CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant

by Gloria Macedo-Janto, PhD candidate, Department of Romance Languages
During the years of internal armed conflict in the Andean country of Peru (1980–2000), as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded, Andean women were victimized because of their gender and ethnicity. They played a significant role in the search for the disappeared and in caring for the survivors. However, their contributions have been recognized only from a paternalistic perspective, positioning them as minor heroines of their Andean communities. For this reason, their voices have not been included or taken into account in constructing the overarching narrative of the 20 years of political violence. 

by Precious Adejumobi, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
“They said the ‘dirty blood’ will come out when I give birth,” 33-year-old Fola (pseudonym) shared with fresh realization of the false hope she was offered about 20 years ago. She anticipated childbirth as a potential source of relief from her debilitating menstrual cramps, but experienced disappointment when confronted with infertility, another symptom of endometriosis.

by Nicolette Molina, PhD Candidate, Clinical Psychology
When people think about the postpartum period, they often picture joy, bonding, and new beginnings. For many people, that is part of the experience. Yet the months after childbirth can also bring exhaustion, isolation, financial strain, shifting identity, and emotional pain difficult to name out loud. For some, this distress becomes life-threatening. In 2022, mental health conditions accounted for more than one-quarter of pregnancy-related deaths, and nearly half of those mental health-related deaths were suicides.

by Olivia G. Wing, PhD Candidate, Department of History
In 1947, eight Asian American men’s basketball teams traveled from California, Oregon, Utah, Illinois, Hawaii, and British Columbia to Seattle, Washington to play ball in the first Oriental–American National Basketball Tournament (OANBT). The four-day tournament concluded with a social dance honoring the victorious team and runners-up, as well as an Outstanding Player award to an individual player. The goal of the tournament was purportedly simple: to identify the most gifted Asian men’s basketball team in the United States.

by Oyeintarimoboere Azebi, Master of Arts, Department of Global Studies
In 2002, in an oil field in the Niger Delta, 200 to 300 women, farmers, mothers, and grandmothers from the Ijaw and Itsekiri villages walked onto a Chevron exploration site and simply refused to leave. They had no weapons. Their only threat was one that struck terror into the company’s representatives: they undressed, and, in their culture, for a woman to bare herself before men who have wronged her community is an act of profound, irreversible shame upon those men. This demonstration lasted ten days, after which Chevron promised to build new schools, clinics, and provide jobs for their husbands and sons. By 2003, none had materialized.

by Kaito Campos de Novais, PhD Candidate, Anthropology
The more I encounter other Latine artistas, more I learn about what is possible to say, write, and create under political precarity. There is a common force affecting both our crafts (arte and etnografia) which is state repression. With these interlocutors I share not only vivências of diaspora, but also the struggle to self-express under conditions of silencing. During interviews and daily interactions, I am constantly listening to stories that never quite finish, hesitations, and... Something unclear, often called “climate,” “news,” “what’s happening,” something hunting us, about to knock our doors, about to stop us on traffic, something I can’t quite name, gets disappeared.

Graduate student Gennie Thi Nguyen’s old neighborhood was flooded by as much as nine feet of water after Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast in August 2005. For Nguyen, like other Vietnamese Americans of her generation who grew up in New Orleans, the destruction of vast areas of her city became a trauma shared with parents and their generation, and opened up new areas of communication, she said.

by René Kladzyk, Department of Geography
July 16, 2010: I squeeze into a bar in El Paso that sits near the university, a ten-minute drive from the downtown “Paso del Norte” bridge—a thirty-minute walk. It is a Friday night, and all the kids here are from Juárez. It is hot, loud, and packed—barely room to stand, let alone dance or hold a conversation. My friend Inez and I shout at one another—she too is from Juárez, and seems to know everyone. It’s a big city, but this is a small enough scene, I presume.

by Miriam Abelson, Department of Sociology
When I told people of my proposed research project with transgender people in the Southeast I met with disbelief from many quarters. That disbelief stemmed from the idea that there were few, if any, transgender people in the Southeast and that those that lived there must live in such constant fear that they would never expose themselves by consenting to an interview.