Recent Faculty Awards and Honors

Ethel Brooks, 2007 Faculty of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education

A versatile and original scholar who works at the intersection of international political economy, comparative labor studies, feminist theory, and globalization studies, Professor Brooks has developed a wide repertoire of undergraduate courses including “Dynamics of Race, Class, and Sex,” “South Asian Feminism,” “Comparative Feminisms,” “Sociology of the Third World,” and “Research Methods in Women’s Studies.”  Her contributions at the graduate level have been equally impressive, ranging from “Comparative and Historical Methods in Sociology,” and “Women and Work,” to “Gender and Globalization” and the WGS proseminar, “Gendered Borders/Changing Boundaries.”  The number and diversity of her course topics, the outstanding quality of her teaching, and her exceptional contributions to co-curricular activities on and off campus were cited in the presentation of the FAS Teaching Award for Assistant Professors.

Elizabeth Grosz, 2007 Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research

            One of the most eminent scholars writing in the English language today,

Professor Grosz has helped to create and define the field of feminist philosophy.  Through her prolific and path-breaking scholarship, she has theorized sexual difference and demonstrated its importance to ontological and epistemological debates within philosophy, as well as to a wide array of fields outside of philosophy ranging from literary, cultural, political, social, and postcolonial theory to architecture, mathematics, science and technology studies.  The scope and significance of her contributions in combination with the brilliance of her insights were cited in the presentation of the Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research.

Mary Hawkesworth, 2007 Graduate School Award for Distinguished Contributions to Graduate Education

            An award-winning scholar, Professor Hawkesworth served as the first Graduate Program Director in the newly created Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, assuming primary responsibility for transforming the idea of a Ph.D. program into a reality, developing challenging interdisciplinary proseminars, recruiting faculty to teach grad courses and present their scholarship in department research briefings, recruiting excellent doctoral students and grooming them for their first teaching experiences, and working with private foundations, donors, and federal agencies to secure additional fellowship-funding for the program.  She has also taught numerous core courses for the M.A. and Ph.D. programs including “Feminist Theories,” “Feminist Genealogies,” “Feminist Methodologies,” and “Feminisms: Theory and Practice,” “Gender and Political Theory,” and “Epistemology” and supervised and served on many thesis and dissertation committees.

Charlotte Bunch, 2006 Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research 

Over the past two decades, Professor Bunch has made profound contributions to global feminist activism and policy-making in the area of human rights.  She has played a crucial role in initiating and shaping the global movement for women’s rights as human rights.  Under her direction, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership has forged global networks of scholars, policy makers, diplomats, and women’s rights activists and helped to train a generation of women leaders from all regions of the globe to use the human rights framework to achieve strategic objectives.  Her path-breaking work has transformed international agreements and political activism around the globe.  Her research has shaped policy documents at the United Nations and her creative policy recommendations have had palpable effects in areas of violence against women, human rights and human security, and in the global campaign against HIV/AIDS.

In 1996 Professor Bunch was inducted in the National Women’s Hall of Fame.  In 1999 the President of the United States bestowed upon her the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights.  Few scholars have equaled her contributions to social justice and global social change.