UPCOMING AWARDS FOR 2022-2023

Please email the Center for the Study of Women and Society office at email csws@gc.cuny.edu, for further information about the following awards.

The Koonja Mitchell Memorial Prize will be awarded to a student in any Ph.D. Program at the Graduate Center working on a dissertation concerned with issues of social justice. Special consideration will be given to work on war and militarism, carcerality, or historical trauma.

To be considered for the prize, candidates must submit a 10-page dissertation prospectus and a CV to csws@gc.cuny.edu. A letter of recommendation from the student’s advisor should be sent to the same address, with the student’s name and award name in the subject line.

These materials should be emailed to: csws@gc.cuny.edu

The deadline for proposals is February 15th, 2023.

The amount of the award is $1000. The prize will be announced in the middle of the Spring 2023 semester.

2021 Recipient

Madeline Lafuse, "Poison in Marie Laveau’s New Orleans: A Cultural History of Slavery and Violence, 1769-1900"

2020 Recipient

China Sajadian, “Debts of Displacement: Syrian Refugee Farmworkers at the Lebanese-Syrian Border”

2019 Recipient

Natalie Haziza, “Traces of Absence: How the trauma of the Yemenite, Mizrachi and Balkan Children Affair is present in photographs and home movies”

2018 Recipient

Arinn Amer, “Tar and Feathers: Colonial Culture and the Making of Patriot Violence”

2017 Recipient

Sonia Sanchez, “Toward Complex Solidarities: Lessons from Migrant Justice Organizing at Intersections of ‘Multiple Struggles'”

2016 Recipient

Einat Manoff, “Counter-Mapping in the South Bronx: Local Perscpective on Disinvestment and Over-Policing”

2015 Recipient

Wen Liu, “Beyond Orientalism and Cultural Essentialism: A Queer Geopolitics of Asian Americanness in Neoliberal Time”

2014 Recipient

Rachel Brown, “The Emotional Politics of Migrant Labor: Domestic Caregivers and the Case of Israel”

2013 Recipient

Carolina Munoz Proto, “‘When I Heard about the March’: Peacebuilding through Testimonies and Participatory Archives”

2012 Recipient

Mohamad Junaid, “Being and Becoming in Kashmir: Military Occupation, Resistance, and the ‘Critical Experience'”

2011 Recipient

Sandra Trappen, “The Surgical Imagination”

2010 Recipient

Kim Cunningham, “The EMDR Machine: Sensory Assemblages of Memory and the New BioPolitics of Trauma”

2009 Recipient

Marisa Lerer, “30,000 Reasons to Remember: Patronage and Artistic Strategies for Memorializing Argentina’s Disappeared”

2008 Recipient

Shana Siegal, “Transgenerational Trauma related to the History of Militarized Repression of Indigenous Populations in Canada”

The Sue Rosenberg Zalk Endowed Fund Award of $4000.00 will be given to assist the scholarly research of a student enrolled in the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. While special consideration will be given to proposed research projects related to globalism and transnationalism, all proposals will be eligible. Awards will be granted on the basis of financial need and academic excellence. Preference will be given to students at the dissertation stage.

Students who wish to be considered for the award should submit a copy of an unofficial transcript, their CV, a description of their project, and a letter of recommendation from the student’s advisor should be sent to csws@gc.cuny.edu, with the student’s name and award name in the subject line.

Submissions should be sent by email to: csws@gc.cuny.edu

Deadline for submissions for the 2022-2023 award is February 15th, 2023.

The prize will be announced in the middle of the Spring 2023 semester.

2021 Recipient

Ariel G. Mekler, Political Science, “Queer Consequences: An Examination of International LGBTIQ+ Mainstreaming”

2020 Recipient

Joanna Beltrán Girón, Critical Social-Personality Psychology

2017-2018 Recipient

Brenna McCaffrey, Anthropology, “Pharmaceuticalizing Abortion: Feminism, Biomedicine, and Reproduction in Ireland”

2016-2017 Recipient

Sumru Atuk, Political Science, “Politics of Femicide: ‘Woman’ Making and Women Killing in Turkey”

2015-2016 Recipient

Heather Denyer, Theatre

2014-2015 Recipient

Lauren Suchman, Anthropology, “Preparing for PrEP: Comparing the Use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV in Two Large-Scale Public Health Campaigns”

2013-2014 Recipient

Pilar Ortiz, Sociology, “Coffee with legs: the production of gendered bodies in Santiago’s ‘cafés con piernas’”

2012-2013 Recipient

Antonia Levy, Sociology, “Polyamory Movement in the U.S. and Germany”

2011-2012 Recipient

Natascia Boeri, Sociology

2010-2011 Recipient

Zoë C. Meleo-Erwin, Sociology

2009- 2010 Recipient

Soniya Munshi, Sociology, “Exceptional Victims and Unruly Others: Violence Against South Asian Immigrant Women and Biopolitical Citizenship.”

2008-2009 Recipient

Valerie Francisco, Sociology, “Going Abroad: Filipino Women, Labor and Transnational Governance.”

2007-2008 Recipient

Keridiana Chez, English, “Construction of “the human” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” - Award $500

2005-2006 Recipients

Robert Diaz, Sociology “Performance Studies International,” - Award $255

Kara Van Cleaf “Eastern Sociology Society” - Award $255

Craig Willse “Eastern Sociology Society” - Award $255

Salvador Vidal-Ortiz “First Congress of Qualitative Inquiry” Award: $255

2002-2003 Recipient

Ananya Mukherjea, Sociology - Award: $1100

The Carolyn G. Heilbrun Dissertation Prize will be awarded to an outstanding feminist dissertation in the humanities completed at the CUNY Graduate Center in a given academic year. The prize is meant to recognize feminist scholarship consonant with the broad intellectual aims of Carolyn Heilbrun’s work.

To be considered for the prize, candidates must submit the completed dissertation and a dissertation abstract by email. A letter of recommendation from an advisor, committee member, or EO of the student’s program should be emailed separately. These materials should be directed to csws@gc.cuny.edu with the student’s name in the subject line. The amount of the award is $300. The prize will not be awarded in a given year unless the committee agrees that the dissertation is worthy of distinction

The competition for the Carolyn G. Heilbrun prize will be open to dissertations completed between April 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023.

For further information, contact the Center for the Study of Women and Society office at 212-817-8895 or e-mail us at csws@gc.cuny.edu.

Submissions should be sent to: csws@gc.cuny.edu

Deadline for submissions is May 2, 2023.
The prize will be announced at the end of May.

2021-2022 recipient

Lynne Beckenstein, English, Committed to the Fragment: Feminist Literature and the Promise of Wellness

2020-2021 recipient

William Camponovo, English,  'An instrument in the Shape / of a Woman’: Reading as Re-Vision in Adrienne Rich

2019-2020 Recipient

Erin Spampinato, English, Awful Nearness: Rape and the English Novel, 1740-1900

2018-2019 Recipient

Madison Priest, English, The Women We Don’t Want to Be: The Anti-Heroine in American Women’s Modernisms

2017-2018 Recipient

Danica Savonick, English, Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Open Admissions

2016-2017 Recipient

Alberto McKelligan Hernández, Art History, Mónica Mayer: Translocality and the Development of Feminist Art in Contemporary Mexico

2015-2016 Recipient

Annie Cranstoun, English, Ceasing to Run Underground: 20th-Century Women Writers and Hydrological Thought

2014-2015 Recipient

Magdalena Bogack-Rode, English, Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents

2013-2014 Recipient

Stephanie Campos, Anthropology, Small Village/Large Hell’: Cocaine and Incarceration in Lima, Peru

2013-2014 Honorable Mention

Amanda Springs, English, The Advance Mobile Woman: Representations of British Women’s Physical Mobility, 1660-1820

2012-2013 Recipient 

Jen Jack Gieseking, Environmental Psychology, Living in an (In)Visible World: Lesbians’ and Queer Women’s Spaces and Experiences of Justice and Oppression in New York City, 1983-2008

2011-2012 Recipient

Sara Pursley, History, A Race Against Time: Governing Femininity and Reproducing the Future in Revolutionary Iraq, 1945-63

2010-2011 Recipient

Stacie McCormick, English, The Open Wound: Writing Black Female Bodies

2009-2010 Recipient

Sophie Martinez, French, Gender, Architecture, and Self-Construction in the Works of Mademoiselle de Montepensier

2009-2010 Honorable Mention

Jody Cross-Hansen, History, Transcendental Reform: Quaker Women and Social Reform During the Kicksite Schism

2008-2009 Recipient

Sara McClelland, Intimate Justice: Sexual Satisfaction in Young Adults

2008-2009 Honorable Mentions

Federica Clementi, Recreating the Mother: Shoah Autobiography in Ruth Kluger, Edith Bruck, Sarah Kofman
Kathryn Coad Narramore, Beyond Agency; Women Writing Romance as Political Intervention in the English Revolution

2007-2008 Recipients

Stepahnie Jensen Moulton, Music, Sparring with Fate: Miriam Gideon’s 1958 Opera ‘Fortunato’
Rebecca Wisor, English, ’My country is the whole world’: Three Guineas and the Culture of Pacifist Dissent

2007-2008 Honorable Mention

Diedre Conlon, Environmental Psychology, The Nation as Embodied Practice: Women, Migration and the Social Reproduction of Nationhood in Ireland
Hosu Kim, Sociology, Virtual Mothering: A Cultural Critique of the Emergent Figure of Korean Birthmothers in Popular Media
Jean Mills, English, Goddesses and Ghosts: Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison

2006-2007 Recipient

Katherine D. Harris, English, The Nineteenth Century British Literary Annual: A genre’s Journey from Nineteenth-Century Popularity to Twenty-First Century Representation

2005-2006 Honorable Mention

Anne M. Hayes, History, Rich Coast : Female Prostitution in the Port Puntarenas, Costa Rica, 1880-1930

2004-2005 Recipients

Christine Rudisel, English
Karen Winkler, Clinical Psychology

2003-2004 Recipient

Kimberly Engber, English, Intimate Observers: American Women Writers in an Ethnographic Tradition
Debra Wacks, Art History, Honorable Mention

2002-2003 Recipient

Jennifer DisneyPolitical Science
Sara Claire Peacock Raymond, English

2001-2002 Recipient

Susan H. BergSchool of Social Work, Hunter College

2000-2001 Recipient

Robin Hackett, English
Gay Wachman, English

PLEASE NOTE: The annual Nina E. Fortin Dissertation Proposal Award is not accepting applications at this time. 

The annual Nina E. Fortin Dissertation Proposal Award of $300 plus tuition is given to a student in any Ph.D. Program at The Graduate School who submits an outstanding dissertation proposal that addresses an issue of concern in the lives of women from a feminist perspective.  While special consideration will be given to those proposals that examine a health-related issue, any Ph.D. proposal that has been accepted by the student’s program is eligible.  In the event that no proposals qualify for the award, it will not be given until the following year.

Please email a 5-page summary of the proposal, including a brief bibliography. Underscore its feminist perspective, research design, and policy implications for the lives of women. Please attach a statement on the progress of the dissertation to date, (maximum two pages,) with a tentative timetable for completion, along with two letters of reference: one from your dissertation advisor, one from a professor in your discipline.

For further information, contact the Center for the Study of Women and Society office at 212-817-8904 or e-mail us at csws@gc.cuny.edu.

2016-2017 Recipient

Abigail Kolker, Sociology, “The Potency of Policy?: A Comparative Study of Filipino Elder Care Workers in New York and Tel Aviv”

2015-2016 Recipient

Emily Brooks, “‘Wayward Minors,’ ‘Prostitutes,’ and ‘Sexual Delinquents’: Gender and Policing in 1940s New York”

2014-2015 Recipient

Livia Arndal Woods, “Heavy Expectations: Reading Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel”

2013-2014 Recipient

Margarite Whitten, “Decentralizing Compassion: Biomedical Politics of Ethics and Life in US Community Health”

2012-2013 Recipient

Amy Baker, “Running Head: Unmasking the Female Face of the Risky Lending Crisis”

2011-2012 Recipient

Risa Cromer, “Inconceivable? The Politics of Frozen Embryos in the United States”

2010-2011 Recipient

Leah Souffrant , English,”‘She said plain, burned things’: A Feminist Poetics of the Unsayable in Twentieth Century Literary & Visual Culture”

2009-2010 Recipient

Diana Polson, Political Science, “The Caring Precariat: Home-Based Care Work in America’s Three Largest Cities”
Kery Chez, English, “The Affect of Humaneness: Humane Movements and Pet-Keeping in late 19th-century England and America,”

2008-2009 Recipient

Lauren Jade Martin, “Reproductive Tourism in the Age of Globalization”

2007-2008 Recipient

Zeynep Goker, Political Science, “Silence in Presence: Feminist and Democratic Implications of Ordinary Political Practices”

2006-2007 Recipients

Jennifer Gaboury, “The Case for Gender Liberation: Citizenship and Fatherhood in the Remaking of Masculinity in the United States” (co-winner)
Alicia Bralove Ramirez, “The Road Not Taken: Portrayal of Women in Ten French Novels on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)” (co-winner)

2005-2006 Recipient

Jean Mills, “Goddesses and Ghosts: Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison”

2004-2005 Recipient

Deidre Conlon, Environmental Psychology, “Women, Migration and the Social Reproduction of Nationhood”
Catherin Ma, Psychology/Social Personality, “Beyond Mother’s Milk: A Critical Examination of Breast-feeding and its impact on Women’s Lives,” Honorable Mention

2003-2004 Recipient

Melanie Panitch, “Accidental Activists: Mothers, Organization and Disability”

2002-2003 Recipient

Ann Wallace, English, “Inscribed in Skin: Gender, Trauma and Marked Bodies”

2001-2002 Recipient

Sarah Carney, Psychology, “Analyzing Cases of ‘Failure-to-Protect’: Legal, Media, and Maternal Narratives”

2000-2001 Recipient

Anne Hayes, History, “Rich Coast: Export-Led Economic Growth and the Rise of Female Prostitution in the Port of Puntarenas, Costa Rica, 1880-1940
Melissa Ditmore, “Trafficking and Sex Work,” Honorable Mention

1999-2000 Recipient

Sue C Grady, “Low Birthweight Among Black Women and the Contribution of Residential Segregation: A Neighborhood Assessment, New York City”

1998-1999 Recipient

Julie Miller, “The Discovery of the Foundling: New York City’s Abandoned Infants, 1819-1920”

1997-1998 Recipient

NO AWARD GIVEN

1996-1997 Recipient

Cecilia T. Castelino, “Battered Women’s Relationship to the Housing in Which They Were Battered: Institutional Programs and Non-institutional Strategies Some Battered Women Use to ‘Stay Put’ and Get Their Batterers to Move Out”

1995-1996 Recipient

Ann E. Cameron, “Life Histories of Women with HIV Disease”

1994-1995 Recipient

Longmun Wong, “Disrupted Journeys: Poor Women, Institutions and Subjectivities”

1993-1994 Recipient

Ara Wilson, “Gender and Consumption in Bangkok, Thailand”

1992-1993 Recipient

NO AWARD GIVEN

1991-1992 Recipient

Margaret Yard, “Social Silences: Illustrated Features of the Epiphenomenon of Silence in the Institution of Medicine”

1990-1991 Recipient

Jaclyn Packer, “Effects of Weight Attribution on the Attitudes of Fat People Toward Physician Visits”