Current Graduate Dissertation Fellows, 2007-08
Jelena Batinic (History) is writing a dissertation entitled "Gender, Revolution, and War: The Mobilization of Women in the Yugoslav Partisan movement in World War II." The mass participation of women, including 100,000 female combatants, in the communist-led Partisan guerrillas in Yugoslavia is one of the most remarkable World War II phenomena. How did the Partisans manage to attract women to their ranks, integrate them in the movement, and legitimize their new roles? What were the short- and long- term consequences of women's mass military and political mobilization in the country? Seeking to answer these questions, this project traces the wartime history and postwar memorialization of the female Partisan, as a lens through which to explore communist gender politics and its contested legacy in the region. (jbatinic at stanford dot edu)
Dara Kay Cohen (Political Science) is a fifth year graduate student in political science, where her main field of study is international relations. Her dissertation analyzes rape during civil war. The central questions in the project focus on how rape is strategically employed by combatant groups. Cohen has completed four months of field research in Sierra Leone, where she conducted dozens of interviews with villagers and ex-combatants about their experiences with violence during the decade-long civil war there. She plans to conduct similar research in East Timor during the winter of 2007. (dkcohen at stanford dot edu)
Brenda Frink (History) is writing a dissertation about pioneer-themed patriotic and hereditary societies in the U.S. West, from 1875 to 1915. The dissertation looks at the organizations' efforts to promote western history through preserving historic sites and documents, erecting monuments, publishing history books, and appearing in local patriotic celebrations. In the nineteenth century, the groups focused their efforts almost exclusively on preserving the histories of American pioneer men. By the beginning of the twentieth century, they became interested in additional historical topics, including the California Missions, Native Americans, and pioneer women. Based on organizational records, patriotic periodicals, and personal manuscripts, the study links this historiographical sea change to contemporary developments in the conceptualization of national citizenship, including the woman suffrage movement.
(bfrink at Stanford dot edu)
Valerie Jones (Social Psychology) is working on her dissertation entitled "The Pressure to Be Better & Work Harder: Contending with Perceived Inferiority in Threatening Domains". Her research explores whether members of stereotyped groups - specifically women in math and science fields and African Americans in academic domains - perceive that in order to be viewed as equally competent and qualified in their fields, they must 1) work harder than, and 2) perform better than, men and majority group members. Her research demonstrates that women in math and science fields perceive this pressure, and consequently expend more effort and resources to complete a given Math task than men. Further, Valerie is exploring whether this pressure may be linked to negative psychological and physiological health outcomes, such as significant increases in blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol. Valerie's research has important implications for explaining the performance disparities and attrition rates of women and minorities in domains in which they are negatively stereotyped. (vdjones at stanford dot edu)
Sarah Richardson (Modern Thought and Literature) studies gender in the biological sciences. Her dissertation research focuses on human sex chromosome genetics from 1900 to the present. Sex chromosomes, the X and the Y, played a central role in the emergence of modern genetics and underpin the genetics of sex and gender difference. Richardson's dissertation presents a series of detailed case studies documenting and analyzing gendered metaphors, symbolism, and ideology in human sex chromosome genetics. Working at the nexus of history, philosophy, and social studies of biology, Richardson shows how gender operates in biological research in a variety of contexts and dimensions, expanding and interrogating models of how gender participates in the production of scientific knowledge. Richardson coordinated the workshop Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age at the Stanford Humanities Center and is co-editing a forthcoming book by the same title. Richardson will be starting a tenure-track position in Women's Studies at U.Mass-Amherst/Five Colleges in September 2009. (richardson at stanford dot edu)
Bryn Williams (Cultural and Social Anthropology) uses archaeological, historical, and ethnographic methods to understand how race and gender intersected during 19th century California. In addition to his teaching, Bryn will spend the 2007-2008 year analyzing data from archaeological excavations of Chinese and Chinese American communities in San Jose and Monterey, CA, in order to examine the material mechanisms through which racialized femininities, masculinities, and other gender identities were created and sustained in the realm of everyday life. In sum, Bryn wants to understand how and if the objects we use, ignore, and throw away on a daily basis constitute and communicate the identities upon which social and political groups are imagined. The results of this research will be written into his dissertation titled "Gender, Race, and the Territorialization of 19th century California." In addition to his dissertation research, Bryn is interested in the historical antecedents of contemporary masculinities as well as the relationships between men and feminism in practice and theory. (bryn at Stanford dot edu)
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2006-07
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2005-06
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2004-05