The Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon recently awarded more than $66,000 in graduate student and faculty research grants to support research on women and gender during the 2016-17 academic year.  

The research being funded includes projects focused all over the globe.

Graduate teaching fellow Baran Germen was chosen from a strong pool of applicants to receive the prestigious Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship. Germen holds a master’s degree from Istanbul Bilgi University and is working toward a doctorate in comparative literature.

The dissertation, “Melodramatics of Turkish Modernity: Narratives of Gendered Victimhood, Affect, and Politics,” offers a historical account of the “disturbing rise of gendered violence in Turkish society.”

The center also funded graduate student research on women’s ability to make decisions and control life choices in rural Pakistan; an exploration of how bananas moved from the exotic to a staple fruit through commercial tactics aimed at working-class women in the 1920s; and an investigation of linguistic practices among women who speak a minority language in western Nigeria. 

Two graduate students in psychology doing collaborative research will receive funds from the Mazie Giustina Women in the Northwest endowment to support a study that will evaluate a new strength-based video coaching program for women with young children living below the poverty line in the Eugene/Springfield area. The goal is to improve parenting support and empowerment for low-income women at increased risk for involvement with the child welfare system.

Funded faculty research includes a book project by assistant professor Oluwakemi Balogun, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, titled “Beauty Diplomacy: Culture, Markets, and Politics in the Nigerian Beauty Pageant Industry.”

And assistant professor Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, was awarded a grant to support work on edits of her book in progress, “Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Native Hawaiian Performance.”

In all, 12 UO graduate students will receive awards ranging from $1,700 to more than $12,000. Four faculty scholars will receive awards ranging from $5,000 to $8,000 each.

Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship

• Baran Germen, Department of Comparative Literature. “Melodramatics of Turkish Modernity: Narratives of Gendered Victimhood, Affect, and Politics.”

Graduate Student Research Awards

• Sarah Ahmed, Department of Sociology. “Understanding Women's Agency in Rural Punjab, Pakistan.”
• Yi-lun Huang, Department of English.  “The Birth of an American Staple Fruit: Reading Bananas from Cookbooks, Recipes, and Periodicals.”
• Hillary Maxson, Department of History. “Kakeibo Monogatari: Women's Consumerism and the Postwar Japanese Kitchen.”
• Shehram Mokhtar, School of Journalism and Communication. “Women's Dances and Men's Pleasures: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Punjabi Theater of Lahore, Pakistan.”
• Laura Noll, Department of Psychology. “Empowering Women with a Focus on Parenting Strengths: The FIND Community Pilot Project.”
• Rebecca Paterson, Department of Linguistics. “Her Voice: Documenting the Language of Women Speakers of the Ut-Ma'in Language (Nigeria).”
• Marie-Caroline Pons, Department of Linguistics. “The Status of Women in Nomadic Raute Society.”
• Kenneth Surles, Department of History. “Beyond Bonds of Blood: Race, Gender, and Sexuality and the Making of Nonnuclear Families in Postwar America.”
• Melissa Yockelson, Department of Psychology. “Empowering Women with a Focus on Parenting Strengths: The FIND Community Pilot Project.”
• Yi Yu, Department of Geography. “Institutional Mothers, Professional Caregivers: The Biopolitics of Affective Labor in State-owned Social Welfare Institutions in China.”

Faculty Research Awards

• Oluwakemi Balogun, Department of Women's and Gender Studies. “Beauty Diplomacy: Culture, Markets, and Politics in the Nigerian Beauty Pageant Industry.”
• Mayra Bottaro, Department of Romance Languages. “Unstable Fetishisms: Labor, Gender, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Argentine Fiction.”
• Alai Reyes-Santos, Department of Ethnic Studies. “Maritime Boundaries, Water Doors: Gender, Sex, and Race in the Caribbean and the Pacific, 1898-1945.”
• Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women's and Gender Studies. “Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Native Hawaiian Performance.”