2020 CSWS Research Grant and Fellowship Awardees

2020-21 Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship

  • Cristina Faiver-Serna, Geography, for “Geographies of Environmental Racism and the M(other)work of Promotoras de Salud.” 
    • Abstract: Promotoras de salud (community health workers) are central to a public health model of care that addresses asthma in Southern California’s Latinx communities. Toxic effects of pollution are countered through state-based programs that use promotoras to teach families home environmental management and proper medication technique. A cornerstone of many promotoras’ care-work is the experience of learning to manage their own children’s asthma, and becoming empowered to help others. The environmental justice movement has always included public health services as part of its platform to achieve justice. Yet, EJ studies has failed to critically interrogate the state’s provision of public health services as means to achieve EJ. Simultaneously, critique of the state’s appropriation of the promotora’s cultural education praxis, and the roles ‘she’ plays in her community’s survival is an area of much needed inquiry in Latina feminist studies. This project asks: What role(s) does the promotora play in the regional response to environmental injustice in Southern California? How is the promotora called upon by the state to remediate and resolve environmental injustice in her own community? How does ‘she’ respond to this call? This project spatially mobilizes the Chicana M(other)work framework (Caballero et al. 2018) to critically analyze care-work of promotoras, and how it operates to (de)construct geographies of environmental racism. This project combines a genealogical methodology to analyze public health science and archival data with an intersectional feminist analysis of qualitative interview and survey data, in order to address current research gaps and chart new interdisciplinary areas of inquiry.

2020-21 Faculty Research Grants

  • Sangita Gopal, Associate Professor, Cinema Studies, “Mixed Media: A History of Women’s Filmmaking in India.”
  • Helen Huang, Career Instructor, English, “‘Yes! We Have No Bananas’: Cultural Imaginings of the Banana in America, 1880-1945.”
  • Theresa May, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Theater Arts, “WaterWays: Native Women’s Story Circle” (Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest).
  • Jennifer O’Neal, Acting Assistant Professor, Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, “Beyond the Trail of Broken Treaties.”
  • Jenifer Presto, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Director of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, “East Meets West: ‘Nina Fedorova’ and the Making of an Émigré Blockbuster” (Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest).
  • Judith Raiskin, Associate Professor, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, “Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project Website” (Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest).
  • Ellen Scott, Professor, Sociology, “Comprehensive Study of the Effects of Oregon’s Fair Scheduling Legislation” (Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest).
  • Arafaat A. Valiani, Associate Professor, Associate Department Head, Director of Undergraduate Studies, History, “Aspiring to Good Fortune: Chinese Mothers and the Biosocial Construction of Reproductive Care and Birth Tourism in the Pacific Northwest and California.”

2020-21 Graduate Writing Fellowship

  • Melissa Barnes, Psychology, “Gendered and Racialized Political Violence Towards the Black Community: Feminist Integration of the Concepts of Betrayal Trauma, Collective Trauma, and Vicarious Trauma.”

2020-21 Graduate Student Research Grants

  • Lara Boyero Agudo, Romance Languages, “Soy mujer, inmigrante y latina: An Intersectional Study of Linguistic Capital among Latina Women Immigrants in Oregon.”
  • Polet Campos-Melchor, Anthropology, “El Noa Noa: Demystifying Love and Survival in Ciudad Juárez.”
  • Nicholette DeRosia, Education, “Refugee Futures: Identity Based Motivation and the Unknowable.”
  • Annalise Gardella, Anthropology, “Visibility, Risk, and Violence: Face-to-Face and Online Organizing among El Salvador's LGBT Organizations.”
  • Katherine M. Huber, English, “Re-mediating Ireland: The Nature of Modernization in 20th Century Irish Culture.”
  • Parichehr Kazemi, Political Science, “Reimagining social media images as sites of protest in authoritarian regimes: The case of #NoToCompulsoryHijab.”
  • Molly McBride, Anthropology, “‘Raising our voices together’: Identity Politics in a Midwestern LGBTQ+ Chorus”
  • Aidan Pang, English, “Hear Me Out: Remediating Bodies through Digital Voices.”

2020-21 Graduate Student Travel Grants

  • Polet Campos-Melchor, Anthropology, “LGBTQ+ Migrants: Strategizing Survival and Love at the U.S.-Mexico Border” at the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) conference in Washington, D.C.
  • Nino Dgebuadze, International Studies and Nonprofit Management, the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights annual workshop on migration and forced displacement.
  • Lola Loustaunau, Sociology, “Assessing the Initial Impacts of the First Statewide Fair Scheduling Law in Oregon” at the Advancing Equality at Work and at Home conference in New York.
  • Carla Osorio-Veliz, Geography, “A Case Study of two Guatemalan Organizations Demanding Justice for 41 Girls” at the American Geographers Association Annual Meeting in Denver.
  • Aiden Pang, English, “Three Minute Wo/men: Female masculinities on Japanese Music Television” at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Denver.