The Association for Women Faculty

Travel Grant Recipient Reports

2007 Celeste Bustamante

2006 Barbara Hagenah Brumbach

I want to thank the Association for Women Faculty for awarding me the AWF Travel Grant to subsidize my travel to a conference this Spring 2006. The conference I attended was the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) Conference and it was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was selected to present a paper and my talk was entitled, Adolescent Predictors of Young Adult Life History Strategy which summarized the key results of my dissertation research. My paper addressed individual differences in life history strategy, a mid-level evolutionary theory, and I utilized the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to test hypotheses. In a longitudinal analysis, I found that the environmental parameters of harshness and unpredictability were significant predictors of life history strategy in both in adolescence and young adulthood. The life history variables included health, delinquency, impulsivity, and general levels of achievement in school and work.

My research bridges content from anthropology and psychology and my major area of study is Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology. HBES is the most important conference in my field and is an interdisciplinary conference primarily comprised of psychologists and anthropologists. Therefore, attendance at this conference was particularly useful both in terms of feedback I received from others, but also the information I learned by attending other conference talks.

Attendance at this conference was especially timely since I am finishing my dissertation work and beginning to enter the job market. I was able present my dissertation results to an audience interested in the content of my work in general, but also to individuals who were likely to be important contacts for future academic positions in Evolutionary Psychology. In fact, I was able to make several professional contacts that I believe will be instrumental when it comes time for me to apply for academic positions.

This was by far the most productive, engaging, and inspiring conference I have attended so far in my academic career and I am so grateful to the AWF for helping give me the opportunity to travel to this conference and to experience academia at its best. Thank you!

2006 Namino Glantz

A generous travel grant from the Association for Women Faculty Travel facilitated my participation in the Annual Meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) and the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), held concurrently in Vancouver, British Columbia, March 28 to April 2, 2006. This dual conference represents the single most important forum for those in my field: applied medical anthropology. The concurrent SfAA-SMA meeting was a timely opportunity to share my most recent dissertation-level work on gendered power relationships and health with a large, engaged audience, well-positioned to interpret, constructively criticize, publicize, and apply my findings and intervention suggestions worldwide.

In response to this opportunity, I organized the session, Aging Adults, Maturing Methods? Multidisciplinary Health Research in Elder Populations, in which four panelists and an expert discussant explored elder health research strategies, ethics, and findings in four cultural contexts. I also presented my own paper, Jumpstarting community engagement around elder health: Formative research on gender, elder health and care in Chiapas, Mexico, the goal of which was to bring a feminist age perspective and a participatory research approach to the table.

More than just another opportunity to present a paper, the SfAA-SMA meeting represented a crucial “professional lifeline” for me. While my long-term residences (1994-2000, 2004-2005) in Chiapas, Mexico allowed me to master the Spanish language, acquire broad knowledge of local culture, and build strong local relationships, it left me somewhat geographically isolated and, in the case of dissertation fieldwork, psychologically submerged in my own research. Interaction with other researcher/scholar/activists working on medical anthropology and gender at the SfAA-SMA conference provided an opportunity for reflection on my own research, writing, and professional development. Additionally, this forum was optimal for establishing and strengthening contacts with colleagues, allied activists, potential employers, and publishers. For example, I met with representatives from other academic centers of excellence (e.g. Michigan State University, University of Alberta, University of Victoria) as well as publishers (e.g. Left Coast Press). A direct result of the panel is the development of a book on the anthropology of aging, of which I will be co-editor and contributor, alongside professors from Canada and the United States whom I met at the conference. In sum, the long-term personal career benefits of attending this meeting include dissertation feedback, an expanded professional network, opportunities for employment, and publications.

My personal situation as a graduate student and single mother of two young children would normally prevent me from any international conference travel at all. Given my academic and professional commitment to medical anthropology and gender, however, attending this meeting surpassed a great opportunity; it was a necessity, and one that rested on the AWF, along with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) and the Women’s Studies Advisory Council (WOSAC). The generous support helped to cover not only travel costs but also childcare expenses during my absence. The continuing benefits of such support are evident in my professional vision and accomplishments, as presented in my personal website (www.healthandculture.org).

2006 Susana Zanello

My many thanks to the AWF for the generous grant that helped me attend the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). The conference took place in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in early May of this year and gathered more than 5,000 participants from all over the world. This was my first chance to take part in this event which indeed proved to be a very valuable one. The conference spanned virtually all fields of basic and clinical research and of medical ophthalmological interventions. I had the opportunity to present work that I had develop during my previous year. The title of my poster was: “Expression of 14.3.3? (stratifin) in normal and pathologic corneal epithelium”. My presentation reported the finding of an abundant marker of differentiation in the human cornea, stratifin. This protein has been in the headlines in the recent years as the product of a gene with important roles in the prevention of cancer. At the conference, I met and discussed with numerous researchers the potential relevance of such finding and its implications in corneal cancer and in corneal wound healing.

Another important aspect of the meeting was the opportunity to make contacts and to start immersing myself into the field of my current research in the area of glaucoma. At present, I have the privilege of having joined the laboratories of Dr. Dan Stamer of the Department of Ophthalmology and Dr. Ron Heimark of the Department of Surgery. Together, our labs are working towards developing a novel therapy to manage this serious blindness-causing disease.

Once again, the support that I have received from the AWF has been very helpful in this transitional stage of my career, and surely organizations like this are of utmost importance in assisting women to solidify their paths in science.

2005 Recipient Laura Hollengreen

The Travel Grant I was awarded by the Association of Women Faculty for Summer 2005 subsidized my travel to deliver a paper at an international colloquium entitled “The Anagogical Image—The Moralized Text: The Relationship between Texts, Images, and Religious Interpretations in the Middle Ages.” The event was sponsored jointly by an American institution, Brigham Young University , and a French one, the Université catholique de l'Ouest, and was held in the city of Angers , France . It definitely fulfilled my twin desires to focus on smaller, thematic conferences and on international meetings: the total number of participants was perhaps 25-30 scholars, which made for an intimate environment conducive to discussion, and the group had good numbers of both American and French speakers as well as senior and junior scholars from both countries. Not only did I hear some excellent papers on a range of subjects (from parables in stained glass to late medieval drama to early Renaissance world maps) but I also made the acquaintance of a number of scholars working on topics close to mine in a variety of disciplines (English, French, Canon Law, etc.).

My own paper, “Discerning Textual Interpretation in the Absence of Text: The Morgan Old Testament Picture Book as Witness to Thirteenth-Century Exegesis and Its Uses,” allowed me to push beyond my earlier work on the thirteenth-century French Gothic manuscript in question by departing from those parts dealing with kingship to look at the specific cycle of images representing the early life of the prophet Samuel. Any investigation of a work as lengthy as this manuscript and with as rich a background of exegesis and other kinds of biblical interpretation stretching over centuries must proceed piecemeal, taking one such sub-section at a time, while also looking at how the parts compose the whole. The Samuel cycle not only prefaces the Saul and David cycle which I had explored earlier in a series of papers and a publication but, more importantly, establishes the necessary thematic preconditions for it. The Angers paper and the conference for which it was written provided me with an ideal and very pleasant opportunity to re-engage a plethora of sources, medieval and modern, that deal with the strategic making of biblical meaning in the Middle Ages.

2003 Recipient Wendy S. Weise

I am very grateful to the Association of Women Faculty and the AWF Grant For the Professional Development of Women Graduate Students and Post Docs, which supported my travel to the Shakespeare Association of America Conference in British Columbia this past April 2003.

Unlike typical conferences in my field at which attendees all present individual papers, the SAA is largely compromised of specialized, working sessions: Participants prepare papers and respond to others' in advance so that our conversation at the conference begins in medias res and allows us to tackle subjects in greater depth than we might have time for in a traditional setting.

Our workshop considered the politics of canonizing early modern women - now that some women writers from the Renaissance have gained regular inclusion in the classroom and literary anthologies. But these gains do not come without a price: We are finding that the same authors and works are reproduced repeatedly, at the expense of other female authors whose work does not complement as neatly a male, writerly tradition. Paradoxically, then, the canonization of early modern women is reproducing the very politics that silenced and kept women from the canon in the first place and promoting a skewed, monolithic notion of early women's lives that eschews difference.

The various backgrounds and professional experiences of those in our seminar (graduates, independent scholars, junior faculty, and senior scholars) fostered a creative, collaborative forum, as we grappled with the current status of the study of early modern women and developed strategies for incorporating a wider range of writers and writing into our syllabi and scholarship without, literally, committing the sins of our forefathers. My own contribution to the seminar, part statistical analysis and part formal paper, surveyed a variety of literary anthologies, detailing which women and what works typically represent "female" writers from the period and critiqued their representation in these "authoritative" texts.

Attending the SAA was a very rewarding experience: Our seminar was dynamic and energetic and I had the opportunity to audit four others that also focused on Renaissance women - quite an encouraging sign for a conference celebrating Shakespeare, the most canonical of all English authors. Moreover, I was able to meet and build alliances with other scholars from the across the U.S and Canada, also dedicated to the study of early women's lives and writing, and work closely with one of my mentors, Kari McBride from Women's Studies at the U of A, who participated in the seminar as well and wrote an important theoretical critique of our scholarly practices when it comes to gender and the canon. At session's end, we proposed compiling a collection based on our original papers to effect even greater change in the field.

Thank you so very much AWF for helping to make this possible!

2003 Recipient Kathryn Jasper

This summer I was offered the amazing opportunity to study Latin in Rome, Italy with Father Reginald Foster. This was made possible through a travel grant f or the Professional Development of Women Graduate Students and Post Docs from The Association of Women Faculty, to whom I am extremely grateful.

Father Foster is the Latinist for Pope John Paul II and carries a very deserved reputation as the most knowledgeable Latin scholar in the world. He generously offers a summer Latin course for students dedicated to the advancement of their skills in the language. The fact that the course is designed as a language immersion program makes it unique. Latin is a language that many are able to translate on paper; however, few scholars are able to speak the language fluently.

Prior to this course, I had rarely heard Latin spoken aloud, and I had never heard a conversation in Latin. When I arrived in Rome, and attended the first class, I was delighted to hear our Father Foster transition with ease from Latin to English. He was able to tell the class various anecdotes in perfect Latin. What was even more impressive was that by the end of one month, we were all beginning to try it as well, and we were succeeding. Fortunately, we were given many opportunities to practice. During the evenings, we would gather around under the trees of his monastery and tell each other stories or have conversations in Latin.

2002 Recipient Billye Foster

Thanks to the generosity of the Association for Women Faculty, I was able to attend the annual research meeting for Association of American Agricultural Educators (AAAE) held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  During the conference I presented a paper with my colleague Dr. Brenda Seevers of New Mexico State University.  This opportunity not only allowed us to share our work with our peers, it also allowed us to initiate a new project for the coming year.

View the paper, titled " Profiling Women in Agricultural and Extension Education," at http://www.aaaeonline.org/ .  Once in this site, just open the NAERC and follow the links to the 2002 papers.

In addition to presenting this paper, I was also able to shadow a subject I am doing a qualitative study on.  She is currently serving as president of another association that holds its conference at the same time as the AAAE.  So I really got the most for the AWF money!

Thanks again!

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Last updated November 13, 2007