Current Community of Scholars Recipients (2011-12)

 

Elizabeth Armstrong

(Social Work and Sociology)
Doing Feminism(s): A Multi-Level Approach to Gender in Intimate Partner Violence Organizations

Daphna Atias

(English Language and Literature)
Domestic Poetics: Emily Dickinson's Recipes and Poems
During the Community of Scholars Fellowship, I will compose an article for publication that examines the relationship between Emily Dickinson’s poems and her domestic work.  I will argue that Dickinson’s household duties, the women with whom she toiled in the kitchen, and the recipes they used are integral to her writing and should, likewise, inform our reading.  Recognizing that Dickinson’s traditional gender role contributed to her untraditional role as a writer and to her unconventional poems challenges the dominant view of Dickinson as a solitary poet and highlights the collaborative writing and reading practices that shape her poems.  “Domestic Poetics” proposes a model of reading that recognizes marginalized textual forms and modes of labor as vital to our understanding of 19th-century US women’s writing.

Jay Borchert

(Sociology)
The Continuing Criminalization of Same-Sex Consensual Sexual Activity: A Law and Society Perspective on US Prisons

A. Sheree Brown

(History)
That peace shall always dwell among them and true love be upheld: Charity, Neighborliness, and Lay Fellowship in Late Medieval and Early Reformation England
My dissertation is a twofold examination of the gendering of the Christian virtue of charity as enacted through the seven works of mercy.  First, I explore charity as a “religious ideology” as imagined by clerics, who sought to shape lay conduct through a catechetical program that advocated different methods of charitable living for men and women.  Second, focusing on Lincolnshire, I investigate the different ways men and women responded to this educational initiative in their religious practices and in daily life.  A gendered analysis of medieval charitable practices reveals the multifaceted and dynamic relationship between religious instruction and parishioner behavior.

Amanda Hendriz-Komoto

(History)
Imperial Zions: Mormons, Polygamy, and the Politics of Domesticity in Britain, the United States, and the Pacific

Laura Herbert

(Romance Languages and Literatures-Spanish focus)
Border Bestseller: The Post-NAFTA Intersections of Culture, Market, Nation, and Gender on the US-Mexico Border

Monique Johnson

(History of Art)
Self-focused: Women and the Photographic Portrait in the 19th Century

Janet Menon

(Political Science)
Women's Activism in Islamist Organizations: A Comparative Study of the Jamaat-e-Islami in South Asia
Women's activism in the Jamaat-e-Islami ("Islamic Party"), the largest Muslim social organization and political party in South Asia, varies dramatically. In the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Jamaats, women play supporting roles in religious outreach and protests focused on public morality. By contrast, men in the Indian Jamaat share decision-making power with women and promote their substantive inclusion in all aspects of the organization. I argue the advanced stature of women in the Indian Jamaat was an unintended consequence of a national growth strategy. My research broadens views of Islamist feminism, provides a model for moderates seeking to increase women's participation in Islamist groups to a reduction in political violence.

Isabel Millan

(American Culture)
Ninas Raras: Mediated Que(e)ries in Latina Kidizenship
This dissertation investigates children’s literature, television, and short-films produced in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, which feature Latina animated characters.  I converge my analysis around three contemporary characters: (1) Dora, the protagonist in Nickelodeon’s children’s animated television show, Dora the Explorer (United States), (2) Meli, the protagonist in Patlatonalli’s children’s book, Tengo Una Tia Que No Es Monjita (Mexico), and (3) Alex, the protagonist in the animated short-film Tomboy (Canada).  Although each is rooted in a particular nation-state, each of these characters also defies bounded notions of citizenship, cultural belonging, and borders.  I focus on the following as evidence of this defiance:  identify markers (e.g. at the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and citizenship), material productions (e.g. as consumable goods, such as children’s books, DVDs, and toys), and political ideologies (e.g. power relations between adults and children, or the construction of “normative” family formations).

Lai Sze Tso

(Women's Studies and Sociology)
"Making It" in China: Why Rural Women Climb the Ladder by Moving into China's Cities
I study why young rural Chinese women migrate into urban areas to improve their lives.  I used ethnographic methods to study an 800-household village in Northeast China, interviewing 42 women, ages 18-29, participating in migration from 2005-2009.  I discovered that women leave home for three primary reasons; as postsecondary students, as workers, and for reunion to a spouse or partner already residing in urban areas.  Women’s preferences are heavily influenced by their expectations about which migration pathways afford greater degrees of permanence, integration into urban society, and achievement of personal images of “modernity.”.

Bonnie Washick

(Political Science)
Embodying_Public_Speech@shakespearessister.blogspot.com: A Feminist Counterpublic's Rearticulation of 'Safety' in Virtual Space
I analyze the politics that develop as writers and readers navigate communication and interaction in and through the medium of the feminist blog Shakesville, focusing on the stated, strong, and central commitment to constructing and maintaining the blog as a “safe space.”  Doing so allows me to (1) consider how tensions around questions of identification and difference, debated in feminist scholarship, play out in “everyday” feminisms; (2) consider how political “voice,” identify, and practices take shape in and through new technologies; and (3) reflect on the relations between language, power, and materiality as they pertain to gender.

Jessica Zychowicz

(Slavic Languages & Literatures)
Performing the Politic: Women's Activism in Independent Ukraine

 

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