2007 Alice Dan Dissertation Award Winner Announced

Congratulations to the 2007 Alice Dan Dissertation award winner Tarini Bedi, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, who is researching "Piety, Violence and the Politics of Performance: Shiv Sena Women and the Feminine Subject in Maharashtra, India." The award will assist Ms. Bedi with travel, translation and transcription costs.

Ms. Bedi's dissertation advisor, Mark Liechty commented, "What is unique about Bedi's research is that it follows women from the Shiv Sena women's meetings out onto the streets and into homes as these same women live out their everyday lives. This allows Bedi to see if and how the public performances and narratives of militant religious nationalism are carried into, or influence, the everyday and personal practices of gender and class of these women."

Three honorable mention awards were also given to outstanding scholars with dissertations revealing the importance of gender-based research in their respective fields:

Catherine Mintler, Department of English, "Fashioning Identity: Consumption, Performativity & Passing in the Modernist Novel"

Jennifer Rupert, Department of English, "Oscillating Wildly: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Convulsive Identity in Experimental Modernism"

Emily LaBarbera Twarog, Department of History, "Beyond the Strike Kitchen: Working-Class Housewives, CIO Auxiliaries, and Citizenship, 1937-1955"

2006 Alice Dan Dissertation Award Winners Honored

The Center for Research on Women and Gender honored the Fifth Annual Alice J. Dan Dissertation Research Award winners at our 15th Anniversary Celebration on October 12, 2006. The Dan Dissertation Research Award is a competitive award presented to UIC graduate students to encourage original and significant research about gender and/or women. We would like to congratulate Elizabeth Collins, doctoral candidate in history, and Sharon Palo, doctoral candidate in English Literature with a concentration in Gender and Women's Studies, recipients of the 2006 award. Each recipient will receive $1,500 toward the completion of her research and an opportunity to present the research findings to the CRWG advisory committee. Ms. Collins' work entitled "Red-Baiting Public Women: Gender, Loyalty, and Red Scare Politics" examines cases made against five public women between 1945 and 1955 in order to explore how red scare politics shaped this generation.

Above: Sarah Shirk, Alice Dan & Elizabeth Collins, 10/12/06. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Marchetti.

Ms. Palo's dissertation is titled "Domestic Disturbances: The Story of the Public Woman in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction." Eighteenth-century domestic fiction is frequently associated with the emergence of a feminine ideal that previous critics have identified as "the domestic woman." In her dissertation, Ms. Palo questions the stability of this figure's dominance and traces the development of an alternative image of womanhood within eighteenth-century English culture and within the pages of the domestic novel.

Alice J. Dan Dissertation Research Award

The Dan Dissertation award is named after the founding director of the CRWG and long-time faculty member in the College of Nursing, Alice J. Dan, PhD.

The award is open to UIC doctoral students in any field who have completed the requirements for candidacy and have an approved dissertation proposal.

A call for applications typically takes place each spring, with awards announced during the summer. Please check this website for more details and for application requirements.

For more information call or e-mail: Manu Khare (312)413-7342 or Sarah Shirk (312)413-1636.

Past Winners

The Alice J. Dan Dissertation has been awarded annually since 2002.

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