News

University of Oregon faculty and CSWS affiliates Mattie Burkert and Sara Hodges were interviewed recently for media stories related to their research.

Graduate students and faculty are invited to apply for up to $1,000 in funding to organize CSWS Research Interest Groups (RIGs) for the 2026-27 academic year. An info session for prospective and returning RIG applicants will be held 4–5 p.m. Wednesday, April 8 in the CSWS Jane Grant Room (330 Hendricks Hall).

CSWS is pleased to announce that Smadar Ben-Natan, assistant professor of global studies, and Hannah Thomas, assistant professor of dance, are the first recipients of a competitive new Faculty Research Fellowship that provides one course release for 2026-27 to pursue work on any aspect of the study of women and/or gender. 

CSWS is hosting an Information Session for students an faculty mentors interested in applying for our newest research initiative—the CSWS Undergraduate STEAM Summer Fellowship.

Over summer, undergraduate fellows collaborate with University of Oregon faculty mentors to develop interdisciplinary research and creative projects that engage with STEAM fields—science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. Our STEAM fellows approach their inquiry with gender and intersectionality as an analytical framework. 

CSWS affiliate Kate Kelp-Stebbins, associate professor of English and director of comics and cartoon studies, has curated the grand opening exhibit for the new Northwest Museum of Comic Arts (NWMOCA) in Portland.

According to NWMOCA, the Pacific Northwest is recognized as one of the most vital comics hubs in the United States. Portland has one of the highest population of professional cartoonists per capita of any major city, and its status as a cartoon capital has grown steadily since the early 2000s.

Excerpted from June 9 CAS Connection, story by Jenny Brooks — Going to the theater in London in the 18th century was a good time—and a transformative time. Playhouses across the city were bursting with activity as crowd-pleasing favorites from the heyday of Shakespeare mixed with slapstick entertainments and boundary-pushing artistic experimentation. These shows drew lively, often raucous audiences from a mix of social and economic classes that seldom crossed paths elsewhere. 

For AY 2026-27, the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) is launching a new research fellowship that provides University of Oregon faculty with one course release for a term of reduced or no teaching to pursue work on any aspect of the study of women and/or gender.

From Oregon News — CSWS affiliate Karen Guillemin, Biology, has been named to the National Academy of Inventors, a designation that recognizes visionaries and innovators whose technologies brought, or aspire to bring, a real impact on society.

CSWS is awarding grant support to four new and three renewing Research Interest Groups (RIGs) spanning the social sciences, humanities, law, and education for the 2025-26 academic year.

Adapted from Oregon News.

Four CSWS affiliates — Lana Lopesi, Adell Amos, Corrine Bayerl, and Amanda Wojick — have been selected to win this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, which recognize exceptional teaching at the University of Oregon. 

May 15 is the University of Oregon's 10th annual Ducks Give, and CSWS is participating for the first time. 

On Thursday, we ask for your help in funding interdisciplinary undergraduate projects focused on gender across the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and the Arts (STEAM) that will solve the problems of tomorrow with innovative thinking and cutting-edge research. 

The Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) is pleased to announce funding awards for AY 2025-26 totaling $80,000 for scholarship, research, and creative work on women and gender at the University of Oregon. A total of 17 grants were given to 12 graduate students and four faculty members.

Story by Capi Lynn. Photo by Kevin Neri. Published Feb. 27, 2025 by the Salem Statesman Journal. Sokolowski is a CSWS faculty affiliate. 

Susan Sokolowski remembers the ill-fitting uniforms when she played youth and high school soccer as a Title IX athlete in New York state.

Story by Matt Cooper. Photo by Nicolas Walcott. Published April 9, 2025 in OregonNews. Geri Richmond is a CSWS faculty affiliate.

After serving four years as undersecretary for science and innovation at the U.S. Department of Energy, chemistry professor Geraldine “Geri” Richmond is back at the University of Oregon’s Eugene campus.

A new book by CSWS affiliate Faith Barter, assistant professor of English at the UO, explores Black writers as architects of legal possibility in the antebellum South. Her book, Black Pro Se: Authorship and the Limits of Law in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (2025) was published by University of North Carolina Press. She received a 2019-20 CSWS Faculty Research Grant for this project.

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Graduate students and faculty are invited to apply for up to $1,000 in funding to organize CSWS Research Interest Groups (RIGs) for the 2025-26 academic year. An info session for prospective and returning RIG applicants will be held 3–4 p.m. Wednesday, April 9 in the CSWS Jane Grant Room (330 Hendricks Hall).

On Feb. 28, the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) presents “Gender as Target: US 2024 Elections and Aftermath,” a teach-in featuring University of Oregon faculty and GTFF representatives discussing how gender and race discourses informed the recent election cycle and ways we can collectively respond to the barrage of policies impacting immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities today. 

An info session will be held 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, in 330 Hendricks (CSWS Jane Grant Room) for students and advisors interested in applying to the 2025 CSWS Undergraduate STEAM Summer Fellowship.

Launching this year with funding from our 50th anniversary Duckfunder campaign, the new fellowship is intended to create opportunities for cross disciplinary collaborations among science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) faculty and students on campus and to enhance pathways for underrepresented students in STEAM to succeed.

CSWS research fellow Julie Weise, associate professor of history, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Her project "Guest Worker: Lives across Borders in an Age of Prosperity, 1919-75" examines the experiences of guest workers in the middle of the twentieth century, focused on three cases—Mexicans in the U.S., Spaniards in France, and Malawians in South Africa. 

University of Oregon undergraduate students have a new way to participate in the research mission of CSWS.

Launching this year with funding from the Center's 50th anniversary Duckfunder campaign, the CSWS Undergraduate STEAM Summer Fellowship is intended to create opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations among science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) faculty and students on campus and to enhance pathways for underrepresented students in STEAM to succeed. 

CSWS invites applications for all 2025-26 faculty, staff, and graduate student research grants to support research and/or creative work that addresses women and gender from a range of disciplines across UO colleges and schools. Applications are due 5 p.m.

If your research, scholarship, or creative work engages with the complexities of women’s lives or the complicated nature of intersectional gender identities and inequalities, then you should apply for research funding from the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS).

As the 2025-26 grant funding cycle rapidly approaches, CSWS will be hosting an information session and a grant writing workshop to support graduate students, faculty, and staff through the funding application process.

Darshana Sreedhar Mini, assistant professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be giving a talk Friday, Oct. 25, on "Madakarani as Screen Pleasure: Scandal and Soft-porn Imaginary." The free lecture will be held 3–5 p.m. in 145 Straub Hall, 1451 Onyx St, at the University of Oregon, Eugene. 

Yale Professor Moira Fradinger will be presenting "A Decolonial Reading: The Case of Latin American Antígonas" on Friday, October 18, 2024. The event will be held 3–5 p.m. in 182 Lillis Hall, 955 E 13th Ave, University of Oregon.

From Around the O—Camisha Russell, an associate professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at University of Oregon, has been named a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow  for 2024. 

Each year, approximately 12 scholars are selected for the prize, and Russell is the UO’s first faculty member to receive this honor.

As we conclude this milestone anniversary year, CSWS is entering a period of strategic planning to build on our strengths and identify new opportunities.

Your steadfast support and participation during our 50th anniversary and beyond demonstrates the significance and impact of the Center for the University of Oregon and broader community.
 We seek your input as we strategize what “feminist futures” can mean for the coming years and decades. 

For two years, Bryant Taylor (PhD candidate, Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies) had a special appointment working as a Graduate Employee (GE) on our 50th anniversary events and projects. I had the opportunity to chat with Bryant about his time at CSWS before he left for a summer internship on an African American archival history project at Harvard University. Click this video link to watch a clip from our interview, and read the full conversation below. —Jenée Wilde

Editor's note: Tykeson Teaching Award winner Lynn Fujiwara is a CSWS Advisory Board member, faculty affiliate, and co-convenor of the Women of Color Project. The Tykeson Teaching Award is an annual prize given to one outstanding faculty member in each division of the College of Arts and Sciences who goes above and beyond in the classroom. Story from Around the O.

Providing individual feedback to each student ended up being the best way for Lynn Fujiwara, associate professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, to learn how to connect with students.

Congratulations to CSWS faculty affiliates who received 2023-24 awards and opportunities from the Office of the Provost!

Williams Instructional Grants were awarded to Assistant Professor Abigail Fine, Musicology, for “Writing Musically,” and to Assistant Professor Solmaz Mohammadzadeh Kive, Architecture, for “Hostile Design in Eugene.”

An award for Distinguished Teaching Professor went to Senior Instructor II Julie Voelker-Morris, Career Services Director for the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management.