CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant

Graphic illustration.

Registration open for Dec. 9 grant writing workshop

The grant writing workshop with Michael Murashige, writing consultant for the Center on Diversity and Community, will be held 12–1 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 9, in the Knight Library DREAM Lab (Room 122). The workshop will help graduate students write a strong CSWS grant application by reviewing important elements and some common oversights. Registration required.
Photograph by Gladys Gilbert in The Oregonian (April 18, 1937), from the Lewis & Clark Special Collections, YWCA Collection / image provided by Olivia Wing.

For a Good Cause: Chinese and Japanese American Girl Reserve Fundraising in 1930s Portland

By Olivia G. Wing, PhD Candidate, Department of History
In the late 1930s, Portland’s Chinese Girl Reserves and Japanese Girl Reserves each hosted a variety of fund-raising events to support causes of their choosing. Fundraisers were not unusual for a service organization sponsored by the YWCA. In the late 1930s, however, the Chinese and Japanese Girl Reserves each chose to sponsor seemingly diverging causes: war relief for Chinese refugees and summer camp, respectively.
Ruby Amanda Oboro-Offerie

Trust in Women’s Organizations: Evaluating Gender Gap and State Characteristics

by Ruby Amanda Oboro-Offerie, PhD Student, Department of Sociology
Public trust in institutions has long been a focus of social science research, yet most studies have concentrated on political institutions (Van Der Meer 2010), banks (Fungáčová et al. 2019), and regional (Ron and Crow 2015) and international organizations (Torgler 2008; Hessami 2011). In contrast, limited attention has been paid to trust in women’s organizations (e.g., women’s rights/empowerment groups or feminist movements), despite their growing role in civil society, global gender advocacy, and transforming social norms and gender power relations (Hassim 2006).
Oyster harvesting off the coast of Apalachicola, Florida / photo provided by Megan Hayes

How to Love an Oyster: Chemistry, Slippage, and Attachment

by Megan Hayes, PhD Candidate, Environmental Studies Program

It was oysters who taught me about tides. Or, more precisely, it was oysters who taught me to give better attention to the tides. An oyster is a kind of bivalve, and bivalves are a class of aquatic mollusks that have, in the collective poetic descriptive of Wikipedia, “laterally compressed soft bodies,” which are enclosed in calcified exoskeletons made up of a hinged pair of half-shells, or valves.

Back of a bronze mirror showing a decorative design, from storage at the Seattle Art Museum / photo by Yuan Fang

It All Started with a Mirror: Questioning How We Assign Sex in Ancient Tombs

by Yuan Fang, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
One summer break back home in China, I visited the Henan Museum and found myself drawn to a bronze mirror on display. I had seen many before, but something about this one stopped me. Its delicate designs were beautiful, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant. I pictured a Tang dynasty court lady using it for daily grooming—the familiar image often used to represent bronze mirrors as feminine tools tied to beauty.
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