Center for the Study of Women in Society

Feminist Thought and Scholarship
Research Interest Groups. Research Interest Groups (RIG) organized by CSWS foster collaboration between scholars at the university. Faculty, graduate students, and community members participate in programs and events. RIGs are designed to facilitate collaborative research; create support groups for the preparation of grant proposals; build better connections between scholars and community activists; and generate opportunities for cross-disciplinary dialogue among scholars.

Women of Color Project
CSWS was awarded a Ford Foundation grant in March 2008 from the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). “Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research Centers,” was meant to promote the leadership of women of color from historically underrepresented groups in the United States within NCRW and within its women’s research, policy, and advocacy member centers. CSWS and the UO Office of the Vice President for Research provided matching funds.

Charise Cheney, associate professor, UO Department of Ethnic Studies, continues as the 2012-13 coordinator of the CSWS Women of Color Project. Cheney’s research interests include African-American popular and political cultures, black nationalist ideologies and practices, and gender and sexuality. She is the author of Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 2005) and is currently working on a book about black resistance to school desegregation in Topeka, Kansas in the decade before Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. She earned her PhD at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Fembot Project
Designed to re-imagine academic writing and research, the Fembot Project participates in the ongoing revolution in academic publishing, taking seriously the advice of scholars to democratize our publications by embracing open access, open source publications. The Fembot Project centrally includes a new journal—Ada: Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology—that will be broadly accessible, both in terms of physical access and in terms of its content. The Fembot website (http://fembotcollective.org/) comprises three overlapping projects: Ada, Laundry Day, and a professional clearinghouse.

For more information, contact Carol Stabile, Director, CSWS, cstabile@uoregon.edu

Women Writers Project

This group organized MemoirFest, the first annual CSWS Women Writers Symposium, held May 12, 2012. The second annual CSWS Women Writers Symposium: Common Ground, will be held over Mother’s Day weekend 2013. The Women Writers Project (http://csws.uoregon.edu/?page_id=10220) seeks to foster and enhance opportunities for women writers on campus, in the community, and throughout the Pacific Northwest; to bring distinct voices of published women writers to campus; and to support the work of creative writing by bringing together writers from different disciplines.

For more information, contact coordinator Alice Evans at alicee@uoregon.edu

2012 CSWS Annual Review

Available online at <http://csws.uoregon.edu/?page_id=82>, this 28-page publication includes these highlights:

• “The Rise and Fall of The Goldbergs,” by Carol Stabile, director, CSWS, and professor, SOJC and women’s and gender studies — Despite widespread support as evidenced through fan mail, this popular show by Jewish writer Gertrude Berg was ultimately squelched by anti-communist activists.
• “Witnessing in the Americas: A Conversation with Gabriela Martínez,” documentary filmmaker, SOJC associate professor, and the new associate director of CSWS.
• “We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements,” by Lynn Stephen,  professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies — CSWS-funded research culminates in innovative book.
• Research articles by UO scholars addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, rural gentrification and immigrant-centered labor, strategies of silence in American women’s poetry, and more.

CSWS Research Matters is published three times yearly. Each two-page article is written by a UO faculty member whose research has been supported by CSWS. Available online at <http://csws.uoregon.edu/?page_id=85>,the most recent issues include:

• 2012, Fall: “Touchstones, Touchscreens and Timeless Tall Tales: A Feminist Analysis of Communication Practice in Exhibitions,” by Phaedra Livingstone, assistant professor, University of Oregon, Arts and Administration Program (AAD) School of Architecture & Allied Arts (A&AA) and coordinator, Museum Studies
• 2012, Spring: “Thinking Through a Research Trajectory, From Hollywood Latinas to Hair/Style” by Priscilla Peña Ovalle, associate professor, Department of English & associate director, Cinema Studies
• 2012, Winter: “Partner Violence and Girls’ Educational and Vocational Development” by Krista M. Chronister, associate professor, College of Education, Counseling Psychology Program
• 2011, Fall: “Why Oklahoma? All-Black Towns and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Indian Territory” by Melissa H. Stuckey, assistant professor, Department of History
   

Feminist Thought and Scholarship

Sandra Morgen; Joan Acker; Jill Weigt. 2010.Stretched Thin: Poor Families, Welfare Work, and Welfare Reform. Cornell University Press.

Pascoe, Peggy. 2009. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. Oxford.

Reis, Elizabeth. 2009. Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lynn Fujiwara. 2008. Mothers without Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Families and the Consequences of Welfare Reform. University of Minnesota Press.

Microfinance

Lamia Karim, 2011. Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh. University of Minnesota Press. Lamia Karim is the associate director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society and an associate professor in the University of Oregon Department of Anthropology.

Grants and Fellowships

The Center for the Study of Women in Society maintains a number of grant programs to support the work initiated by University of Oregon faculty, staff (with the appropriate end degrees), and graduate students. By providing these highly competitive grants and fellowships, CSWS consistently has supported many important research projects at various stages of development and enriched programs in all sectors of the university. The Center has offered research funding to faculty and graduate students at the University of Oregon for more than 25 consecutive years.

For more details visit: 

http://csws.uoregon.edu/?page_id=16