University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

• Print

• Comments

• 

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: September 16, 2010

The Institute for Research & Education on Women & Gender has announced the recipients of its 2010-11 undergraduate and graduate scholarships and faculty course development grant.

The Gender Institute established the competitive scholarship program, now in its third year, to encourage UB students to focus on the study of women and gender. The biennial course development grant award was created to enhance the curriculum on women and/or gender across the disciplines at UB.

The award winners, who will be recognized at a reception to be held from 3:30-6 p.m. Sept. 24 in the Gender Institute, 207 UB Commons, North Campus, are:

• Laura Neese, a fifth-year student pursuing a BFA in dance and a BA in English, is the winner of the undergraduate scholarship. Her area of interest is “the place of modern dance in the socio-political and theoretical discourse of gender, especially in the embodiment of feminine sexuality, i.e. ‘writing woman’ through the medium of the body.” Neese will use her scholarship award to help fund her study abroad this year at the University of Chichester, England, where she will continue her studies in modern dance technique theory.

• Hope L. Russell, a PhD candidate in global gender studies, is the recipient of a graduate scholarship. Russell’s dissertation “explores third-wave feminist writings from the past two decades in order to analyze the complex ways that young feminists are exploring what it means to grow up female and come of age as both young women and as feminists.” She plans to use her scholarship award to conduct research at the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University, where she will study the center’s extensive collection of ‘zines authored by girls and young women. 

• Nicole Fava, a third-year PhD student in social work, is the recipient of a graduate scholarship. Fava’s dissertation will “use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data set…to explore the relationship between traumatic experiences in childhood and developmental outcomes across adolescence and young adulthood.” She plans to use her scholarship award to fund her dissertation research.

• Sarah Bay-Cheng, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance, is the recipient of the biennial course development grant. Bay-Cheng will use the grant to purchase materials necessary to develop and implement the course “Women and Theatre.” This course will feature sections on playwrights, directors and performers, and focus on “the rising status of women in theater from the first Restoration actress-prostitutes to international directors currently shaping world theater to solo artists who engage their own bodies as sites of agency and subjectivity in performance work.” With the funding, Bay-Cheng plans to obtain media recordings of performances to help support the curriculum and make the class accessible to students without a theater background. She also will organize and sponsor a live theater performance in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo.