News Briefs

Prof. Sari Van Anders (Psychology; Women's Studies; Programs in Neuroscience; Reproductive Sciences; and Science, Technology & Society) has won the Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory Award, from the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, for her coauthored paper, "Invited Expert Review: The Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds: Integrating testosterone and peptide responses for classifying social behavioral contexts." Psychoneuroendocrinology, 36, 1265-1275.

Prof. Van Anders directs IRWG's Program in Feminist Science Studies.

The purpose of the Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory Award is to highlight and support theoretical advances in social science theories concerning human sexuality. The award is given annually to the author(s) of the best social science article, chapter, or book published in the previous year in which theoretical explanations of human sexual attitudes and behaviors are developed. In addition to careful theoretical development, stress is placed on the use of relevant empirical evidence to examine the validity of the theoretical explanations.

September, 2012. Prof. Amal Fadlalla (Afroamerican and African Studies and Women's Studies) and Prof. Howard Stein (Afroamerican and African Studies) have coedited Gendered Insecurities, Health and Development in Africa (Routledge, 2012). The book grows out of an IRWG lecture series.

March, 2012. Professor Maria E. Cotera (American Culture/Latino Studies and Women’s Studies), is one of the 2011 winners of the Scalable Research Challenge (SRC11). She received the award for her digital humanities project, Chicana por mi Raza, which involves the collection, digitization, and display of archival materials and oral histories related to the development of Chicana feminist thought and praxis over the long civil rights era.

The SRC11 prize goes to scholars in the humanities, arts, social science, and sciences who apply for computational resources that will enable discovery and visionary research in their fields. It is awarded by the Advanced Research and Technology Collaboratory for the Americas (ARTCA) and administered by the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Professor Cotera says that the prize acknowledges “a ‘brave new world’ that links advanced computing to the humanities, and [the prize will] encourage our faculty to think expansively about how the humanities and technology may interface in future collaborations.”

Professor Cotera is a 2010 winner of an IRWG Faculty Seed Grant.

January, 2012. The Dog and Pony Show (bring your own pony), written and performed by U-M Professor Holly Hughes, has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in the category of Outstanding Theater: Off-Off Broadway. The show is described as “a blend of autobiography, animal behavior and bald-faced lies . . . a poetic/comic meditation on the midlife crisis in the key of canine by the woman who drove Jesse Helms nuts. Or nuttier.” Holly Hughes—associate professor of art and design, theatre and drama, and women's studies—has enjoyed a long association with IRWG and directed the institute’s Lesbian, Gay, Queer Research Initiative. Holly Hughes has received several GLAAD awards. This is her second nomination in two years.

The GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Awards are presented annually. The awards recognize and honor media for outstanding images of the LGBT community.

January, 2012. U-M Professor of History Deborah Dash Moore has been named recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Gender & Jewish History (Indiana University Press, 2011) in the category of Anthologies and Collections. The book was coedited by Marion Kaplan and written in honor of Paula Hyman, a founder of Jewish gender studies. It is a collection of essays from such noted scholars of Jewish history as Beth Wenger, DeborahLipstadt, Rebecca Korbrin, and Marsha Rozenblit.

Prof. Dash Moore is the director of the U-M Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History. Her work was discussed in September, 2011, as part of IRWG's newest lecture series, Gender: New Works, New Questions, which examines works by U-M faculty members in an intimate symposium format.

The National Jewish Book Awards is designed to recognize outstanding books of Jewish interest.

January, 2012.  The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony), a one-woman performance, by Holly Hughes, associate professor of art and design, theatre and drama, and women's studies, has been named one of the Top 10 stage events of the year by the Baltimore City Paper. Celebrating Hughes as a "performance superstar" and "one of the pioneers of 1980s-inspired autobiographical storytelling in performance art," the paper goes on to describe the performance as "painfully funny ... . Dog people, cat people, whatever: We like to think we're pet owners when, really, they're very often the creatures emotionally taking care of us." Hughes has been associated with IRWG for many years and has chaired the institute's Lesbian, Gay, Queer Research Initiative.

December, 2011.  Tiya Miles, chair of Afroamerican & African Studies, LSA, has been awarded the 2011 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Best Book Award for The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story (UNC, 2010). The American Society for Ethnohistory presents the annual prize to recognize the best book-length contribution to ethnohistory.

For more information, click here.

October 1, 2011. Dr. Jacquelynne S. Eccles, the Wilbert McKeachie and Paul Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education, has been appointed interim director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She succeeds Dr. Carol J. Boyd, the Deborah J. Oakley Collegiate Professor of Nursing. For Professor Eccles, this appointment represents a return to IRWG, where she housed her research program from 2000 to 2007. Her research has focused extensively on gender issues, particularly as they relate to gendered educational, recreational, and occupational choices.

For the official announcement from the Office of the Vice President for Research, click here.

October, 2011—A new article by IRWG Research Investigator Michelle Segar, IRWG Interim Director Jacque Eccles, and Caroline Richardson (Family Medicine) concludes that women who exercise regularly stay motivated by focusing on the immediate benefits of their fitness routines, such as stress reduction and increased vitality.

The article, "Rebranding exercise: closing the gap between values and behavior," appeared August 31, 2011, in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

The findings suggest that the usual emphasis on the "logical" long-term benefits of exercise, including improved health and longevity, is ineffective for promoting regular exercise. Instead, health promoters should emphasize the immediate, "emotional" benefits of exercise to ensure compliance.

The study of more than 200 midlife women (aged 40-60) found that people who focus on distant benefits exercise less than those who aimed to enhance the quality of their daily lives.

To see the article abstract, click here.

To see the complete press release click here.

To hear a U-M interview with Michelle Segar, click here.

To hear an interview produced by the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, click here.

For coverage on Michigan Radio, click here.

September, 2011. Congratulations to Tiya Miles, chair of the Department of Afroamerican & African Studies, LSA, on being named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. Prof. Miles, studies the historical relationships between African Americans and the Cherokee people and, thereby, reframes the history of the United States. Earlier this year, Prof. Miles's book,The House on Diamond Hill (North Carolina, 2010) was discussed in IRWG's Gender: New Works, New Questions discussion series, which focuses on works by U-M faculty members. She also received a 2010 Faculty Seed Grant to support her work on "Our Mother's Gardens," a historical novel based on The House on Diamond Hill. Prof. Miles is one of 22 fellows honored this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.