Student Accomplishments and News
Inaugural Charles H. Page Scholarship Recipient, Ashley Garner
The inaugural recipient of the Charles H. Page Scholarship for Excellence in Sociological Theory goes to Ashley Garner. Thanks to the generous donation of a UMass alumnus who prefers to remain anonymous, this annual award seeks to recognize graduate students who possess strong theoretical aptitudes, while paying tribute to Charles H. Page, former chair and distinguished faculty member of the UMass sociology department.
In her paper titled “Black Feminist Piety”, Garner critiques the pervasive disregard and misrecognition of Black women’s religious thought and practice, that of African American Sunni Muslim women in particular. According to Garner, they are illegible to critical theorists, such as Habermas, who insist upon a strictly secular lens and Western feminists who presume the religious to be antifeminist. To the extent they are seen, in the post-9/11 world, Black Muslim women are reduced to their relations with immigrant Muslims, viewed as more legitimate and authentic, or their “agency,” narrowly defined as resistance to religious practice. With the concept of Black feminist piety, Garner affirms and extends Patricia Hill Collins’s groundbreaking Black Feminist Thought, taking Black Muslim women seriously as knowledge producers and adding a religious axis to intersectionality theory.
Graduate Student Awards and Fellowships
- Alexandra Casuso won a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship.
- Rodrigo Dominguez and Yolanda Wiggins won the Pre-Dissertation Fellowship from the UMass Center for Research on Families.
- Brandi Perri won a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council.
- Cassaundra Rodriguez won the Rose Laub Coser Dissertation Proposal Award from the Eastern Sociological Society, as well as the Society for the Study of Social Problems 2016 Racial/Ethnic Minority Graduate Scholarship.
- Celeste Curington won the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program.
- Ember Kanelee and Joohee Han won a SAGE Teaching Innovations & Professional Development Award.
- Cassaundra Rodriguez, Swati Birla, Patricia Sanchez-Connally, Celeste Curington, and JooHee Han all won UMass Graduate School Summer Dissertation Fellowships.
- Lucious Couloute won the The Labor Resource and Action Network New Scholars Grant.
- Kayla Preito-Hodges won the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
- Sarah Miller won a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, as well as the Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the American Sociological Association section on Sexuality.
- Mahala Dyer Stewart won the Dissertation Fellowship from the UMass Center for Research on Families.
Undergraduate News
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