Five Ways to Support Women’s Research & Creativity at CSWS
How to Help: To support the work of CSWS, call (541) 346-2262 or email csws@uoregon.edu. To send a check, mail to: Center for the Study of Women in Society, 1201 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1201
1. Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender, Race, and Sexuality
Over the past forty years, the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) has witnessed massive changes in the everyday lives of women, as well as a commensurate shift in the ways in which feminists understand the category of “women.” Theories of difference, intersectionality, and the multiple aspects of identities are common in feminist studies, along with a commitment to modeling these in our work and communities alike. It might be said that feminists seek to celebrate, study, and enhance the diversity of university communities so as to mirror the diversity of the biological and social worlds that we live in. Supporting and encouraging such diversity is one way of honoring the legacy of Jane Grant, who broke new ground for women in the early twentieth century.
As part of our commitment to intellectually and structurally diversifying CSWS, and, in support of University of Oregon’s diversity plan, CSWS is launching a campaign to endow a postdoctoral fellowship for junior faculty members working on gender, race, and sexuality in any field across the Humanities and Social Sciences. In order to endow this post-doctoral fellowship, CSWS will need to raise $1.5 million.
The CSWS diversity fellowship has multiple intents. Postdoctoral fellows bring new life and energy to institutional settings, allowing CSWS and its partner departments to benefit from intellectual interests, disciplinary connections, and networks. It also demonstrates our commitment to thinking about critical studies of gender, race, and sexuality and puts UO on the map in terms of supporting scholars who are conducting such research.
2. The Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship
The intention of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is to encourage research within UO collections in the area of feminist science fiction. The Knight Library’s Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) houses the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, and Jessica Salmonson. SCUA is also in the process of acquiring the papers of James Tiptree, Jr. and other key feminist science fiction authors. For more about these collections, visit http://library.uoregon.edu/node/3524.
This fellowship supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in the Knight Library. These short-term research fellowships are open to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in feminist science fiction. In 2013, $3,000 will be awarded to conduct research within these collections.
As part of the CSWS 40th Anniversary Celebration, and as a way of honoring the role that SCUA played in our founding, we are collaborating with the Knight Library and the Robert D. Clark Honors College to fund this award for a three-year period. In order to endow this fellowship, CSWS is campaigning to raise $100,000.
3. CSWS Graduate Research Awards
Since 1983, CSWS has awarded funding for graduate students engaged in research that reflects scholarly and/or creative work on women and gender from a range of disciplines. Over the past five years alone, we have funded graduate students working on issues as wide-ranging as the following sample:
- An anthropologist studying organic farming, gender, and sustainability in the Caribbean
- A media scholar researching lesbian, gay, transgendered, and bisexual youths’ use of digital media
- A team of psychologists studying a program devoted to preventing depression and enhancing maternal self-efficacy in pregnant women who are in recovery from substance dependence
- A literary scholar studying the use of silence in women’s experimental poetry
- A scholar in international studies researching how women with disabilities are responding to the AIDS crisis in their communitiess
- A sociologist researching how poor and working-class women have been mobilizing for environmental justice in the West Virginia coalfields.
While in a typical year we award $20,000 to graduate student research, the need far exceeds this amount. Therefore, we are seeking to supplement these graduate student awards with an additional $10,000 per year.
4. Road Scholars Program
As the public lecture program of CSWS, Road Scholars is intended to fulfill a key part of our mission—to disseminate research on women and gender—by offering audiences the opportunity to engage in conversation with UO scholars about gender-related issues critical to our region and beyond. In the past decade, our presenters have spoken to more than 2,700 community members in at least 45 venues across the state. In AY 2013-2014, we celebrate forty years with three special presentations by UO faculty and researchers (see csws.uoregon.edu for details).
We are seeking to expand and sustain the Road Scholars Program by providing funding for outreach, publicity, and stipends for research and development of public lectures. Support could take the shape of annual corporate sponsorships that would allow us to support and enhance our offerings, or individual contributions to the program.
5. Annual CSWS Northwest Women Writers Symposium
The CSWS Northwest Women Writers Symposium (NWWS) is a series of readings, panels, roundtables, and workshops held in early May that provides learning and writing opportunities for 300-1,000 participants ranging in age from high school through retired, as well as professional development for 12–15 creative writers, scholars, and teaching writers. NWWS was successfully launched in 2012 as “MemoirFest,” a one-day event held on the UO campus, and expanded in 2013 to three days with a strong off-campus focus more inclusive of non-university participants. “Common Ground: Land, Language, Story” featured a Saturday program of morning panels and afternoon writing workshops held at the downtown Eugene Public Library, in addition to a Thursday evening panel and Friday night reading held on the UO campus. NWWS 2014 will once again mix venues between town and gown, with an evening panel and evening literary reading at UO, and a full day of panels, roundtables, and workshops to be held at Eugene Public Library. Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; The Jane Austen Book Club) will be the keynote author.
With an advisory board of professional writers and scholars, NWWS aims to go beyond the usual writer’s conference by drawing on the strengths of its host research center and university—namely, giving creative writers and thinkers an opportunity to talk and write about ideas affecting our threatened planet. CSWS is seeking annual individual and corporate sponsorship in support of NWWS.
