Undergraduate Initiatives

CSWS offers a variety of opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to our mission and participate in the Center. 

STEAM Summer Research Fellowships

This new undergraduate fellowship is intended to create opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations among science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) fields on campus and to create and/or enhance pathways for underrepresented students in STEAM to succeed. CSWS provides grant funding for STEAM-field undergraduates and faculty mentors to partner on cross-disciplinary summer projects that support the CSWS mission.
 
The CSWS Undergraduate STEAM Summer Fellowship will fund one student per academic year to conduct a research-based project for a minimum of eight weeks under the supervision of a UO faculty mentor. CSWS defines research as broadly encompassing all academic fields of study, including social sciences, humanities, arts, sciences, and disciplines in the professional schools. Final products must support the mission of CSWS and may be in any genre (e.g., an article, website, comic, podcast, short film, etc.). 

CSWS Calderwood Seminars in Public Writing

Starting in Spring 2025, CSWS is sponsoring Calderwood Seminars on gender-related topics across several departments at UO. In a Calderwood Seminar, you’ll learn quickly how central public writing is to success in life beyond college. And you’ll gain skills that will establish you as a leader in future internships and jobs. Calderwoods are fast-paced, rigorous, and intensely rewarding. These workshop-style courses will strengthen your writing, editing, and revision skills. You’ll see a difference in your writing almost immediately as you write with more authority on important topics for audiences beyond the ivory tower.

Spring 2025

HIST 415 On Women’s Land: Public Writing About Women’s History and the Environment. This seminar explores environmental approaches to women’s history in the 20th century and afterward. Through a series of short writing assignments aimed at the broadest possible audience, students will learn to bring historiographical debates about ecofeminism, settler colonialism, and land use into the public realm. Instructor: Jack Evans. Thursdays 2–4:50 PM, Hendricks 330.

Spring 2026

COLT 399 Extreme Domesticity: The Labor of Care in Literary and Visual Culture. This Calderwood Seminar challenges students to grow as public intellectuals and writers in an intimate workshop setting. Throughout the term, students will build a writing portfolio that includes film and book reviews, museum exhibition wall texts, a personal essay, and, if time allows, a performance review. Our once-a-week, 3-hour classes will involve discussions, collaborative editing workshops, guest lectures (professional editors, personal essayists, or performers), and activities to build a strong writing foundation. In keeping with the structure of the Calderwood Seminar, course work will include both common assignments, (readings & photographs) and independent research (including film screenings). Weekly deadlines are firm so as to allow classmates time to reflect and comment on each other’s work. Our topic of inquiry—the aesthetics and politics of domesticity—takes on new urgency with shifting political power structures in the U.S. Instructor: Dawn Marlin. Wednesdays 2–4:50, Hendricks 330.

Winter 2027

WGS 407/507: Pop Feminisms: Celebrity, Representation, and Power, with Kemi Balogun (Winter 2027, Tuesdays 2–4:50, CRN 25195). How do celebrities shape public conversations about gender, race, sexuality, and social justice? This CSWS Calderwood Seminar examines celebrity culture as a lens for understanding representation, power, and popular feminisms in contemporary society. Students in this course will write for public audiences, connecting feminist ideas to current debates.

Spring 2027

KRN 399: Love, Labor and Life Writing in Modern Korea, with Jina E. Kim (Spring 2027). How have Korean women narrated love, work, family, and identity in a rapidly changing modern world? This CSWS Calderwood Seminar explores women’s life writing alongside literature and film to examine questions of gender, beauty, labor, sexuality, and power. Through public-facing writing projects, students will learn to communicate humanistic insights to audiences beyond the classroom.

ENG 399: Speculative Fiction and Gender, with Jenée Wilde (Spring 2027). How can speculative stories help us think publicly about gender, power, and social change? This CSWS Calderwood Seminar examines how science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature and film make visible systems of gendered power in our world, and explores what futures become imaginable when we rethink gender norms. Students will consider why feminist speculative fiction matters in public discourse and learn to communicate insights through public-facing writing projects.

Internships and Employment

Through our internships and job positions, students can gain practical work experience in event planning, public communications, and office administration while learning about feminist research, history, and activism at the University of Oregon. 

As part of the CSWS team, student workers and interns can:

• Assist staff with event promotion and the production of quality video content.
• Develop creative ways to communicate with multiple audiences about the CSWS mission in digital and traditional media forms.
• Manage content across platforms that connect followers to the CSWS brand, programming, and feminist research and activities.
• Assist staff with the research and development of CSWS special projects and programming.
• Aid with the day-to-day activities of the Center.

CSWS communications jobs are posted to Handshake, typically in time for Fall hiring. Students interested in internships should send a letter of inquiry to csws@uoregon.edu stating your interest/reasons for wanting to intern with CSWS, including any relevant work experience or courses related to the general duties noted above and any work-study funding you have been awarded. You may also attach a résumé, if available.