Our Sheroes
Rosie the Riveter Award Recipients
Cara Tuttle (top left), serving as interim faculty advisor to Upstate Upstarts in Spring 2009
Adrienne Jones (top right), serving as Center Supervisor
Sarah Wilson (bottom left), serving as Assistant Coordinator of the Bodies of Knowledge Symposium
Kyia Chandler (bottom right), serving as CWGS Liaison to the SiHLE Outreach Program.
Sister Spit Theory Slam Awards
The Awards for Scholarly Achievement have been renamed as the Sister Spit Theory Slam Awards (after a popular Slam Poetry troupe based in San Francisco). These award recipients presented papers at the Upstate Feminist Theory Slam panels and at national conferences in Women’s and Gender Studies.
The recipients are Andrea Miller (pictured above with Dr. Lisa Johnson at the Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies Conference in Columbia, SC on March 21, 2009 where she presented a paper on feminist narratology and its applications to Toni Morrison’s novel Sula and the contemporary HBO television series True Blood) and Lindsay Harris (below right). Andrea also won the inaugural Emma Goldman Award for Outstanding Major in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies, 2008-2009.
Lindsay Harris, who also presented a paper at the Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies Conference, on bisexual epistemology as a critical framework for interrogating the narrative structure of Jennifer Baumgardner’s cultural studies memoir Look Both Ways. Lindsay is also the recipient of the newly titled Lucy Stone Award for Outstanding Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies 2008-2009).
CWGS Independent Spirit Awards
The last category of awards is the renamed Campus Consciousness-Raising Awards – now called the CWGS Independent Spirit Awards.
Recipients include Joey Geier, President of Pride Upstate, for coordinating the 3rd Annual National Coming Out Day Festival at USC Upstate and for serving on the Safe Zone Allies Program Steering Committee and as a trainer in the program.
The next three recipients are recognized for their participation in the SiHLE Outreach Program for African American Teen Girls in Spartanburg, SC.
- Kindra Graham
- Melanie McBeth
- Jasmine Rice
Emma Goldman Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Major with an Emphasis in Women’s and Gender Studies
The inaugural Emma Goldman Award was developed this year to reward high achievement in IDS/WGS. The award is named after a famous Marxist feminist activist who developed a philosophy of feminist anarchism, a political philosophy that foregrounds individual and collective will over the will of the government. Emma Goldman (1869-1940) is known for her vitality and charisma, and was admired by her allies for being a radical free-thinker.
These characteristics reflect the independent spirit that leads some of our USC Upstate students to create a major of their own – in the absence of a Women’s and Gender Studies major – by majoring in IDS with a WGS concentration. This choice is quickly gaining in popularity among the WGS minors.
The award name is also inspired by the inaugural winner, Andrea Miller (pictured above, with Dr. Lisa Johnson, in the Sister Spit Theory Slam Awards section), whose first words to Dr. Johnson after class, as a new transfer student from Gardner-Webb, were, “I’m very interested in Marxist feminism. Can you recommend any good books for me to read on the subject?” This is an unusual conversation at Upstate! Drea has been reading, reflecting on, and formulating original ideas in the field of Marxist feminist cultural studies ever since.
“If I can't dance - I don't want to be part of your revolution.”
- Emma Goldman
Lucy Stone Award for Outstanding Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies
The Lucy Stone Award for Outstanding Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies is newly named this year as well. The award is named after a prominent abolitionist and female suffragist in the United States. Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree, and she helped organize the first National Women’s Rights Convention. Called “the orator,” and “the morning star of the woman’s rights movement,” Stone published her radical views in the Woman’s Journal and delivered a speech that sparked Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women’s suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that “Lucy Stone was the first person by whom the heart of the American public was deeply stirred on the woman question." Stone was also the first American woman to revert to her maiden name after marriage.
The award is named after Lucy Stone in honor, in part, of the first recipient of the award, Lindsay Harris (pictured above, in the Sister Spit Theory Slam Awards section). Lindsay first came on to the CWGS scene in fall 2006, when she attended Dr. Johnson's talk on “Women in Love,” wherein Johnson remarked that many young women today still come to college in search of their “MRS” degree. Lindsay was the only undergraduate to pose a question after the talk, in a room packed with faculty members and administrators, and she stated defiantly that she was in fact here for her MRS degree, and wanted to know what, exactly, was wrong with that. Over time, Lindsay began to take Women’s Studies courses, and her priorities and interests shifted. The following fall she enrolled in Johnson's Feminist Theory course, and her intellectual curiosity about gender, power, and sexual politics caught fire. Her current work on bisexual epistemologies reflects the rich academic journey she has taken in WGS at Upstate. She takes home the first Lucy Stone award as recognition of her accomplishments, and as a reminder that while feminist scholars can certainly maintain marriage as a life goal, the MRS degree is simply not enough to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and human development.
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