The WSRC Internship:
Student-Scholar Partners (SSP)
run out of The Women’s Studies Research Center of Brandeis University
Fall 2010 - Spring 2011
Academic Year Journal
Volume four
Spring 2011
Student-Scholar Partnership Program Journal
volume four spring 2011
table of contents
pageSSP Project
4About the Student - Scholar Partnership Program
5Notable Quotes from Successful SSP Relationships
7Scholar: Rosalind Barnett
Student: Anushka Aqil
Project: Gender Matters
9Scholar: Mary Berg
Student: Gilda Di Carli
Project: Translations of Olga Orozco’s Anthologies La oscuridad es otro sol y También la luz es un abismo.
11Scholar: Helen Berger
Student: Rebekah (Becky) McDowell
Project: Does Worshipping the Goddess Make You a Feminist?
14Scholar: Susan Eisenberg
Student: Julie Shih
Project: On Equal Terms: Women in Construction 30 Years and Still Organizing
16Scholar: E. J .Graff
Student: Rachel Gillette
Project: Schuster Institute of Investigative Journalism
18Scholar: Florence Graves
Student: Rachel Klein
Project: Schuster Institute of Investigative Journalism
19Scholar: Brenda McSweeney
Student: Kate Curley
Project: Irish Women Today: Perspectives from Galway to Dublin on Gender Equality
22Scholar: Ruth Nemzoff
Student: Nathan Koskella
Project: Married Into - Making New Family Bonds Work
pageSSP Project
23Scholar: Ellen Rosen
Student: Elizabeth Posner
Project: Be Ye Steadfast- A Biography of Frances Perkins: Research on an Important Historical Feminist
25Scholar: Georgia Sassen
Student: Amanda Dryer
Project: Drums and Poetry Project
27Scholar: Georgia Sassen
Student: Ilana Pomerantz
Project: Drums and Poetry Project
29Scholar: Pheobe Schnitzer
Student: Justine Zayhowski
Project: Gender Issues in Achievement Concerns: Is “Fear of Success” Still With Us?
32Scholar: Stephanie Wasserman
Student: Sarah Kass Levy Steinhouse
Project: Successful Foster Mothers and the Children They Raise: What Are They Doing Right?
About the Student-Scholar Partnership Program
“T
he SSP Program is an excellent opportunity for our talented undergraduates to develop serious, productive, and engaging relationships with scholars and university faculty. These partnerships span so many diverse areas of intellectual inquiry and professional development - it’s stunning to me to see how many different projects are available to our students. This program is truly a credit to the students, scholars, and faculty who participate.” - Provost Marty Krauss, June 2006
Overview
The Student-Scholar Partnership (SSP) was launched in the spring of 1997 as a project of the Women’s Studies Program at Brandeis University. Today, the program continues as a component of the Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC). The goal of the Student-Scholar Partnership is to match undergraduate students with WSRC Scholars and Women’s and Gender Studies faculty to work collaboratively on research or artistic projects. The emphasis of the program is to enable students and scholars/faculty to work collectively on projects that focus on women’s issues in many different fields. Each partnership meets on an ongoing basis throughout the semester and students have the option of continuing to work on their project more then one year. Students provide research assistance including library and online research, archival work, data analysis, interviewing, preparation for art exhibitions, assistance with book publishing and production, and webpage development. Two unique aspects of the program include an emphasis on mentoring and students contributions to the projects. The program supports the important work that the scholars/faculty are conducting on women’s lives and provides Brandeis undergraduates with an exceptional opportunity to work closely with established professionals in their fields of interest.
Notable Quotes from Successful SSP Relationships:
Spring 2011
“R
esearching issues regarding gender portrayal in the different spheres of life has greatly affected my outlook in both my academic and social circles and has impacted the lens through which I perceive, analyze, and appreciate how gender is experienced in daily life.” - StudentAnushka Aqil working with Scholar Rosalind Barnett on “Gender Matters”
“W
orking on this SSP project has allowed me to utilize the skills I have developed through my study of Sociology here at Brandeis, and has reaffirmed my interest in exploring and understanding the world around us. The time that I spent working on the project over the course of the semester provided me with new perspectives and insights.” - StudentRebekah McDowell working with Scholar Helen Berger on “Does Worshipping the Goddess Make You a Feminist?”
“P
ersonally, this project has opened my eyes to the realities that women face around the world…This project has sparked my interest as to what really matters to women in various countries and how their governments measure wellbeing…Not only that, but I have had the opportunity to consider what my dreams are for the future, and how those compare to ones my grandmother and my mother had at my age. And in the future, what might my daughter’s dreams be?” - StudentKate Curley working with Scholar Brenda McSweeney on “Irish Women Today: Perspectives from Galway to Dublin on Gender Equality”
Notable Quotes from Successful SSP Relationships (cont’d.):
Spring 2011
“M
y time at the Schuster Institute - through the Student-Scholar Partnership - has certainly been a rewarding and pertinent experience to my personal interests and career aspirations.” - Student Rachel Gillette with Scholar E.J. Graff on “Schuster Institute of Investigative Journalism”
“T
he project has allowed me to work closely with a scholar and gain some insight to the field of psychology. The time I have spent helping with this project has showed me how psychological ideas have far-reaching effects and has sparked an interest in me to declare an additional major in the field of Psychology. “ - Student Justine Zayhowski with Scholar Phoebe Schnitzer on “Gender Issues in Achievement Concerns: Is “Fear of Success” Still With Us?”
“T
he scholar with whom I have been partnered, Dr. Stephanie Wasserman, is a kind and intelligent woman who has guided me through this research process while genuinely valuing my contributions to her project. I honestly could not have asked for a better experience.” - Student Kass Levy with Scholar Stephanie Wasserman on “Successful Foster Mothers and the Children They Raise: What Are They Doing Right?”
For more information on the Student-Scholar Partnership Program, please contact the Program Coordinator, Kristen Mullin, via e-mail: .
Scholar: Rosalind Barnett
Student Scholar: Anushka Aqil
Gender Matters
Gender and sex are so interchangeable in our society that many are surprised, and often disturbed, to see that gender is a social construction while sex is biological. Although the two are heavily intertwined, they are not the same thing.
Working with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, my insight into gender and gender-related issues in realms of education, politics, media and the workplace has increased tremendously. As I started working with Dr. Barnett, my primary role was to implement Gender Matters, a website that will serve as a resource to educators, students, and others who wish to learn the facts regarding many gender myths and misconceptions. Since then, however, my role has expanded to being a constant contributor to the Media section of the website as well as the maintainer of the overall website content.
Researching issues regarding gender portrayal in the different spheres of life has greatly affected my outlook in both my academic and social circles and has impacted the lens through which I perceive, analyze, and appreciate how gender is experienced in daily life. In addition, this position has provided me with such insight and curiosity that I have also been fortunate to become the Undergraduate Representative for the Women & Gender Studies Program here at Brandeis University. But this is not all that I have learned. The most important thing of all is that the struggle for equality is not yet over and although significant gains have been made for women, a long road still lies ahead. As my specialty lies greatly in the gender portrayals in the media, I will focus on those and share the impact of my own realization of how things are presented in our daily lives.
My first introduction to gender bias and even gender separation in the media was when I learned about the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel Test was designed by Amy Bechdel to assess how many women are seen, heard, and shown as entities on their own merit during filming. The Test has three criteria which every movie has to pass or otherwise it will fail the test. The criteria are: 1) There must be two women in the film; 2) these two women must have a speaking role talking to each other or another woman; and 3) these women should speak about something other than men in the movie. It is absolutely fascinating how many movies fail this test, and especially movies made by Pixar and Disney such as Walle, the Shrek series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Megamind, and Ice Age among others. These movies are targeted to younger audiences yet what messages are being sent and received?
Negative portrayals of both genders are also found in commercials in which both men and women are hyper-masculinized and hyper-feminized by large amounts of muscles, make-up, and body types. It seems that both genders are constantly reminded to conform to a certain ideal of their gender which leaves very little flexibility for self-definition.
Although negative assertions of gender are common in society, many entities, such as the Geena Davis Institute, are working to counter these false-representations. Gender Matters is pursuing a formal relationship with the institute. In addition, we are benefiting from studies they have been conducted on the effect of media on gender perceptions in lives of young girls, teenagers, and college-aged women. Out of all the studies done, the most common finding across the board is that both girls and boys are heavily influenced by what they see on the television and due to this, often undertake dangerous habits to mimic what they think is the ‘norm.’
It is not only my hope but also the hope of the creators and contributors of this website that more accurate perceptions of gender can be shared, seen, and understood. Gender is in fact a social construction and not based entirely on biology. Decisions made based on gender are made without due attention or fairness to the person who is in question. From the work place to whether single-gendered classes are better suited for students are all debates that have arisen recently with the common assertion – boys and girls are separate because that is how they are wired. We at Gender Matters hope to dispel those beliefs using peer-reviewed and scientifically sound data as well as experts to not only impart what gender really is but also to point out the flaws in many of the supposed science that is being promoted in the media
Scholar: Mary Berg
Student: Gilda Di Carli
Translations of Olga Orozco’s Anthologies La oscuridad es otro sol y También la luz es un abismo
Scope:
In this project scholars, Mary Berg and Melanie Nicholson, undertake the difficult task of translating two anthologies of short stories by Argentine author Olga Orozco. “By the time of her death in 1999, Olga Orozco was widely recognized as one of Latin America’s most important twentieth-century poets. Her poetry, oracular in tone and surrealistic in vision, has received considerable critical attention and has been widely anthologized and translated into numerous languages. Yet Orozco’s fiction, collected in two volumes of short stories whose settings and characters intertwine and enrich each other, has remained until now a fairly well guarded-secret. The present collection, comprised of stories from La oscuridad es otro sol (Darkness is Another Sun, 1967) and También la luz es un abismo (Light Also Is an Abyss, 1993), introduced English-speaking readers to the hallucinatory yet lucid world that Olga Orozco’s young narrator, Lía, inhabits and animates with her prodigious imagination.” [1]
Student Duties:
With this understanding of the anthologies in mind, Gilda applied her experiences and native understanding of the Argentine culture and language to a close reading of both the original and also translated text. The texts are placed alongside one another, and she reads both texts almost simultaneously, transitioning at each sentence from Spanish to English. The purpose of this close reading is on a basic level to grasp any typographical errors made in translation, but more importantly to consider whether the word choice and the sentence structure do justice to the original text. But also, it is important to balance Orozco’s intended tone and structure with the audience’s readability in English. As this semester draws to a close, Gilda is now finalizing her search and acquisition of the cover image of the final version of the collection.
Impact:
Both Mary and Gilda have found that Olga Orozco’s text has opened up enchanting thoughts and intriguing conversations especially on the topic of memory, with all its distortions, hazy in setting and yet vivid in details, wherein elements of the subconscious become apparent through symbols and motifs. Lía’s mancha venenosa has been one of the most challenging symbols to translate and no doubt the most fascinating because in it, Olga Orozco embeds several layers of meaning. As translators, it was Mary and Gilda’s task to target their own fears and subconscious, and reflect on their childhoods to try and embrace the rich imagination of Olga Orozco. And as with any text, there is always the worry of whether anyone will read it. But this book will hopefully intrigue and charm all those who risk entering Olga Orozco’s surrealist world. Optimistically, this collection will ultimately allow non-Spanish speakers to embrace Orozco’s unique imagery so that her voice can perhaps resonate throughout the world’s subconscious.
Scholar: Helen A. Berger
Student: Rebekah (Becky) McDowell and Diana Marte
Does Worshipping the Goddess Make You a Feminist?
This project is an analysis of a large-scale international survey of contemporary Pagans entitled “The Pagan Census Revisited.” The research explores gender attitudes, beliefs, and participation in feminist activities and groups among contemporary Pagans internationally. Paganism, a new religious movement in which the Goddess is celebrated to the exclusion of, or in conjuncture with the God, has appealed primarily to women (70% of members are women). The largest and most influential forms of the religion, Wicca and Witchcraft, have been informed by feminism. Diversity is celebrated in all forms of the religion, particularly diversity of sexual expression. For most Pagans gender is viewed as fluid, something to be considered and played with both in ritual and in their daily lives. Nature or Mother Nature is seen as the Goddess or as her body and as such it is to venerated and protected—as are all her creations. Paganism is part of the larger phenomenon in the contemporary developed world of the growth in popularity of spirituality and metaphysical religions.
“The Pagan Census Revisited” is an updated, revised, and expanded version of a survey Helen A. Berger completed with Andras Corbin-Arthen (the founder of an influential umbrella group for Pagans) fifteen years ago, entitled “The Pagan Census,” which was the basis of her second book, Voices from the Pagan Census written with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer. There never was a true census but the first survey was the largest and most diverse survey completed of U.S. Pagans. It is now online at the Murray Research Archive at Harvard University. Unlike the original survey, which was only of U.S. Pagans, the current one is an international survey. Like the first survey, this one will provide the most complete picture of Pagans that is available and the only one that has sufficient questions from other surveys, including the General Social Science Survey, to permit both tracking trends within the community and a comparison with the larger non-Pagan community. The survey was circulated on Survey Monkey, which permits respondents to add written responses to answers. There are, therefore, short essays in response to a number of questions including those about individuals’ conversion to Paganism. These permit an analysis of the degree to which gendered language is used in people’s conversion narratives. The question about gender identity was written to permit respondents to indicate gender fluidity in their responses. The survey has received over 8000 responses from individuals in seventy-four nations.
The research explores how gender, age, nation and denomination of Paganism interact to influence individuals’ support of four social movements that are consistent with Pagan beliefs and practices—feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, and animal rights. The data permits us to both analyze individuals’ self-definitions as for example, stating they are feminists, their attitudes towards social issues, such as women’s reproductive rights, and their political activities, including voting, protesting, and writing letters to legislators.
In the past year two student partners, Diana Marte in the fall semester and Rebekah (Becky) McDowell in the spring have worked with Helen A. Berger on the project. Both students have worked with Helen on breaking down the quantitative data into categories; in all instances the data was divided into four age groups and by gender, including in some instances those who indicated gender ambiguity. The data was then broken into nation or region of residence and denomination of Paganism. Both students also looked for data on the general American and European populations to compare with what we found about Pagans. For example, research was done on voting rates of young Americans and the number of people both in the US and elsewhere who self-define as feminists, or environmentalist. In the spring semester Becky and Helen have also read through the conversion narratives, and the respondents’ discussions of the books and websites that they found most invaluable in their spiritual quest for four of the groups (the oldest and youngest US females and males). This data will be used for programming the computer system to scan for these in other categories of respondents we have created.