Adapted from "Inside This Issue" in the 2026 Annual Review, by Jenée Wilde—
One of my favorite roles at CSWS—besides putting together this publication—is helping University of Oregon students and faculty to share their funded research with our community. Whether I’m organizing and publicizing Noon Talks, conducting video interviews, or editing articles submitted for the Annual Review, I feel privileged to be one of the first to hear about the incredible research, scholarship, and creative work that our Research Fellows are producing.
For instance, during Winter and Spring terms, we held four Noon Talks by CSWS Research Grant Fellows, two of which focused on research in South Asia. Sanjula Rajat, philosophy, talked about anti-trans politics in India, and Nishat Parvez, communication and media studies, discussed how tea shops serve as informal political spaces in Bangladesh. A third Noon Talk by Audrey Lucero, professor of education studies, shared results from a study of how K–12 teachers respond to constraints on equity-focused instruction in Oregon schools. Finally, Joyce Wei-Jo Chen, assistant professor of music, gave our first-ever live performance Noon Talk on music by Baroque women composers. Lucero and Chen also gave video interviews about their funded research that you can watch on our YouTube channel. Keep an eye on the CSWS event calendar for more Noon Talks in the coming year.
Our Jane Grant Dissertation Fellow typically gives a talk and writes an article for this publication during their fellowship year. However, Malvya Chintakindi, anthropology, has already done both as a previous Graduate Student Research Grant recipient, so she took the third option. Check out her video interview on our YouTube channel discussing how class, caste, and gender intersect in urban slums of Hyderabad to shape aspirations for “good life” for lower caste women engaged in the informal labor sector, which constitutes a whopping 80 percent of the Indian workforce.
This year I was amazed and thrilled to see the creativity of graduate students at our CSWS Research Fellows luncheons, which provide opportunities for grantees to meet each other, share their funded research, and network across departments and schools. In Spring, for example, I got to preview the multimedia projects of Hoda Sobhani, law, and Kaito Campos de Novais, anthropology. Sobhani shared a clip from her award-winning short, animated documentary film That Night, which takes viewers inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison for political prisoners on the night a major fire broke out. Campos de Novais talked about creating the dreamlike collage images included in his multi-media ethnographic project on the politics of art and resistance among queer and trans Latine immigrants.
Two articles by Research Fellows in this issue deal with women’s health. Nicolette Molina, clinical psychology, discusses how sociological factors may contribute to postpartum suicide risk, while Precious Adejumobi, anthropology, examines Nigerian women’s narratives of endometriosis to question the sociocultural and gendered dimensions of the disease. Also researching in Nigeria, Oyeintarimoboere Azebi, global studies, discusses feminist environmental justice and women as agents of change in the Niger Delta’s oil conflict.
Two articles in this issue take us to South America, where Fellows Gloria Macedo-Janto, Romance languages, examines gender stereo-types in the literature of political violence in Peru (p. 24), and Lanie Millar, associate professor of Romance Languages, discusses gender and resistance in art that recuperates Brazil’s Black past. Finally, Olivia G. Wing, history, delves into historical archives to examine how a Pan–American masculinity was shaped by Seattle’s 1947 Oriental–American National Basketball Tournament.
I see many of our past and present Graduate Student Research Fellows at CSWS events, such as this year’s Acker–Morgen Memorial Lecture in May. In this issue, 2023 Fellow Anu Sugathan, English, 2025 Fellow Nishat Parvez, communication and media studies, and 2026 Fellow Maia Wellborn, philosophy, all offer their takes on Harvard Professor Durba Mitra’s lecture, “What If Gathering Together Liberated Us?”.
From cross-disciplinary collaborations to deep dives into intersectional feminist research that fill gaps in fields and departments, CSWS Research Interest Groups have flourished over the last few years. Earlier this year, our six funded RIGs for 2025–26 shared their activities and outcomes at our annual RIG luncheon. You can read reports on their activities in this issue.
CSWS continues to fund undergraduate research through our STEAM Summer Fellowships and Calderwood Seminars. Our 2026 STEAM Fellows spent the summer researching in a science lab and conducting a quantitative study of gendered dance forms, while our Spring Calderwood Seminar introduced students to the labor of care in literary and visual culture.
Finally, we invite you to look at our new CSWS Impact Report: 1973–2023, which shares 50 years of our history, research, programming, and advocacy at the University of Oregon. Go to the Impact tab or email csws@uoregon.edu to request print copies.