The Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) has awarded $94,500 to support scholarship, research, and creative work on women and gender at the University of Oregon for AY 2024-25. A total of 25 grants were given to 19 graduate students and six faculty members.

Philosophy doctoral candidate Rhiannon Lindgren won the prestigious Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship for her project, “Revolutionary Love and Reproductive Struggles: Feminist Politics of Care for the Queer Future.” The Jane Grant Fellow receives a $27,000 stipend and UO student health insurance for the academic year. In addition, in partnership with the dean, the Graduate School provides tuition remission for the academic year.

As noted in her abstract, Lindgren’s project examines the failures of Care Ethics to articulate a notion of care as political praxis in marginalized communities. To address this gap, she proposes a concept of “reproductive struggle” to identify “the development of collective, conscious action which intervenes in the conditions under which caring labor is demanded and performed.” By examining “various contemporary abolitionist projects seeking to realize the potential of a sociality centered on community and care as opposed to discipline and violence,” her dissertation argues for “the necessity of transnational politics of care as fundamental to any revolutionary political project.”

Since 1983, the highly competitive Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship has supported projects from a range of disciplines on topics related to women and intersectional gender. The award is open to eligible UO graduate students who are ABD and spend the award year writing their dissertation.

In 2020, CSWS instituted a Graduate Writing Completion Fellowship to provide summer writing support to one or more doctoral candidates in the early stages of their dissertation who are runners up for the Jane Grant Fellowship. This year CSWS awarded two Graduate Writing Completion Fellowship to runners up Sarah Agou, romance languages, and Olivia Wing, history.

In addition, four of this year’s grants were awarded from the Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest. In 1997, CSWS received a large private gift from Mazie Giustina to promote and spotlight research on women’s lives in the Pacific Northwest. This year’s awards highlight migrant Maya women in Oregon, lesbian histories in Eugene and Oregon, and histories of Asian youth culture in the Pacific Northwest.

The following is a complete list of 2024-25 grant awardees and their projects:

Jane Grant Dissertation Fellow

• Rhiannon Lindgren, Philosophy, “Revolutionary Love and Reproductive Struggles: Feminist Politics of Care for the Queer Future.”

Graduate Writing Completion Fellows

• Sarah Agou, Romance Languages, “Narrative Sovereignty in Contemporary Cuba, Haiti, and Indigenous Quebec: Exploring forms of Inhabiting Against Geographical, Political, Economical, and Identitarian Forced Enclosures.” 
• Olivia Wing, History, “Common and Contested Ground: Chinese and Japanese American Youth Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1920s–1960s” (Giustina Fund).

Graduate Student Research Grants

• Tal-Hi Bitton, Philosophy, “Steadfast Watermelons: Social Reproductive Struggle and Colonialism in Palestine/Israel.”
• Malvya Chintakindi, Anthropology, “Chasing the Good Life: Caste, Class, and Dalit Women in India’s Informal Economy”
• Liesl Cohn De Leon, Anthropology, “Migrant Memories of Guatemalan Maya Women in Oregon: Community and Identity Building in a New Territory” (Giustina Fund).
• Yalda Eskandari, Art, “Between the Two Trees.”
• Yuan Fang, Anthropology, “Bronze Mirrors: Serving the Beautiful or the Powerful? Viewing Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China from a Gender Archaeology Perspective.”
• Madison Fowler-Niblock, Environmental Science, and Moe Gamez, English, “Queer Resistance, Abolition, and American (Homo)National(ist) Narratives: Reading the 2016 Designation of Stonewall National Monument.”
• Margaryta Golovchenko, History of Art and Architecture, “Strange-Kinship: Women-Animal Relationships in British and French Art, 1700–1900.”
• Megan Hayes, Environmental Studies, “How to Love an Oyster: Chemistry, Attachment, Slippage.” 
• Nat Ivy, Folklore and Public Culture, “‘This is traditional song; we can’t let you stay happy long’: Murder Ballads, Gender, Race, and Crime in 19th Century America.”
• Bex Macfife, Sociology, “Gen(der)italia: Pelvic Physical Therapy and Feeling in the Shadow of Biomedicine.”
• Gretchen Nihill, Psychology, “Compounding Safety Cues for Women of Color.”
• Ruby Oboro-Offerie, Sociology, “Economic Values, Ethical Norms, and Gender Stereotypes as Predictors of Trust in Women’s Movements: A Multi-level Approach.”
• Sammy Plezia, Family and Human Services, “Exploring the Relationship Between Gender Identity, Culturally Relevant Gender Roles, and Body Dissatisfaction among Goan Adolescent Girls: A Qualitative Investigation.”
• Raechel Root, History of Art and Architecture, “Future Objects: Building Queer Feminist Worlds in the Photography of Oregon’s Lesbian Lands” (Giustina Fund).
• Haifa Souilmi, Political Science, “Democratic Backsliding and the Ebbs and Flows of Gender Equality in Tunisia.”

Faculty Research Grants

• Corinne Bayerl, Clark Honors College, “Gendered Practices in Early Modern Cryptography.”
• Marjorie Celona, Creative Writing, “The Year of X: A Novel.”
• Miriam Chorley-Schulz, German and Scandinavian Studies, “A Queer History of Yiddish.”
• Alisa Freedman, East Asian Languages and Literatures, “Telling the Stories of Vietnamese Women Educators and Their New Academic Fields.”
• Judith Raiskin, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, “Outliers and Outlaws: A Documentary Film” (Giustina Fund).
• Julie Weise, History, “Guest Worker: Lives Across Borders in an Age of Prosperity.”