FOR RELEASE:    February 11, 2008
CONTACT:           Cynthia Daniels, Director, Women’s Studies Fellowships,
                             (609) 452-7007 x307
                             Beverly Sanford, Director of Communications,
                             (609) 452-7007 x181

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WOODROW WILSON FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES SELECTION OF ITS
2008 WOMEN’S STUDIES DISSERTATION FELLOWS

PRINCETON, N.J. (Feb. 11, 2008)—The conceptions of tradition and religion in leftist feminist thought in present-day Morocco; gender equality and education in Vietnam; the black female body in pornography; how suburban New York women changed politics in New York City—these are just a few of the provocative topics addressed by the 2008 Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellows in Women’s Studies.

Seven Fellows, all in their final year of dissertation research and writing, have been named in the 34th annual competition for the Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellowships. Each Fellow will receive an award of $3,000 from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation to be used for expenses connected with completing their dissertations, such as research-related travel, data work/collection, and supplies.

This year’s Fellows include sociologists at Emory University and the City University of New York; an anthropologist at Columbia University; an international education policy doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin; a law graduate turned performance studies specialist at Harvard University; a political historian at Brown University; and a literary scholar at the City University of New York. (See below for the full list of the 2008 Fellows.)

Funded by the Ford Foundation, the Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Endowment, and private donors, the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowships in Women’s Studies is the only national program supporting doctoral work on women’s and gendered issues. Since its inception in 1974 as the nation’s first such program, the program has supported 494 Ph.D.s in various fields, many of them now on the faculty at such major research institutions as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, Berkeley, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and Rutgers, as well as noted liberal arts colleges like Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Sarah Lawrence, Spelman, Wellesley, and Williams.

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THE WOODROW WILSON NATIONAL FELLOWSHIP FOUNDATION
DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES, 2008

Alison Faupel   •  Sociology, Emory University
Wave or Trough? The Transformation of the U.S. Feminist Movement, 1910-2005

Jennifer Gieseking   •   Sociology, City University of New York
Living in an (In)Visible World: Lesbians and Queer Women's Spaces and Economies in New York City (1983-2008)

Nadia Guessous   •   Anthropology, Columbia University
Aversions of Modernity: The "Problem" of Tradition and Religion in Leftist Feminist Thought in Contemporary Morocco

Kristy Kelly   •   Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Learning to Mainstream Gender in Vietnam: Where 'Equity' Meets 'Locality' in Development Policy

Jennifer Nash   •   Performance Studies, Harvard University
The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography

Stacie Taranto   •   History, Brown University
Debating Family Values: Women, Grassroots Politics, and the New Right, 1970-1992

Karen Weingarten   •   English, City University of New York
Reproducing Genealogies: Abortion and the Limits of Life and Choice in Modern America