2021 CSWS Research Grant and Fellowship Awardees

2021-22 Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship

  • Jon Jaramillo, Romance Languages, “Viral Bodies: AIDS and Other Contagions in Latin American Narrative.”
    • Abstract, “The HIV/AIDS crisis in Latin America was overshadowed by the late phase of the Cold War, while authoritarian governments promoted discourses reflecting moral and ethical exceptionalism. People with AIDS (PWAs) experienced multiple crises—moral excision by the state, marginalization, and the certainty of death. Existing societal infrastructures of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, which already urged marginalized lives into even more precarious ways of being, complicated and intensified how PWAs experienced isolation, internal exile, neglect, condemnation, discrimination, and death. Exceptional conditions led to a 10-year delay before works by Latin American artists and writers emerged. My dissertation…examines works by Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba), Mario Bellatín (Mexico), Pedro Lemebel (Chile), and Pablo Perez (Argentina) since they reveal a spectrum of intersectional AIDS subjectivities exhibiting accommodation, resistance, and transgression of prevailing national and religious norms. Drawing from the fields of exile studies, transfeminism, contagion theory, and virality, ‘Viral Bodies’ argues that as these narratives break imposed silences by radically exteriorizing the insularity, anonymity, and decomposing bodies of those dying, and living, with the disease, they also intervene in national, transnational, and religious discourses. They offer utopian imaginings of kinship, belonging, and community formation, while also bringing practices of difference such as transvestism, sadomasochism, and spiritual fetishism into focus. The dissertation intervenes in transfeminist discourse by questioning how HIV/AIDS feminizes subject formation when the viral contagion penetrates the body. The infection places the person in the passive/receptive position, the identity categories destabilize, and the body becomes charged with viral potential.”

2021-22 Graduate Writing Completion Fellowship

  • Robin Okumu, Comparative Literature, “Utopian Relationality: Intercorporeal Subjectivity in French Feminist Fiction.”
  • Cornesha Tweede, Romance Languages, “The Recuperation of Agency and Subjectivity of the Black African Women in the Iberian Early Modern Archive.”

2021-22 Graduate Student Research Grants

  • Ola Adeniji, Human Physiology, “Biomedical Sports Analysis in Collegiate Athletics: Determinants of Performance in Sprint and Jump Events among Female Participants”
  • Elinam Amevor, Journalism and Communication, “Risking Birth: Gender, Culture and Advocacy in Maternal Healthcare Choices and Utilization in Ghana.”
  • Malvya Chintakindi, Anthropology, “Informal Labor Blues: Effects of COVID-19 on Dalit Caste Women in Hyderabad, India.”
  • Anna Dulba-Barnett, Theater Arts, “Reading Polish Theater Through the Lens of Eco-Dramaturgy and Eco-Feminism.”
  • Cassandra Galentine, English, “Wash Yourself White: Race, Hygiene, and Environmental Justice in U.S. Multiethnic Women’s Working Class Literature.”
  • Teresa Hernandez-Reed, English, “Contested Motherlands: Disputed Sovereignties and Geographies of the U.S./Mexico Border”
  • Sarah Horn, Psychology, “Mental and Physical Health Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Child Welfare Involved Women Caregivers.”
  • Carla Macal, Geography “GuateMaya Migrant Women in Los Angeles: Healing Inter-generational Trauma in the Diaspora.”
  • Nathan Mather, Counseling Psychology, “Working Class Gay Fathers’ Experience with Unpaid Care Work: A Narrative Inquiry”
  • Zeinab Nobowati, Philosophy, “Is Postcolonial Becoming Postfeminist? A Feminist Philosophical Inquiry.”
  • Annalee Ring, Philosophy, “Cleanliness: A Cultural Construction Perpetuating Race, Gender, and Class Discriminations.”
  • Max Skorodinsky, Education, “More than Binary, More than Normative, More than Quantities: Diverse Gender Identities in Computer Science Education Research.”
  • Jinsun Yang, Sociology, “Gender Dynamics in Non-binary Sports Spaces: Korean Queer Women Games’ Challenge the Two Sex System in Sports”

2021-22 Faculty Research Grants

  • Hiba Ali, Art, “Amazonification.”
  • Johanna Bard Richlin, Anthropology, “Anxiety, Autonomy, Activism: An Ethnographic Study of Vaccine Hesitancy Among Mothers in Oregon,” Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.
  • Corinne Bayerl, Comparative Literature, “The Stage on Trial: Theatrical Battles in Early Modern Europe.”
  • Claire Herbert, Sociology, “Mothers Squatting to Secure Housing: A Three-Case Comparison of Organized Illegal Occupation in Detroit, Oakland, and Philadelphia.”
  • Masami Kawai, Cinema Studies, “Valley of the Tall Grasses” (film), Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.
  • Jina Kim, East Asian Languages and Literatures, “Sounding Women: Chang Tokjo’s Mid-Century Korean Radio Novels (1914-2003).”
  • Leah Lowthorp, Anthropology, “Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattan, Dynamic Tradition, and Global Heritage in India.”
  • Ernesto Martinez, Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, “The Boy Who Became a River” (film).
  • Stephen Rodgers, Music, “The Songs of Clara Schumann.”
  • Yvette Saavedra, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, “Living la mala vida: Transgressive Feminisms, Morality, and Nationalism in 19th Century California, 1800-1850.”