Departmental Prizes
For Undergraduate Students
The Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women's Studies
The Pembroke Center is pleased and honored to offer the Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women’s Studies. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding honors thesis on questions having to do with women or gender. In the spring, the Pembroke Center invites faculty in all fields to nominate honors theses for the prize. A committee of faculty who teach and write in the area of gender studies will make the selection.
If you wish to make a nomination, please send the following to Box 1958 by May 1:
- thesis adviser’s evaluation
- a copy of the thesis
The Ruth Simmons Prize carries with it an award of $1,000.
Full list of recipients of the Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women's Studies
2012 Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women's Studies
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2011 Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women's Studies
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Joan Wallach Scott Prize
The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women annually awards the Joan Wallach Scott Prize for an outstanding honors thesis in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Joan Wallach Scott is the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Among her many books are Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005), and The Politics of the Veil: Banning Islamic Headscarves in French Public Schools (2007). Professor Scott taught at Brown from 1980-1985, where she was Nancy Duke Lewis Professor and Professor of History. She was the founding director of the Pembroke Center.
Each year the Pembroke Center awards this prize for an outstanding thesis by a Gender and Sexuality Studies Concentrator. If you wish to nominate a dissertation, please send to Box 1958:
- A nominating letter including a brief description of the thesis
- A letter of support from a second member of the dissertation committee
- A copy of the dissertation
Click for a list of all Joan Wallach Scott Prize recipients
Congratulations to the 2012 Joan Wallach Scott Prize recipient |
Kathryn A. Davis "Seeing Queerly, Selling Queerly: Reconceptualizing LGBTQ-Targeted Television Advertising and Audience Reception" |
Congratulations to the 2011 Joan Wallach Scott Prize recipient |
"Whoring in America: Sacred Sex, Subjugation, This thesis examines the multiple layers of subjective experience which contribute to the production of identity and knowledge for and about women who engage in prostitution, in a contemporary American context. I rely heavily on first-hand accounts and memoirs, to demonstrate the diverse, multifarious ways prostitution is experienced, its effects on the phenomenological experience of the self, and the dialogical formation of identity. In deconstructing prostitution epistemology (what we “know” about prostitution, and how we come to know it) I sought to reveal the profoundly injurious conditions of leading a stigmatized existence, suggesting the need for a politics of livability, which make recognition and empathy of paramount importance. |
Stephanie Paris
For Graduate Students
Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize
The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women annually awards the Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize for an outstanding dissertation in the area of feminist studies. Marie J. Langlois became a trustee emerita of the Corporation in 2007 having previously served as trustee and vice chancellor of the University since 1998. She served as a member of the Board of Fellows from 1992 to 1998, as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1980 to 1985, and as a trustee and treasurer of the University from 1988 to 1992. She received a bachelor of arts degree from Brown in 1964 and a master of business administration degree from Harvard University in 1967. Ms. Langlois recently retired as managing director of Washington Trust Investors, a division of Washington Trust Company. She currently serves on the boards of directors of the Rhode Island Foundation, Lifespan, Salve Regina University, Rhode Island Philharmonic and Music School, and Rhode Island Public Radio.
Each year the Pembroke Center awards this prize for a dissertation in areas related to gender studies or feminist analysis. If you wish to nominate a dissertation, please send to Box 1958 by current nomination deadline date (May 1):
- A nominating letter including a brief description of the thesis
- A letter of support from a second member of the dissertation committee
- A copy of the dissertation
The Marie J. Langlois Prize carries with it an award of $1,000.
Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize recipients
Congratulations to the 2012 Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize recipients
Daphna Oren-Magidor "'Make me a Fruitful Vine': Dealing with Oren-Magidor's dissertation focused on the experience of infertility in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and discussed this topic not only from a medical perspective but also from its cultural, gendered and emotional dimensions. It examined how infertile couples understood their condition, gave meaning to it, and ultimately sought to treat it. It also used infertility as a lens through which to explore the interactions between medicine and culture in this period. |
Pooja Rangan "Automatic Ethnography: Otherness, Indexicality, |
Congratulations to the 2011 Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize recipients
Corey McEleney "The Pleasure in Error: Early Modern Romance and Poetic Futility" This dissertation examines the errant role that pleasure plays in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers’ attempts to define the epistemological, ethical, and civic value of poetry. My focus is on the mode of writing known as romance, which came under attack in the Renaissance for allegedly producing an excess of pleasure over utility. I argue that the threat of poetry’s futility, which was pushed to the limits in the case of romance, reveals fundamental contradictions within the project of Renaissance humanism and constitutes a blind spot for contemporary criticism. |
"Reclaiming the Discarded: The Politics of “Reclaiming the Discarded” explores intertwined issues of gender, class, and labor among catadores, who retrieve and sell materials on Rio de Janeiro’s largest garbage dump. This study reveals that catadores integrate work with other dimensions of everyday life in ways that unsettle gendered divisions between workplace and home and that challenge existing theories of the informal economy. The stories of catadores show how the dump has become a space in which new gender and class subjectivities are made and alternative livelihoods and life projects fashioned. |
Kathleen Millar
Helen Terry MacLeod Prize
From 1995-2007 the Pembroke Center awarded this prize for an outstanding undergraduate honors thesis that addressed questions of gender or women, or that brought a feminist analysis to bear on a topic of study.
MacLeod Prize recipients 1995-2007
In 2007, this award was changed from a prize for a completed honors thesis to a research grant available to support undergraduate honors research. Please click here for information on the grant.