Award Announcements
WCIS Business Meeting, Annual Convention 2013
As you know, the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association is fast approaching. On behalf of the Board of the Women’s Caucus of International Studies (WCIS), we do hope that you will be able to include WCIS in those plans. The WCIS business meeting will be held 7-8 am on Friday, April 5 in Continental 5, Hilton Union Square. We encourage your participation in the Caucus, and look forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions for reinvigorating the Women’s Caucus. Please let us know if you can make the breakfast meeting by emailing the WCIS treasurer, Bethany Barratt (bbarratt@roosevelt.edu), by Friday, February 15th. Cash and checks are accepted on site: $15 for graduate students, $25 for faculty, and $35 (or whatever contribution you feel appropriate) for faculty who wish to subsidize a graduate student.
Reception honoring Marysia Zalewski at ISA Annual Convention 2013
In addition to the WCIS meeting, we are also pleased to invite you to attend the joint Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS), Women’s Caucus (WCIS), and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer and Allies Caucus (LGBTQA) reception honoring Marysia Zalewski on Wednesday, April 3 (6:30-8 pm) in Imperial A, Hilton Union Square. At the reception we will also recognize and celebrate the recipients of the two WCIS awards, Christine Balarezo (Gerner Award) and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (Susan S. Northcutt Award). The Deborah Gerner Grant for Professional Development is awarded by WCIS and sponsored by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Funds from this grant may be used to support any legitimate professional development need identified by the candidate. The Susan S. Northcutt Award was established in 2003 by WCIS to honor the Caucus’ founder, Susan S. Northcutt. The award recognizes a person who actively works towards recruiting and advancing women and other minorities in the profession, and whose spirit is inclusive, generous and conscientious. Furthermore, the recipient has made significant contributions through service and competence in the profession of international studies and to the International Studies Association. We are grateful to our reception sponsor, Lynne Rienner Publishers.
The 2012 Deborah (“Misty”) Gerner Grant for Professional Development Awarded to Professor Linda Akua Opongmaa Darkwa
The Women’s Caucus for International Studies (WCIS) of the International Studies Association is pleased to announce that Linda Akua Opongmaa Darkwa, University of Ghana, has received the Deborah "Misty" Gerner Professional Development Grant. The grant is expect to fund her field work in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sierra Leone to complete her project on "International Legal Protection of Children in Armed Conflict Situations.” The award is sponsored by Lynne Rienner Publishers in memory of Dr. Deborah “Misty” Gerner, a professor of international relations at the University of Kansas (1988-2006) who spent more than 25 years studying, visiting, and living in the Middle East, and was an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian nationalism; Professor Gerner received awards for outstanding teaching as well as service in the profession and was a supportive advocate for women scholars in international studies (For more information, please see http://deborahgerner.org/biography.php ) The award will be formally presented at the ISA Annual Convention to be held in San Diego, California, 1-4 April 2012. The amount of the award is $2,000 USD.
The 2012 Susan Northcutt Award to Professor Jindy Rose (Jan) Pettman
The Women's Caucus for International Studies (WCIS) has selected Jindy Rosa (Jan) Pettman as the 2012 recipient of the Susan Northcutt Award. She was nominated for this award by Professor Cynthia Enloe, who writes in part:
"Jindy has been an active member of the ISA’s Feminist Theory & Gender Studies section from its start...and was chosen to be one of the inaugural trio of editors of the then-brand-new International Feminist Journal of Politics. It was a tribute to the trust that all of us had in Jindy – in her fairness, in her commitment, in her hard work, in her breadth of understanding of feminist IR scholarship, and in her truly collaborative style of work....We now take IFjP for granted – but it was Jindy Pettmen who did so much to get the journal off to a good feminist-informed start. In Jindy, teaching, mentoring, doing research, and building a genuinely transnational feminist scholarly community all converged."
The 2010 Deborah (“Misty”) Gerner Grant for Professional Development Awarded to Professor Maia Carter Hallward
The ISA Women’s Caucus for International Studies and sponsor Lynne Rienner (Lynne Rienner Publishers) are pleased to announce that Maia Carter Hallward has been awarded the Deborah (“Misty”) Gerner Grant for Professional Development for this year. Maia Carter Hallward, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at Kennesaw State University, Georgia. Professor Hallward will use the Gerner Grant to support two broad streams within her research agenda: peace and justice activism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the role of religion in political matters, and specifically in the Middle East. She will follow up on her past teaching and research interests associated with the Ramallah Friends (Quaker) School and the Friends International Center of Ramallah in the West Bank, documenting the history and impact of the one-hundred years old Friends Community in Ramallah. Clearly Maia Carter Hallward’s work will continue the legacy of Misty Gerner with her focus on conflict resolution and peace in the Middle East.
Meredith Reid Sarkees Honored with the Susan S. Northcutt Service Award for 2010
Professor Meredith Reid Sarkees, currently a Scholar in Residence at the Women & Politics Institute at American University, is being honored with ISA’s Susan S. Northcutt Service Award for this year. Meredith Reid Sarkees’ affiliation with the Women & Politics Institute (where she has also served as the director of the Global Women’s Leadership in International Affairs Security project) is just one more illustration of a career devoted in large measure to scholarly research and professional service focused on women and their status, both within government, and within the Academy itself. In addition to positions at Niagara University and DePaul University, she has also served as the Director of the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN). During this time she published some of the first important work analyzing the position and status of women in foreign policy circles and as leaders.
Professor Sarkees’ record of service to the profession is exceptional, including serving as vice-president of ISA; president of the ISA-Northeast Region; chair of the Women’s Caucus for two different terms; and currently a member of the newly-established ISA Committee on the Status of Women. In all these roles she has been instrumental in selflessly advocating, and helping to secure, the successful development of women within the profession. ISA (and the American Political Science Association) would be much chillier places for women members without her efforts to promote women to positions of leadership within the profession, to encourage and mentor them, and to provide opportunities for greater representation of gender-specific issues, themes, and concerns at annual conventions. As one letter of nomination eloquently commented: “Women within the association are served by the tenaciousness Meredith brought to her quest to make women’s issues visible within the profession. Most others would probably have given up on this type of research…after the hostile reaction.” Thus, Meredith Reid Sarkees clearly merits the Susan Northcutt Award—which recognizes a person who actively works toward advancing women and other minorities in the profession, and whose spirit is inclusive, generous, and conscientious—and who has made significant contributions to the profession of international studies and to the International Studies Association.
