Center for Study of Women in Society names grant recipients

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A committee of feminist UO faculty members unanimously selected Celeste Reeb as the recipient of the 2019-20 Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship.

The fellowship is awarded annually by the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society to support a doctoral candidate already advanced to candidacy in writing a dissertation on women and gender.

Reeb’s work on her dissertation topic, “Closed Captioning: Reading Between the Lines,” was described by Priscilla Peña Ovalle, a member of her dissertation committee and head of the Department of Cinema Studies, as “a fascinating scholarly project that has real-world implications on the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences it serves.”

English professor Elizabeth Wheeler, another member of Reeb’s dissertation committee and the director of the disability studies minor, describes Reeb’s work as “brilliant” and “groundbreaking.”

 “If any discourse can be described as hidden in plain sight, it is closed captioning,” Wheeler said. “Although available to any viewer with the touch of a button, captioning serves a marginalized community: deaf and hard of hearing people. Captioning is widely assumed to be neutral, nonideological language that simply transcribes the dialogue and sounds on screen. In the scholarship of Celeste Reeb, however, the rhetorical choices of this overlooked discourse speak volumes about dominant notions of gender, sexuality, ability and race.”

Reeb has already been awarded the English department’s 2019 Rudolf Ernst Award, a fellowship given annually to a single doctoral candidate. Wheeler commented that Reeb’s dissertation “will revolutionize her primary field as well as a few secondary ones.”

The Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship comes with a stipend of $12,000. The award also includes a tuition remission grant from the dean of the Graduate School and a health insurance stipend from center. It is named for activist and journalist Jane Grant, a co-founder of The New Yorker and wife of center benefactor William Harris. It has been awarded it annually since 1984.

The center also awarded nine graduate student research grants for a total of almost $25,000 and seven faculty research grants for a total of more than $40,000. In all, the center awarded more than $77,000 for the 2019-20 round of research support for scholarship on women and gender.

Recipients of the 2019-20 graduate student research grants and faculty research grants are as follows:

2019-20 graduate research grants

  • Marc Carpenter, Department of History, “‘Worthy of All Honors Accorded to the Brave’”: Women’s Rights and the Sanctification of Race War in Oregon, 1890 – 1919.” Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.        
  • Michelle Dreiling, School of Journalism and Communication, “Non-binary Gender and the Driver’s License: A Documentary Exploration of State Identification.” Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.       
  • Daizi Hazarika, Department of Anthropology, “Witchcraft, Gender and Colonial Law in Assam, India: An Archival Analysis.”       
  • Amna Javed, Department of Economics, “An Exploratory Analysis of Honor Killings in Pakistan.”
  • Stephanie Mastrostefano, Department of English, “Manufacturing Race at 24 Frames per Second: Creative Voice at the Intersection of Disney Animation and Audience.”
  • Emily Masucci, Department of Anthropology, “The Politics of Seeking Shelter: Gender-based Violence and the Right to Safety among Low-Income Women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.” 
  • Holly Moulton, Department of Environmental Studies, “Complicating Vulnerability: Gendered Disaster Narratives, Ice Loss, and Resilience in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca.”         
  • Jane Nam, Department of Philosophy, “Radical Korean Feminism.” 
  • Carmel Ohman, Department of English, “Beyond Binary Consent: Sex, Power, and Embodied Performance in U.S. Black Feminist Novels and T.V., 1975-2018.”

2019-20 faculty research grants

  • Diana Garvin, assistant professor, Department of Romance Languages, Mediterranean studies, “Feeding Fascism: Tabletop Politics in Italy, 1922-1945.”    
  • Akiko Hatakeyama, assistant professor of music technology, School of Music and Dance, “Don’t Call Me a Female Composer—Gender Imbalance in Electronic/Electroacoustic Music.”  
  • Lamia Karim, associate professor, Department of Anthropology, “Raising Cain? Factory Workers and Socialization of Sons in the Garment Industry in Bangladesh.”     
  • Wendy Machalicek, associate professor, special education and clinical sciences, College of Education, “Meaning Making in Autism: A single-case evaluation of a psychoeducational curriculum for mothers of children with autism.” Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.
  • Senyo Ofori-Parku, assistant professor, School of Journalism and Communication, “Women’s Leadership in Inter-Faith Dialogue for Peacebuilding in Patriarchal Ghanaian Society: A Mixed-Methods Approach.”
  • Xiaobo Su, associate professor, Department of Geography, “No place to call home: Burmese wives and the biopolitics of cross-border marriage in Yunnan, China.”
  • Kristin Yarris, associate professor, Department of International Studies, “Mid-Century American Psychiatry and State Formation: A Post-Colonial Analysis of Morningside Hospital and the Alaska Mental Health Act.” Mazie Giustina Fund for Women in the Northwest.