CSWS Annual Review

By Katherine M. Huber, PhD Candidate, Department of English

COVID-19 confronted us all with an uncomfortable present. The fear for the health and safety of family and colleagues, the inability to make plans in the midst of ongoing economic and political uncertainty, shifting safety guidelines, racial and income disparity in healthcare, and imposed isolation all brought the immense injustices pervasive in U.S. society into sharp relief. The national uprisings and resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement that followed the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor made the meticulous work of research seem both urgently necessary and totally out of touch.

by Polet Campos-Melchor , PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology

The title, “El Noa Noa,” was inspired by Juan Gabriel’s nod to an infamous bar in Ciudad Juarez that burned down in 2004. The bar once hosted queer artists and was a reminder of the music and spirit of Juan Gabriel, the angel of the city. After my 2019 summer fieldwork at Respetttrans, a trans asylum seeker shelter in Ciudad Juarez, I was inspired to celebrate the lives of trans women through my research and practice.

by Lara Boyero Agudo, PhD Candidate, Department of Romance Languages

Oregon’s Latino population has kept growing during the last three decades. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the percentage of Latinx immigrants doubled from 25.8% in 1990 to 42% in 2017. Despite Oregon’s multiculturalism, there is a political and cultural environment where xenophobia has been accepted, and there is a tendency to dehumanization that creates isolation and fear among the Latinx community.

by Molly McBride, PhD Candidate Department of Anthropology

My research with Sistrum, a women’s chorus from Lansing, Michigan, unfolded in surprising ways over the past year. Supported by a CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant, I had originally proposed to look at the sexual politics of the chorus: how gender, race, sexual orientation, and class are performed in the chorus, both at an individual level and at a group level, as the chorus brings together many voices into one. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was difficult to reconceptualize my project. Luckily, Sistrum pivoted to Zoom rehearsals, so I, too, pivoted to digital ethnography.

by Parichehr Kazemi, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science

In 2014, Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist, posted on Facebook an image of herself running through a London street with her curly locks lifted in the air, captioning it: “When I run and feel the wind in my hair, I am reminded that I come from a country which kept my hair hostage for thirty years” (Mohseni, 2015). Little did Alinejad know at the time, this small, subversive act to reclaim agency in her new home would pave the way for thousands of Iranian women to do the same, but in the context of a regime bent on restricting them at every turn.

by Cristina Faiver-Serna, MPH, PhD, Department of Geography

One spring morning in 2011, I left my home in the Los Angeles Harbor region to drive to a community meeting in Long Beach, California. I was to present on the “Bridge to Health” program, a promotora de salud-led asthma education program funded by the Port of Long Beach. Merging onto the 710 freeway my car became sandwiched between big-rig diesel trucks hauling cargo from the Port of Long Beach. The 710 freeway is the main truck route from the Port to inland distribution centers in San Bernardino County. Together, with the Port of Los Angeles, more than 40 percent of goods imported into the continental U.S. come by way of the Los Angeles Harbor.

by Judith Raiskin, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Eugene Lesbian History Project is a community-based, digital humanities project that preserves and shares the unique history of the lesbian community in Eugene, Oregon. The project includes filmed oral histories with 83 narrators, searchable transcriptions, a digital exhibit that curates and contextualizes the interviews, and a forthcoming documentary film. I am grateful to CSWS for funding the website Outliers and Outlaws that serves as a landing page for all the aspects of this project.

CSWS events have always served as informal sites for networking, support, and mentorship among women faculty and graduate students across campus. When the pandemic shut down our regular programming last year, the Women of Color (WOC) Project filled this need with a virtual books-in-print event series celebrating recent monographs by WOC faculty affiliates. Below are some personal reflections by current graduate students who have been impacted by the work and words of these faculty.