues at the heart of scientific and psychological debates of the 19 th century.
Lisa DiMarni Cromer , graduate student, psychology, $2,500, “Bias in Believing Accounts of Child Abuse: The Role of the Participant Gender, Media, and Characteristics of Reported Abuse.” Up to 86% of sexual assaults go unreported, Cromer explains. She believes her research will be a catalyst for creating a more supportive environment so that the majority of child sexual abuse cases will no longer go unreported.
Marie De La Torre , graduate student, sociology, $2,500, “The Social Construction of Racial and Ethnic Identities of Mexican Migrant Women in Chicago.” Her study explores the ways in which gender is intertwined in the construction of ethnic and racial identities among mestizo and indigenous migrant women and the ways both may experience processes of identity formation differently.
Josh Fisher , graduate student, anthropology, $1720, “Hasta La Victoria: The Sandinista Revolution, Women, and Tourist Nicaragua.” Through his project, Fisher seeks to bring understanding to the shifting meaning of the revolution in an ethnographic perspective by focusing on a community of Nicaraguan women who live and work in a sewing cooperative in a refugee community called Neuva Vida.
Adria L. Imada , assistant professor, ethnic studies, $6,000, “Aloha America: Hula and Hawaiian Performance in the U.S. Empire.” Imada says that her forthcoming book will make a pioneering contribution to women’s and gender studies by offering original documentation and analysis of women who labored in the developing military and tourist economies of Hawaii.
Lamia Karim , assistant professor, anthropology, $6,000, “Struggles within Islam: The Emergence of Human Rights Discourse for Women in Bangladesh.” Karim’s research will examine how secular and Islamic laws intersect to create new conditions for Muslim women’s rights to full citizenship in Bangladesh.
Deanna Linville , and Krista Chronister, assistant professors, counseling psychology and human services, $1140, “Understanding Career Needs and Experiences of Women Domestic Violence Survivors.” Their study examines the career counseling needs of women domestic violence survivors in the cultural context of women’s ethnic, racial and socioeconomic identification.
Sharilyn Lum , graduate student, counseling psychology and human services, $2,500, “Moderating Sociocultural Influences on Body Dissatisfaction in Asian American Women: An Examination of Critical Consciousness.” Lum’s research will, she says, provide insight for human services workers, educators, parents, social organizations, and the larger public in improving the social climate for all women through individual change and social liberation.
Debra Merskin , associate professor, journalism and communication, $6,000, “Squaw: Oregon’s Debate about Names, Place, Meaning, and the Image of Native American women.” Merskin’s study examines the significant and negative impact on quality of life, perceptions, and opportunities for Native American women due to the consistent use and reification of the “squaw” stereotype through 400 years of American history.
Amanda Powell , senior instructor, Romance languages, $4,800, “Queering the Quarrel: Contexts and Conflicts in the Sapphic Poetry of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.” In her project, Powell will place Sor Juana’s love poems to women in the context of other international early modern women writers, and explore these homoerotic love poems as taking part in the early modern debate on women’s intelligence and value.
Courtney Smith , graduate student, political science, $2,500, “Transforming Cultural Identities: The Eradication of Female Genital Cutting.” Smith’s project aims to contribute positively to the awareness and critical analysis of the women in the practicing communities as well as how other organizations and groups should approach this delicate issue while avoiding the ethnocentrism and western bias, she says, that most often accompanies efforts to combat female genital cutting.
| CSWS Grants Announcements are added once a year, usually in late spring. They are compiled and edited by Shirley Marc, CSWS. |
