The 2020 recipient of the Mae and Robert Carter
Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award was Dr. Tiffany E. Barber,
Assistant Profess of Africana Studies and Art History at the University of
Delaware. Dr.
Barber's research focuses on women artists of the Black diaspora working
in the United States and the broader Atlantic world, with a particular
interest in developing new modes of criticism and theory that contest
well-worn notions of feminist art as a reparative enterprise,
particularly with regard to women artists of African descent in the
West. The 2020 Women's Studies Faculty Research Award will support Dr.
Barber's completion of her book manuscript, Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work,
which consider how Black women's otherness at the intersection of race,
gender, and sexuality spurs aesthetic strategies of refusal within
contemporary Black feminist art practice and criticism. Bridging Women's
Studies, Art History, and Africana American Studies, Art History, and
performance studies, Dr. Barber's work explores the binary between
fracture and unity—rupture and repair—within critical theories of
Blackness and feminism as well as in everyday life, and in doing so,
expands the aesthetic and ethical terrain of what it means to be Black
and woman in the 21st century to reveal the omnipresence of historical
injury and strategies of survival.
Dr. Barber will present her research in Fall 2021 as part of The Carter Series Lecture.
The 2019 recipient of the Mae and Robert Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award was Dr. Jaipreet Virdi, Assistant Professor, Department of History at the University of Delaware, received the 2019 Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award for her research “Gendering Deafness: Dorothy Brett’s Lived Experiences with Disability," which she presented for The Carter Series Lecture in November 2020. Dr. Virdi is a historian of medicine, technology, and disability. Her research and teaching interests include the history of medicine, the history of science, disability history, disability technologies, and material/visual culture studies. She received her PhD from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto (2014). Her research on Dorothy Brett offers an alternative perspective for examining Brett’s biography, focusing on her disability and gender performances.
The 2018 recipient of the Mae and
Robert Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award was Dr. Ann V. Bell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, who presented her
research "A Neglected Disparity: Race, Class, Gender, and the Lived
Experience of Abortion" during her October 2019 lecture at UD. Dr.
Bell's research explored the disconnect between statistics and
women's lived experiences of abortion, asking how does the social
construction of abortion and its embedded stereotypes influence how
women understand and experience abortion? Furthermore, importantly, how
does one's life circumstances, including race, class, and gender, shape
such an experience? The standing room-only lecture was attended by students, faculty, and the UD community.
The 2017 recipient of the Mae and Robert Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award was Dr. Mieke Eeckhaut, Assistant Professor of Sociology at
the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice, University of
Delaware. The award supported Dr.
Eeckhaut's research to investigate the association between economic
conditiions and long-acting contraceptive methods such as female
sterilization, intrauterine devices, and implants during the Great
Recession
of 2007-2009. On November 1, 2018, Dr. Eeckhaut
presented her research "Women's Sterilization and Contraception During
the Great Recession, " as the Women & Gender Studies'
Fall Lecture Series in the Trabant
University Center Theater.
The 2016 recipient of the Mae and Robert Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award Program was Dr. Rachael Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Delaware, who presented "The Representation of Women in Japanese War-Themed Video Games." Dr. Hutchinson’s research focused on the representation of women in Japanese war-themed videogames, specifically the highly popular online card game Kantai Collection.
The 2015 Mae and Robert Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty Research Award recipient was Dr. Amanda Bullough, Assistant Professor of Management in the Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware, for "Women Entrepreneurs: Resilience and Reducing Fear through Business Ownership." Building on her previous research in countries like Afghanistan, Dr. Bullough presented her newest data on women entrepreneurs' perceptions about culture and adversity, domestically (Chicago) and abroad (Pakistan), and how these perceptions not only affect their business decisions but also how entrepreneurial activity in turn affects their perceptions of adversity. Dr. Bullough's research spans entrepreneurship, leadership, organizational behavior, cross-cultural management, and international development. Her newest streams of research include entrepreneurship in war zones and under adverse conditions, global leadership, and women's entrepreneurship and leadership.