College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Congratulations to our GWSS scholarship recipients!
The Department of Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies has recently awarded $14,000 in scholarships!
Isabella Senno is the recipient of the Adele Kimm Scholarship. Ms. Senno is a second year Journalism and Mass Communication and Anthropology double major. In her application she states "Women are taught to disassociate from themselves in order to become stepping stones for men to grow. They are taught that they will never have true agency over their bodies or brains. They are taught that as the "fairer sex" they will always be second best (or worse if not cisgender, heterosexual, without disabilities, white, and traditionally attractive). I want to fight for women in all of their multitudes by attacking issues at their root. I will not only expose problems, but also why those problems exist, peeling back layers of androcentric history, misogynistic approaches, and under-informed procedures." One recommender writes "Her commitment to women’s issues is evident not only in her coursework but also in her extracurricular activities, such as the stories she has written for the Daily Iowan."
Ellen Kuehnle and Jamillah Witt are the recipients of the Kristin K. Lippke Memorial Scholarship, established by the Lippke family for students majoring in GWSS.
- Ms. Kuehnle, a fourth year GWSS major, is also a Certified Peer Educator for the Women’s Resource and Action Center on Campus. In her role as a peer educator she co-facilitates, with a full-time staff member, workshops on bystander intervention and healthy relationships across campus, and works to prevent sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment on campus in order to create a safer campus community. One of her recommenders states "[Kuehnle] is a living example of what an activist, student and community member should be: a compassionate, inquisitive and an active participant. In times like the present, it is refreshing to know a student like Ellen and it is students like her that give me hope on a daily basis."
- Ms. Witt is a third year GWSS major. In her application she states "After graduation, I would love to work in the field of sex education, in the realms of getting teens in low income areas access to accurate information. I would want to, with the help of others, create a new curriculum that teaches body positivity, what sex can look like for lgbtq+ students and engage students in conversations about rape and rape culture, teaching them to let current or future sexual partners know what is okay and what is not okay to do to their bodies." One of her recommenders states "Through my class, I got to know Jamillah quite well, discovering her excellent writing and analytical skills and her incisive and often brilliant insights into the ways in which race, class, sexuality and gender intersect in the lives of African American girls.... I can think of no better way to honor the memory of a young woman who was deeply influenced by what she learned in our department [than to give this award] to a young African American student on a similar journey of transformation and discovery."
Noaquia Callahan is the recipient of the Adah Johnson/Otilia Maria Fernandez Scholarship. A PhD student in the Department of History and a current Fulbright fellowship holder in Berlin, her dissertation, “Divided Duty: African American Feminist Transnational Activism and the Lure of the Imperial Gaze, 1888-1922,” opens up the little-known world of African American women’s international work and transatlantic dialogue with white European feminists. "I envision myself working for organizations in the non-profit world, federal and state government, and in NGOs. By seeking a career in one of the above areas, I hope to contribute to institutional policies that strengthen trans-Atlantic dialog ensuring equality for any marginalized communities and protection of women’s rights as human rights worldwide." One of her recommenders writes "Ms Callahan is an extraordinarily talented scholar and teacher who will make a difference not only in the scholarly community but also, more broadly, in encouraging minority students to engage in international studies." Another states "Noaquia is far from our typical graduate student: her dual expertise in US and European history, her commitment to creating new knowledge, and her dedicated pursuit of publically-engaged history reveals her to be a true leader, a representative of all that is best in current thinking and activism around the role of history in our ability to understand the past as well as our present."
Corey Hickner-Johnson is the recipient of Jane Weiss Memorial Scholarship. Ms. Hickner-Johnson is a PhD student in the Department of English. Her dissertation, "Out of the Attic: Mental Illness, Psychiatric Disability, and Contemporary Women Writers" argues that mental illness is a complicated, affective experience impacted by race, class, gender and sexuality, and that contemporary literature provides us with rich qualitative information about how it feels to have a mental illness in the 20-21st centuries. One recommender writes "Corey’s dissertation work serves and has been served by an unusually broad and enthusiastic engagement in feminisms on and off campus. Thoughtfully integrating social justice theory and practice, Corey both invigorates and challenges communities, particularly around matters of dis/ability and access, through her editorials, activist organizing, committee work, engagement and public appearances."
Congratulations to all recipients!