Women's & Gender Studies Caucus
The NeMLA Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus welcomes members interested in feminist scholarship, women’s and gender studies, and the status of women in the profession at all stages of their careers. The Caucus organizes panels, promotes publication, and fosters the establishment of networks linking senior and junior faculty including graduate students.
On this page:
Women's and Gender Studies Essay Award
The NeMLA Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus invites submissions for the “Best Essay in Women’s and Gender Studies Award” given for a paper presented at the previous two sessions of the NeMLA Convention using women and/or gender-centered approaches. This essay may not be submitted to another contest for the duration of the award’s deliberation. Essays must be submitted in English.
- Send entries to the President of the NeMLA Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus as two separate Microsoft Word document files at wgsnemla@gmail.com by January 15 with:
- a cover sheet with the title, author's name, address and academic affiliation
- the essay and “NeMLA WGSC Essay Award Submission” in the subject line
- Decisions will be communicated in winter.
- 2022: Samadrita Kuiti, University of Connecticut-Storrs, "Anticipating the Afrotopia: Queer Monsters and Utopian Futurities in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon"
Honorable Mention: Dolores Batten, University of Central Florida, "The Problematics of the Postcolonial? Identity: Embracing Linguistics, Culture, and Pre-Feminism in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God" - 2021: Stephanie Papa, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, “Crafting Somatic Communication: The Kinetics of Motherhood in Layli Long Soldier’s Poetry”
- 2020: Nancy Vera, University of Maryland College Park, “Witches & Tricksters: Feminine Forms of Resistance in Afro-Mexican Folklore”
- 2019: Nancy Kang, University of Manitoba, "Sin Sexo: Auto-Historiography and Reproduction in Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Sor Juana’s Second Dream”
- 2018: Molly Ferguson, Ball State University, "The First Five Minutes: Teaching with Twitter in the Feminist Classroom"
- 2017: Jessica MacEachern, Université de Montréal, "Warped Visions of Time and Place: H.D. Re-Visions Sensory History"
- 2016: Nicole Gervasio, Columbia University, "The Power of the Weak Signifier: Wordsworth Lucy in J.M. Coetzee's and Kincaid’s Decolonizing Fictions"
- 2015: Mary Ellen Iatropoulos, Independent Scholar, "‘Laughing and Crying Behind Her Mask’: Code-Switching and Sentimental Strategy in Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall"
- 2014: Victoria Muñoz, Ohio State University, "Female Translators and Their Detractors: Theories of Early Modern Translation in Development"
Honorable Mention: Kara Johnson, Northwestern University, "‘A pure young voice’: Textual Performance in the Journals of Frances & Mary Willard” - 2013: Marisa Palacios Knox, University of California, Berkeley, "Literary Nunneries: Women’s Education, Sterility and Detachment"
- 2012: Melissa A. Schaub, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
- 2011: Christopher Byrne, McGill University
- 2010: Daniel Moore, Queen’s College, "Mourning the Mourners: Gender Politics of Commemoration in the First World War"
- 2009: Zachary Hutchins, University of North Carolina, "The Wisdom of Anne Bradstreet: Exchanging Eve’s Legacy for Elizabeth’s"
- 2009 GLBTQ Caucus Essay Award: Bryan Conn, Johns Hopkins University, "The Terror of Love: Race and Sex in James Baldwin’s Another Country"
- 2008: Catherine Keyser, University of South Carolina, "Keeping Ironic Company: Mary McCarthy and the Smart Woman in Politics"
- 2008 GLBTQ Caucus Essay Award: Wendy Pawlak, "The Lonely View from the Closet: Lesbianism in The Bostonians and the Inevitable Doom of Olive Chandler"
- 2007:Shari Evans, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, "Fortress, Haven, Home: Programmed Space, Themed Space, and the Ethics of Home in Toni Morrison’s Paradise"
Honorable Mention: Lynn Johnson, Dickinson College, "Traversing the Oceanic: The Garret as a Vehicle of Transport in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)" - 2006: Stephanie Harzewski, University of Pennsylvania, "A New Bildungsroman: Chick Lit Authors and Their Characters"
- 2006 GLBTQ Caucus Essay Award: David Jarroway, "George Cukor and Filmic Collaboration: Subjective Displacement in America’s Postwar Years”
- 2005: Beth Capo, "Can This Marriage Be Saved? Birth Control and Marriage in Modern American Literature"
Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Abele, Nassau Community College, "The Open Range: Jane Smiley Reclaims the Feminine Western Tradition"
Earlier WGSC Essay Award Winners
- Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Haverford College, “The Missing Mother: Negotiations of Motherhood in the Gothic Mode”
- Catherine Golden, Skidmore College, "Late-Twentieth-Century Readers in Search of a Dickensian Heroine: Angels, Fallen Sisters, and Eccentric Women"
- Michael R. Schiavi, New York Institute of Technology, "Gay and Lesbian Caucus Essay Prize for “Teaching The Boys: Mart Crowley in the Millennial Classroom"
- Elizabeth Fekete, Northwestern University, "Graduate Student Caucus Essay Prize for “Imagined Revolution: The Female Reader and The Wide, Wide World"
- Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Haverford College, "Appropriating the Golem, Possessing the Dybbuk: Stories of Power and Creation by Jewish-American Women"
- Honorable Mention: Diane M. Garno, Wayne State University, "Elevating His Mistress to a Utopian Wife: Cabt and Denise in Icaria"
Guidelines for all Caucus Essay Awards
- Essays should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words (there is a 10,000-word limit, notes and works cited included). All essays are to be revised and expanded from original papers presented at previous NeMLA convention(s).
- Submissions should be written in or translated into English.
- Each Caucus Essay Award winner will be awarded a $100 prize that will be handed out at the membership brunch, and their essays will automatically be considered for publication by Modern Language Studies. All essays are subject to MLS's double-blind review.
WGS Mentorship Program
The NeMLA WGS Caucus operates an interdisciplinary mentoring program, which pairs senior faculty mentors with junior faculty and doctoral students. The application process for mentees will open in late fall. To access the application, please click here. For more information or to volunteer to serve as a mentor please contact us at wgsnemla@gmail.com with the subject "WGS Mentorship Program."
Business Meeting
At its annual meeting held at the NeMLA Convention hotel site, the Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus takes nominations for new officers and invites suggestions for speakers and topics for future NeMLA Conferences.
Baltimore 2022: Emily Anne Parker, Towson University, "The Body Figures the Denial of Matter of the Polis"
Virtual 2021: Grace L. Sanders Johnson, University of Pennsylvania, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Multi-modal and Eco-literacy Approaches to Transnational Feminist Research"
Boston 2020: Marjorie Howes, Boston College, “Irish Women Writers and Literary History”
Washington D.C. 2019: Ricardo L. Ortiz, Georgetown University, “Sex and Gender After ‘Latinx’”
Pittsburgh 2018: Janet Lyon, Penn State University, “Love, Idiocy, and Modernism”
Baltimore 2017: Bernadette Wegenstein, Johns Hopkins University, “Is There Such A Thing As A Feminist Documentary?”
Hartford 2016: Crystal Parikh, New York University, “The Unyielding Earth: Women of Color Feminism and Cold War Fictions”
Toronto 2015: Sara Horowitz, York University, “‘If He Knows to Make a Child...’: Integrating Gender into Holocaust Survivor Narratives”
Harrisburg 2014: Ann Jurecic, Rutgers University, “Susan Sontag’s Trouble with Memoir”
Boston 2013: Suzanne Matson, Boston College, “Writing Women’s Lives: A Fiction Reading and Discussion”
Rochester 2012: Stephanie Li, University of Rochester, “The Gospel According to Toni Morrison”
New Brunswick 2011: Sharon Jimenez, “Stand, Fight and Persevere: One Woman’s Journey Beyond Barriers”
Montreal 2010: Madeleine Monette, selections from her recent text America is Also a Québec Novel
Boston 2009: Carole Boyce Davies, Cornell University, “Caribbean Women and the Black Radical Intellectual Tradition”
Buffalo 2008: Marlene NourbeSe Philip, selections from and commentary on her remarkable poem Zong! (Wesleyan U Press, 2008)
Baltimore 2007: Elizabeth Núñez, “The Women in Shakespeare‘s The Tempest: The Perspective of a Woman Novelist”
Membership
You can join the NeMLA Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus by indicating your interest on the registration form when you join NeMLA or renew your NeMLA membership.
- Faculty at 4-year institutions: $20.00
- Full-time Lecturer/Instructor: $10.00
- Contingent Faculty: $10.00
- Graduate Student: $10.00
- High School Teacher: $10.00
- Independent Scholar: $10.00
- Librarian: $10.00
- Postdoctoral Fellow: $10.00
- Visiting Faculty: $10.00
- Academic Staff: $10.00
- Administrators: $30.00
- Undergraduate Students: $5.00
Joint memberships are also available. Add $5 to the higher paying member’s dues.
Officer Descriptions and Duties
Duties for the Secretary position
This is a rolling position. Duties include:
- recording all minutes of WGSC meetings and submitting them for approval
- corresponding with all current members about upcoming elections
- creating and holding online elections via SurveyMonkey
- acting as a liaison between the Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus and the webmaster to maintain accurate and up-to-date caucus information on the website
- selecting, designing, submitting, and overseeing the coordination of the caucus-sponsored panel for the next convention
- supporting the Vice President with the WGS Mentorship Program
- drafting pre- and post-convention newsletters
Duties for the Vice President position
Duties include:
- promoting and managing the Mentorship Program
- working with the President to organize and cover convention events, particularly with Mentorship Program events
- organizing coverage of the Caucus table at the spring convention
Duties for the Board Representative position
This is a three-year position. The Board rep acts as the liaison between the Caucus and the Board, and NeMLA's administrative staff when required. The Board rep works closely with the other Board members to ensure that the Caucus and the organization as a whole both contribute to and benefit from the other's strengths. As a member of the NeMLA board, the Board Representative
- manages WGS Caucus panels including overseeing approval and rejection of all panels, publicizing the CFP for panels and then for papers and informing chairs of important information
- attends the Fall and Spring meetings of the NeMLA Board, and prepares the Caucus Board Reports for these meetings
- contacts the NeMLA webmaster for website changes related to the CFP and NeMLA Board related information, and as needed
- provides information for the caucus newsletters and for Modern Language Studies, NeMLA's peer reviewed journal
- provides the materials for the caucus table at the convention
- has opportunities to read for the Book Prize and the Summer Fellowships
- is part of NeMLA decision-making
Duties for the Social Media Representative position
This is a yearly position, volunteered for at the spring convention business meeting. Duties are primarily overseeing the Caucus Facebook page, which will include adding a few WGS Caucus announcements throughout the year and approving caucus members’ posts to the page.
Current Officers
President
Lisa Propst
Clarkson University
lpropst@clarkson.edu
Vice President
Maurine Ogbaa
The University of Texas at Dallas
maurine.ogbaa@utdallas.edu
Secretary
Fernanda Righi
Roger Williams University
frighi@rwu.edu
Past President
Maria Rovito
Penn State University
mrr354@psu.edu
Representative to the NeMLA Board
Justine Dymond
Springfield College
jdymond@springfieldcollege.edu