Interview with Georgiann Davis, 2022 SWS Feminist Activism Awardee Talk

Kejsi Ruka, SWS Intern, conducted the interview.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’m an intersex scholar-activist and associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Much of my work is related to my experience being born with a body outside of the sex binary. I have complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, CAIS, which means on the outside I’m female, but on the inside, instead of ovaries, a uterus, fallopian tubes, and XX chromosomes, I was born with internal and undescended testes and XY chromosomes. Doctors didn’t discover my CAIS until I was a tween. And when they did, they didn’t tell me the truth. They lied to me about my body—telling me I had premalignant underdeveloped ovaries—and they encouraged my parents to do the same. I only learned the truth years later after I obtained copies of my medical records. I was at first confused, then devastated and ashamed, and eventually just unapologetically angry which is where I’m at today.

I didn’t pursue my PhD in sociology to study intersex. But that changed in a feminist theory class I was taking. We were discussing intersex, and there I was with this deep dark secret—I was intersex. It was during that doctoral seminar, in the fall of 2007 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, that I slowly started opening up about being intersex. And, you know what? It was fucking freeing to let go of that secret.

I wrote a paper on intersex in that seminar, and then shortly after, for a handful of reasons, decided to study the way in which intersex is experienced and contested in contemporary U.S. society. My first book, Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis, evolved from my dissertation and in it I interweave my personal experience with my interview data.

As a feminist medical sociologist, what kinds of topics are you researching and looking into?

I like to say that I study all sides of the hospital bed, meaning I like to study patient and provider experiences and interactions.

I’m also currently working on a new book, a cultural memoir, which I’ve tentatively entitled Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of a Society in Crisis. It’s about my journey from, in 1992, when I was a 329 pound tomboy who dropped out of the seventh grade to today a still fat tenured associate professor of sociology. I used to think of my journey as a story of overcoming a lot of adversity with everything from hard work to mentorship. But I trash much of that narrative in Five Star White Trash by using my sociological tools to analyze my life experiences with everything from dropping out of school, medical abuse, childhood trauma, and more.

Given that you’ll be a presenter at the SWS Summer Meeting, can you give us a preview of what you plan to talk about?

I’m nervous as hell, so I hope I follow through with this but I want to talk about being Five Star White Trash. And the multiple Lifetime movies I’ve been through . . . mostly unscathed.

I am curious to hear a little bit about your activism and advocacy work. What drives you to be a scholar-activist?

I used to think it was the possibility for social change, but that was ten years ago when I was naive and way more optimistic about how scholars can use their research to improve lives. Back then I also took for granted that scholars were mostly in the game for altruistic reasons and not for their next promotion, publication, or award. I know much better these days about egos and gatekeepers.

My scholar-activism these days begins with a mirror. How can I be a scholar-activist if my scholar-activism doesn’t begin with me? What’s my role in the continuation of the social problems I study? What does it mean to get paid, as a scholar, to do work so many activists have been doing without pay for a lot longer?

Do you have a call to action or a departing message for us?

We have to be vigilant and honest about where we come from and where we’re located today. I think oftentimes we come into our studies and research interests with the goal of being social justice oriented, which is great, but in order to do that work, we have to work on ourselves. I mean really work on ourselves—think about our role in racial oppression, our role in gender oppression, our role in all sorts of oppression.


 

Georgiann Davis will be giving the 2022 SWS Feminist Activism Awardee talk during the 2023 Summer Meeting SWS Awards Reception the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown on Sunday, August 20. SWS Meeting Registration Form is now open: https://sws.memberclicks.net/2023summerreg! For more information on the 2023 Summer Meeting, please visit: https://socwomen.org/2023-summer-meeting/.

SWS Congratulates the 2023-2024 ASA Minority Fellowship Awardees Sponsored by SWS – Clark Brinson and Faith Deckard

 

SWS Congratulates the 2023-2024 ASA Minority Fellowship Awardees Sponsored by SWS –
Clark Brinson and Faith Deckard

 

Clark Brinson
Graduate Institution: Emory University
Sociologists for Women in Society MFP

Clark Brinson is a PhD candidate in sociology at Emory University where she also earned her MA. She earned her BA in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on inequality, social psychology, and the needs and experiences of queer communities and communities of color. Brinson’s dissertation, Planning Our Futures: A Qualitative Study of Family Formation Goals among Black Queer Women, examines family formation desires among Black queer-identified women living in Atlanta. Using intersectionality theory as a guiding framework, the study explores how Black queer women navigate both disadvantage and privilege during the family planning process through differences in sexual orientation, class position, and gender expression. This project applies mixed methods, using interview data with 54 Black queer women and survey data from the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey, to examine challenges in family planning among Black queer southern women. Brinson’s work aims to advance science and support organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive justice, and racial justice. She has received the James Weldon Johnson Institute Dissertation Completion Grant and has been involved with the Coalition of Graduate Sociologists and the Black Graduate Student Association at Emory University. Brinson also recently completed her tenure as a Research Fellow for Justice Work, an organization that focuses on advancing equity and justice through community interventions, research, and political advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys trying new vegan recipes, hiking, and going to the beach.

 

Faith Deckard
Graduate Institution: University of Texas at Austin
Sociologists for Women in Society MFP

Faith Deckard is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her BA in Biology at Trinity University and her MA in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin where she was a McNair Scholar. Her areas of interests include crime, law, and deviance, population health, support networks, and debt and poverty. Her dissertation Bonded: How Commercial Bail Entangles Families through Money and Risk examines how “kin and friends” inadvertently become involved in carceral surveillance and the punishment systems through the processes of bail and bail bonds. Deckard was a Population Research Fellow (NICHD Recipient) at the University of Texas at Austin and currently serves as a graduate research assistant in the Life HD Lab where she has been able to combine her interests in biology and sociology to look at how racial inequality impacts health disparities. She also received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Deckard continues to help support minority scholars by organizing workshops on promoting self-care and applying for external funding. When she has free time, she loves to on new adventures with friends. This has led to her picking up bouldering, short hikes, and attending comedy and improv shows.

 

SWS Congratulates all of the 2023 – 2024 American Sociological Association (ASA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Fellows!

To view the 2023-2024 Minority Fellowship Program Fellows, please visit: https://www.asanet.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/minority-fellowship-program/2023-2024-minority-fellowship-program-fellows/?hilite=MFP.

For more information on the Minority Fellowship Program’s (MFP), please visit:  https://www.asanet.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/minority-fellowship-program/.

Thank you to our SWS liaisons to the ASA Minority Fellowship Program, Chaniqua Simpson and Andrea Gómez Cervantes.

Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Reich, the 2023 SWS Feminist Mentoring Award Winner!

The SWS Feminist Mentoring Award was established in 1990 to honor SWS Members who are outstanding feminist mentors. While the word “mentoring” is commonly used to describe a faculty-student relationship, this award has shown the breadth of ways that feminists do mentoring. In establishing the award, SWS recognized that feminist mentoring is an important and concrete way to encourage feminist scholarship.

This year’s Feminist Mentoring Award Subcommittee included Saida Grundy (Subcommittee Chair,) Rebecca P., Heather Laube, and LaToya Council. The Subcommittee decided that Dr. Jennifer Reich will be the recipient of the SWS 2023 Feminist Mentoring Award.

Dr. Jennifer Reich is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the University Honors and Leadership Program. She earned her BA from the University of California Santa Barbara and her doctorate from the University of California Davis, and she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in health policy at the University of California San Francisco. Her research examines how individuals and families weigh information and strategize their interactions with the state and service providers in the context of public policy, particularly as they relate to healthcare and welfare. She is author of two award-winning books, Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System and Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, and is editor of the books, Reproduction and Society and the State of Families. Her work has been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and Newsweek, and on the Netflix show, Bill Nye Saves the World. She teaches classes on healthcare, family, and reproductive politics.

Here are some highlights from Jennifer Reich’s nomination materials that were submitted by Emily Mann, with support from Tristan Bridges, Laura Carpenter, Patrick Grzanka, Jessica Harrison, Penny Harvey, Anthony Hatch, Joanna Kempner, Ophra Leyser-Whalen, Krystale Littlejohn, Meika Loe, Zakiya Luna, Norah MacKendrick, Anna Muraco, Ranita Ray, LaTonya Trotter, and Jonathan Wynn.

Laura Carpenter noted, “Jennifer Reich’s mentoring comes with no hidden agendas or strings attached; she does not mentor to self-aggrandize or advance her own career. She mentors others because she believes she can—and indeed she does—help others reach the places where they can positively affect the world through their teaching and research.” 

Anna Muraco detailed in her nomination letter, “At conferences, “Jennifer” takes time to meet with students and faculty members who have solicited her advice on scholarship and job searches; she then connects them with other scholars who are part of her network.”

LaTonya Trotter noted: “Speaking as a Black scholar, I know that getting us into the pipeline is one thing; getting us through it is a different matter altogether. With both encouragement and practical support, Jennifer has helped get me through it. When I was an Assistant Professor, she was not only encouraging of my research agenda, she provided incisive feedback on my book manuscript. As I went up for tenure, Jennifer gave me practical advice to help me navigate the hidden curriculum of that process. And, when she heard that my institution did not give me tenure, she stepped forward, without my asking, to support the job search that resulted in my current, tenured position. Although we have never shared the same institution, Jennifer has shown up, again and again, to help me make a place for myself in the academy.”

We hope you will join us in congratulating Jennifer and that you will make plans to join us for the 2023 Summer Meeting SWS Awards Reception that will take place on August 20, 2023, in Philadelphia, PA starting at 6:00 pm at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

SWS Meeting Registration Form is now open: https://sws.memberclicks.net/2023summerreg! SWS Summer Meeting attendees must register for the SWS Meeting and must also be registered for the ASA 2023 Annual Meeting.

Winter 2023 Award Winners

Congratulations to Dr. Kirsten Dellinger, the 2023 SWS Feminist Activism Award Winner!

The SWS Feminist Activism Award, established in 1995, is presented annually to an SWS member who has notably and consistently used sociology to improve conditions for women in society. The award honors outstanding feminist advocacy efforts that embody the goal of service to women and that have identifiably improved women’s lives. This year’s Feminist Activism Award Subcommittee included Ghassan Moussawi (Subcommittee Chair), Brittany Battle, LaToya Council and Rocio Garcia. The Subcommittee selected Kirsten Dellinger as the SWS 2023 Feminist Activism Award Winner.

Kirsten Dellinger is a Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi (2018 to present). She formerly served as Department chair in Sociology and Anthropology for 11 years (2007-2018).  She received her B.A. degree in psychology at Rollins College and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She brings a feminist sociological approach to bear on efforts to identify and address racial, gender, and sexual inequalities in department and university settings. She has helped build the Pathways to Equity plan for the College of Liberal Arts to create policies and practices that support faculty, staff, and students in their work.  As part of this effort she is leading the first cluster hire initiative to bring diverse and cutting-edge research, teaching, and scholars to the College at the University of Mississippi. She is currently collaborating with campus partners to seek funding from NSF ADVANCE Catalyst and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 initiatives to foster institutional transformation in STEM and beyond.

Her research and teaching interests focus on gender and sexuality through intersectional and qualitative lenses to better understand the dynamics of workplace culture, inequality, and social change. She has mentored over 50 graduate students in their research on these and related topics.  She co-edited a book with Christine L. Williams entitled Gender and Sexuality in the Workplace (Emerald). She has published articles on workplace culture and sexual harassment, the construction of masculinities in organizations, workplace dress norms, and the dynamics of gay friendly workplaces, in journals such as the Annual Review of Sociology, Gender & SocietySocial Problems, Gender IssuesSexuality Research and Social Policy and Sociological Spectrum. She has also published work on the methodological implications of disaster research in the context of Hurricane Katrina and a variety of articles on the Global South.

She has been actively involved in campus and national organizations that promote gender and racial equality including the University of Mississippi’s Sarah Isom Center for Women/Gender Studies, the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement’s Diversity Liaison Committee, the Slavery Research Group, the Chancellor’s Committee on Sensitivity and Respect, Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), and the American Sociological Association’s Committee on the Status of Women. She recently served on the executive committee for the Southern Sociological Society and has been an editorial board member for academic journals including Gender & SocietySocial Problems, and Social Contexts.

Kirsten’s central nominator, Christine Williams indicated, “For the past four years, Kirsten has held the position of Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi. She is the first person to occupy this position. In this role, Kirsten has engaged in strategic planning and built an infrastructure for DEI programming from the ground up. Providing direct support for the hiring, promotion, and retention of Black faculty is central to her work. To this end, she has instituted cluster hires, improved the faculty search process, and increased available resources for faculty research.  She also supports Black students from recruitment to graduation and beyond. Kirsten uses her significant background and expertise in sociology to promote feminist social change at the University of Mississippi.”

Kirsten has been a leader in promoting gender equity at the University of Mississippi. Through her service on the Pay Equity committee (part of the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women), she co-wrote a report which led to increases in pay for many women faculty on campus. That report also looked at the impact of racial inequality on pay. With other feminists, she started “Equal Pay Day”–handing out “pay day” candy bars at the Student Union. The Provost at the time, Carolyn Staton (the first and only woman Provost at the University) implemented the recommendations of the report.

As a faculty member and as Chair, Kirsten is a highly visible proponent and supporter of feminist and anti-racist student groups. As her CV attests, she has participated in numerous panels related to gender and race equality and diversity. She makes herself available to student groups working for equality on campus and participates in student-led protests to support their work. For example, the movement to combat sexual assault on her campus is growing in part thanks to the emergence of a student group on campus called RASA (Rallying Against Sexual Assault). This group was founded by one of her students in her Sociology of Gender course.


Congratulations to Jun Zhou, 2023 SWS Cheryl Allyn Miller Award Winner!

Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) established The Cheryl Allyn Miller Award for graduate students and recent PhDs. working in the area of women and paid work: employment and self-employment, informal market work, illegal work. The award honors the late Cheryl Allyn Miller, a sociologist and feminist who studied women and paid work. The 2023 Cheryl Allyn Miller Award Winner is Jun Zhou.

Thank you to the Cheryl Allyn Miller Award Subcommittee that included Laura Bunyan (Chair), Suki Xiao, Rianka Roy, Sarah A. Robert, and Lisa Dilks.

Jun Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, a student affiliate with the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics, and a certificate holder in the Science, Technology & Society Program. Her research interests intersect gender/sexuality, political economy, and science and technology studies.

Jun’s dissertation project is a comparative study of gender in the political economy by tracing the varying human-machine relations across China’s manufacturing and digital labor regimes. Specifically, drawing on ethnographic and historical methods, this project looks at how digital technologies such as algorithms reconfigure human-machine relations in digital workplaces compared to those in the pre-digital age. Juxtaposing the panopticon-style machinery on assembly lines that restrict women’s body in time and space and present-day technologies of tracking, surveilling, and valuing on digital platforms, the project attends to both the continuities and ruptures of (apparently) new digital machinery with antecedent forms of capital accumulation and state control.

Jun’s article looks at how women negotiate work-family relations when the family is internal to their work and how much autonomy women can attain during this process. Drawing on ethnographic data in Chicago’s Chinatown and in-depth interviews with immigrant women entrepreneurs, the article examines how women construct the boundary between “family” and “business” even though the business-making practices in the market are undergirded by the thick gendered kinship relations grounded in the family. The article offers implications of their entangled work-family experiences on the implicit power relations and inequalities in the increasingly informal and irregular workplace against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and mass unemployment.

Jun is the recipient of the ASA Economic Sociology section 2022 Best Student Paper in Economic Sociology and Entrepreneurship Award, the ASA Family Section 2022 Linda Burton Award, the 2022 McGuigan Prize for Best Graduate Essay in Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Michigan, and the 2020 Raymond Fogelson Award for Best Master Thesis in the Ethnological and Historical Sciences at University of Chicago.


Congratulations to Kavya Subramaniam, the 2023 SWS Undergraduate Social Action Award Winner!

The Undergraduate Social Action Award is given annually to recognize students or a team of students making a substantial contribution to improving the lives of women in society through activism. SWS initiated this award in 2003. The work honored by this award is central to the SWS goal to foster activism for women. SWS recognizes that action “for women” does not mean that the work was done “with women” or even “by women.” Substantial need exists for social action working with working with men, boys, LGBTQ communities and other groups where change will benefit women and can be understood as feminist action. Therefore, SWS recognizes work done in this spirit regardless of applicant gender identity. A special thank you to the SWS 2023 Undergraduate Social Action Subcommittee: Kris De Welde (Co-Chair), Heather Hlavka(Co-Chair), Marley Olson and Melody Huslage. In 2022, we are pleased to announce that Kavya Subramaniam is the 2022 Undergraduate Social Action Awardee. Thank you to Dr. Clare Daniel for nominating Kavya for this prestigious award.

Kavya Subramaniam is a fourth-year student at Tulane University studying Neuroscience and Philosophy. She is currently serving as the Executive Coordinator of Big Easy EC, a local organization dedicated to providing free and confidentially delivered emergency contraception and pregnancy tests to students 24/7. Kavya has been involved in various aspects of reproductive justice work on Tulane’s campus, including serving as a peer advocate through Tulane’s Sexual Aggression and Peer Hotline Education Program (SAPHE) and as an Emergency Medical Technician through Tulane EMS.

As noted in her nomination materials submitted by Dr. Clare Daniel: Upon being elected to her position as executive coordinator, Kavya took the initiative to create a handbook for all volunteers, which explains the procedures and considerations that ensure the safety of volunteers and facilitate access to EC, pregnancy tests, and other sexual and reproductive health resources. Kavya has also worked hard to ensure a consistent supply of EC and other sexual health materials in the midst of a national EC shortage. She manages a team of 33 volunteers and oversees outreach for the organization. In this post-Roe era, in which there is no access to legal abortion in the state of Louisiana, the work of Big Easy EC has become increasingly important, and Kavya has stepped up to the task of leading them with the utmost skill and thought.

Moreover, Kavya maintains a rigorous academic course load and various other extracurricular commitments, including as a member of the Sexual Aggression Peer Hotline and Education and an emergency medical technician for Tulane University and the City of New Orleans. Tulane’s community has benefited immensely as a result of her time here.


Congratulations to Dr. Zakiya Luna, the 2023 SWS Feminist Lecturer Award Winner!

The 2023 SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Award Winner is Dr. Zakiya Luna. Thank you to the SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Subcommittee that was comprised of Shobha Hamal Gurung (Chair), Christobel Asiedu, Jill Bystydzienski, Margarita Levine, Sara Tyberg, and Marcella Gemelli. The SWS Distinguished Lectureship was founded in 1985 as a way of recognizing members whose scholarship employs a feminist perspective, and of making this feminist scholar available to campuses that are isolated, rural, located away from major metropolitan areas, underfunded and without the resources needed to invite guest speakers, and/or characterized by hostility to feminist scholarship. A key goal of the program is to provide a feminist voice on campuses where such a perspective is unusual and/or unwelcome. Please note that the Lectureship originally carried the name of Cheryl Allyn Miller, but now there is a separate Cheryl Allyn Miller Award.

Zakiya Luna is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her research, teaching and community work focus on social movements, reproduction, human rights, and intersectionality. She has published multiple peer-reviewed articles and chapters and secured multiple grants including from the National Science Foundation. Her research on the reproductive justice movement includes the book Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice (NYU Press), which was included on the Oprah Daily list “The 12 Books You Need to Read Post the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade Smackdown.” She is coeditor of Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis (Routledge) with Whitney Laster Pirtle. Her other writing includes contribution to Ms. and Refinery 29. Professor Luna earned a joint PhD in Sociology and Women’s Studies from University of Michigan, where she also earned a Master of Social Work. She was a University of California (UC) President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley affiliated with the Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Sociology and the Center for the Study of Law and Society. She was hosted by the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law, which she accidentally helped co-found (long story). She was also the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Human Rights Postdoc at University of Wisconsin, a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow and member of inaugural cohort (2019) of Society of Family Planning Changemakers in Family Planning.

As noted in her nomination materials collected by Victoria Reyes and Whitney Pirtle:

Dr. Luna is a dedicated teacher, a key part of her feminist praxis. She has developed many  courses in order to teach students about feminist and sociological principles, including seminars  of Intersectionality, Gender, Race, and Class, Reproduction, Reproductive Justice, Sociology of  Gender, and Social Movements. Innovation, just as in her research, is also found in her  pedagogy. For example, she was part of the collaboration between the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law /Center for Race and Gender that created the Center for Race & Gender Reproductive Justice Working Group while a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and has advised many students in the area of gender, sexuality, intersectionality, reproductive justice and social  movements

For example, she was [part of the collaboration between the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law /Center for Race and Gender that created of the Center for Race & Gender Reproductive Justice Working Group] while a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and has advised many students in the area of gender, sexuality, intersectionality, reproductive justice and social  movements. In recognition of her excellence in mentoring even at an early stage in her career, she was the inaugural recipient of the Sociology Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award while a graduate student at Michigan.  …

Dr. Luna has also established herself as one of the most visible advocates of Black feminist  sociology and praxis with an inspiring record of service, community activism and public  scholarship. She has worked and marched alongside activists to increase rights for women of  color in particular. Her commitment and labor for social justice in the academy and beyond was  evident in graduate school. Four scholars, Drs. Hirschfield, Kazyak, Pfeffer, and Scherrer all met Dr. Luna while they were all in graduate school together and note that even then, “Dr. Luna  quickly emerged as a leader at UM, working to organize across several cohorts to ensure  graduate student rights and well-being, particularly among those most marginalized within the  discipline.”  …

Dr. Bridges, a former colleague of Dr. Luna’s when she was at University of California, Santa  Barbara, writes that her feminist praxis also “left a lasting impact on our department, having  instituted many changes that have made work in the department more equitable, transparent, and  considered with shared goals in mind.” Her current WUSTL colleagues agree to the transformative character of Dr. Luna’s scholarship and praxis, note in their supporting letter that “Her commitment to forging collaborative networks that directly draw power from, as well as speak to, reproductive justice activists epitomizes the promise of an engaged, public sociology.  And of course, this work has never been more urgent following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe earlier this year.”

Congratulations to Dr. Zakiya Luna, the 2023 SWS Feminist Lecturer Award Winner!

The 2023 SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Award Winner is Dr. Zakiya Luna. Thank you to the SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Subcommittee that was comprised of Shobha Hamal Gurung (Chair), Christobel Asiedu, Jill Bystydzienski, Margarita Levine, Sara Tyberg, and Marcella Gemelli. The SWS Distinguished Lectureship was founded in 1985 as a way of recognizing members whose scholarship employs a feminist perspective, and of making this feminist scholar available to campuses that are isolated, rural, located away from major metropolitan areas, underfunded and without the resources needed to invite guest speakers, and/or characterized by hostility to feminist scholarship. A key goal of the program is to provide a feminist voice on campuses where such a perspective is unusual and/or unwelcome. Please note that the Lectureship originally carried the name of Cheryl Allyn Miller, but now there is a separate Cheryl Allyn Miller Award.

Zakiya Luna is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her research, teaching and community work focus on social movements, reproduction, human rights, and intersectionality. She has published multiple peer-reviewed articles and chapters and secured multiple grants including from the National Science Foundation. Her research on the reproductive justice movement includes the book Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice (NYU Press), which was included on the Oprah Daily list “The 12 Books You Need to Read Post the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade Smackdown.” She is coeditor of Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis (Routledge) with Whitney Laster Pirtle. Her other writing includes contribution to Ms. and Refinery 29. Professor Luna earned a joint PhD in Sociology and Women’s Studies from University of Michigan, where she also earned a Master of Social Work. She was a University of California (UC) President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley affiliated with the Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Sociology and the Center for the Study of Law and Society. She was hosted by the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law, which she accidentally helped co-found (long story). She was also the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Human Rights Postdoc at University of Wisconsin, a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow and member of inaugural cohort (2019) of Society of Family Planning Changemakers in Family Planning.

As noted in her nomination materials collected by Victoria Reyes and Whitney Pirtle:

Dr. Luna is a dedicated teacher, a key part of her feminist praxis. She has developed many  courses in order to teach students about feminist and sociological principles, including seminars  of Intersectionality, Gender, Race, and Class, Reproduction, Reproductive Justice, Sociology of  Gender, and Social Movements. Innovation, just as in her research, is also found in her  pedagogy. For example, she was part of the collaboration between the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law /Center for Race and Gender that created the Center for Race & Gender Reproductive Justice Working Group while a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and has advised many students in the area of gender, sexuality, intersectionality, reproductive justice and social  movements

For example, she was [part of the collaboration between the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law /Center for Race and Gender that created of the Center for Race & Gender Reproductive Justice Working Group] while a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and has advised many students in the area of gender, sexuality, intersectionality, reproductive justice and social  movements. In recognition of her excellence in mentoring even at an early stage in her career, she was the inaugural recipient of the Sociology Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award while a graduate student at Michigan.  …

Dr. Luna has also established herself as one of the most visible advocates of Black feminist  sociology and praxis with an inspiring record of service, community activism and public  scholarship. She has worked and marched alongside activists to increase rights for women of  color in particular. Her commitment and labor for social justice in the academy and beyond was  evident in graduate school. Four scholars, Drs. Hirschfield, Kazyak, Pfeffer, and Scherrer all met Dr. Luna while they were all in graduate school together and note that even then, “Dr. Luna  quickly emerged as a leader at UM, working to organize across several cohorts to ensure  graduate student rights and well-being, particularly among those most marginalized within the  discipline.”  …

Dr. Bridges, a former colleague of Dr. Luna’s when she was at University of California, Santa  Barbara, writes that her feminist praxis also “left a lasting impact on our department, having  instituted many changes that have made work in the department more equitable, transparent, and  considered with shared goals in mind.” Her current WUSTL colleagues agree to the transformative character of Dr. Luna’s scholarship and praxis, note in their supporting letter that “Her commitment to forging collaborative networks that directly draw power from, as well as speak to, reproductive justice activists epitomizes the promise of an engaged, public sociology.  And of course, this work has never been more urgent following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe earlier this year.”

We hope you will join us in congratulating Zakiya and that you will make plans to join us for the 2023 Winter Meeting Awards Banquet and Reception to be held on Saturday, January 14 starting at 5:15 pm. Please register here for the 2023 Winter Meeting where you will have the opportunity to attend this celebration.

 

Congratulations to the 2022 Summer SWS Social Actions Initiative Award Winners: Minwoo Jung and Leslie Wood

In 2016, SWS Council approved the Social Action Committee’s (SAC) proposal to support more direct social action of SWS members. The Social Actions Initiative Awards provide a way for the SAC to directly support and encourage the social activism of SWS members.  Awards are given out twice per year on a competitive basis until funds run out. The social actions represented by this initiative are central to advancing the mission of SWS. Special thanks go to the Social Actions Initiative Award Subcommittee: Kris De Welde (Co-Chair), Heather Hlavka (Co-Chair) Rebecca P., Kira Escovar, Natascia Boeri, Rosalind Kichler and Kristy Kelly.

Queer Feminist Climate Justice in Asia proposed by Minwoo Jung.

Minwoo Jung is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago. His research investigates the impacts of global and regional geopolitics on political, economic, and social life of marginalized groups and individuals. His work grows out of multi-sited fieldwork conducted across East and Southeast Asia. His work has been published in The British Journal of Sociology, The Sociological Review, Social Movement Studies, and positions: asia critique.

As a transnational gender and sexuality scholar, Minwoo worked on a multi-sited research project on how global politics impact the conditions of queer activism in various parts of Asia, including South Korea. During Minwoo’s fieldwork, he became involved in the work of Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights in Korea, a Korean queer activist organization. For more information on Solidarity Korea, please visit:  http://lgbtpride.or.kr/. Solidarity Korea and Minwoo proposed educational workshops on transnational climate justice and queer feminist action for Korean queer and feminist activists. The workshops will provide a space for transformative education for Korean queer and feminist activists who seek to build coalitions between climate justice activism and queer and feminist activism in South Korea and across Asia. They will work with local climate justice organizations to create educational resource and identify shared issues, challenges, and agendas related to the uneven impact of the climate crisis on vulnerable women, as well as queer and trans people. During the workshop, they will also seek to form coalitions with feminist and queer movements in other Asian countries, particularly Taiwan and Japan, to address regional-scale climate challenges. With these workshops, Minwoo plans to bring the important issue of how impacts of climate change have been and will continue to be unequal to the attention of activist communities so that we can better understand climate injustices form a queer and feminist perspective, as well as discuss possible action plans for queer and feminist sustainability that challenges heteronational and reproductive futurism.

Boots on the Ground Initiative to Increase Public Awareness of Harm Reduction and Treatment Resources for Underserved Communities proposed by Leslie Wood.

Leslie Wood (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate at Kent State University. She studies medical sociology/mental health and deviance. Her current work focuses on the social aspects of drug use, harm reduction, and experiences and perceptions surrounding the recovery community. Over the past 5 years, she has volunteered with and built relationships with numerous grassroots organizations and individuals in Akron, Ohio where she lives. She is passionate about meeting people where they are and providing access to harm reduction and recovery resources for marginalized populations. She strongly believes in asking people what they need, because every individual is the expert in their own lives, their own drug use, and their own definitions of recovery. 

Leslie is thrilled and honored to receive an SWS social action award to help her in this work. Her proposed social action, “Boots on the Ground Initiative to Increase Public Awareness of Harm Reduction and Treatment Resources for Underserved Communities,” is a targeted campaign to provide education about and access to resources for harm reduction and recovery to specific neighborhoods where these vital tools are rarely provided. Using recent local overdose data to identify appropriate zip-codes, we will visit three underserved neighborhoods – low SES neighborhoods with high overdose rates – on three separate dates to engage with community members and pass out brochures, as well as naloxone with instructions and demonstrations of use. We also hope to offer other harm reduction tools including fentanyl test strips and wound care supplies.

Leslie proposed outreach campaign is targeted towards specific neighborhoods in Akron, Ohio where there is limited access to or awareness of local resources for harm reduction and treatment for people who use drugs. The goals for this campaign are as follows: 1) increase public awareness of what services and resources are freely available and local, 2) provide education on harm reduction and safer drug use 3) serve specific, underserved populations within their own communities. This campaign will be implemented by a team of local advocates primarily composed of people with who have lived experience with drug use, harm reduction and/or recovery. Ultimately, the team hopes to increase the services available directly within these underserved neighborhoods where funding does not seem to reach and decreasing the fear of asking for help and reducing the stigma of talking about drug use. 

SWS will honor Minwoo Jung and Leslie Wood and all our 2022 Summer Award recipients during our Awards Banquet which is scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 7 from 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm in the Los Angeles Convention Center, Room 515B. 

If you are interested in making a gift to support the Social Actions Initiative Award, please contact Barret Katuna, Executive Officer, at swseo.barretkatuna@outlook.com, or make a gift via this form: https://sws.memberclicks.net/donation-form.