2022 Women’s Studies Fellows

The WW Dissertation Fellowship for Women’s Studies has been supporting promising Ph.D. students since 1974. Created to support original, significant, and interdisciplinary research on women’s and gender issues, the Women’s Studies Fellowship has helped foster and grow the academic field of women’s studies. By providing resources for dissertation completion, the Fellowship program has helped ensure a diversity of scholars, ideas, and perspectives have been able to continue in academia. 

Now joining the ranks of the more than 600 Women’s Studies Fellows are eight outstanding scholars. The Fellows in the 2022 class are Chloé Samala Faux, Janice Feng, Pallavi Gupta, Erin Johnson, Kimberly Jones, Nora Kassner, Sophie Morse, and Paulina Rodríguez (bios below). Fellows are working in such fields as political science, sociology, history, and public policy. 

Many of this year’s Fellows are interested in highlighting the way lived experience and difference bring greater understanding to their scholarship.  

I’ve “started to appreciate the unique insight differences bring,” says Janice Feng. “I am able to see that many of the theoretical debates and questions, though seemingly abstract, have very concrete relevance to those whose daily lives are structured by various differences.” 

Janice addresses the way these differences manifest themselves in the lives of those she studies: “As a feminist political theorist, I am committed to thinking about life stories and personal narratives that are not captured by grand narratives and reflected in dominant discourses, including academic ones.” 

For Paulina A. Rodríguez it was a feminist theory class in graduate school where she first saw herself reflected in the academic work. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza was “a text that spoke to my experience as a Mexican woman and an undocumented immigrant,” says Paulina. “I gained an awareness of the importance of representation in scholarship.” 

But, as she progresses in her studies, those instances became fewer. “I found that the scholarship I was reading did not reflect my experience as a woman, immigrant, and athlete.” This lack of representation, in part, sparked Paulina’s current work exploring the history of Mexican sportswomen in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands and beyond.

Pallavi Gupta worked for nearly a decade with women’s advocacy groups in India on issues related to women’s rights, rights of indigenous communities, children, and those living with disabilities. This work encouraged Pallavi to “further examine ‘difference’ and the hierarchies operating in different spaces.” 

For her current research, Pallavi uses an intersectional approach to explore these differences. “I employ an intersectional approach and the frameworks of racial capitalism, Dalit feminism and Black Feminism to examine how caste, gender, waste and space intersect within the labor of cleaning in railway stations.”

For each of these scholars, understanding the varied experiences underpinning their research is a driving force. By seeking out new perspectives and sharing often underrepresented voices, these scholars are building greater understanding in their fields and beyond. 

“The past, our histories most especially, shift for each narrator,” says Kimberly Jones. “In my work as a historian of race, gender, disability, law, and slavery, I conjure often-unheard voices from the past so that they will be heard in the present.”

By supporting their work at this stage, Citizens & Scholars is helping these scholars find space to hone their research and providing a vote of confidence in their work. These Fellows will continue to explore a variety of perspectives, experiences, and understandings through their dissertations and their larger academic careers. This foundational work will serve as the basis for how we all understand these topics in the future.