Prizes & Awards
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies awards the following prizes each year. Click the prize name to learn more.
The Alison G. Fraker '89 Essay Prize
Established in 1990 by Drue Cortell Gensler '57, Middlebury College trustee, this award honors the memory of Alison Gwen Fraker '89 (shown in a dance performance, at right), a much-beloved, vocally feminist student who was killed in a car accident a few weeks short of her graduation. The prize is awarded to a student whose essay on a topic specifically concerning women and gender studies is judged the best. It excludes senior theses.
The Drue Cortell Gensler '57 Prize
Established in 1990 by Drue Cortell Gensler '57,a Middlebury College trustee, this prize goes to the student with the best senior project—thesis, performance, or creative work—on a topic concerning women and gender studies.
Fraker Prize Recipients:
2012:
Zaheena Rasheed '12, "Desperate Acts"
Donna Zamora Stevens '12, Que pocha eres, chula
2011: Colleen Carroll '11, "Continuity and Rupture: Community-building and domesticity in missionary China"
2010: Julia Szabo '10 won the award for her paper titled, "Marriage Promotion in the Urban Ghetto: Policy, Theory, Reality" Julia completed this project for Professor Rebecca Tiger's senior seminar Sociology of Punishment.
2009: Hannah Rommer '09 won the award for her paper titled, "Castrati and Sexuality: Perspectives on Renaissance Aesthics" for Professor Larry Hamberlin's MUSC 0400 "Senior Music Seminar: Music and Drama." A group project for Kamakshi Murti's GRMN/WAGS 0226 class, "To Veil or Not to Veil: German and Islam" received honorable mention.
2008: Kate Silbert '08 won the award for "Real Human Bodies Viewing: 'Real Human Bodies'" for Professor Sujata Moorti's WAGS 400 Seminar class. Emily Asher '09 received honorable mention for her paper "A Mirror of Her Own: Reflections of Female Identity in 'The Bloody Chamber'" for Professor Maria Hatjigeorgiou's class "Introduction to World Literature: Storytelling."
2007: Mateal Lovaas '07 received the award for her paper “To the Moon and Back: Gender Construction in Children?s Literature,” which she wrote for Professor Michael Sheridan's class “Language and Power.”
2006: Piya Kashyap '07 won the Fraker Prize for her weblog "A Journey Back," about her winter term travels to India.
2005: Elizabeth Lyon '06, for her essay "From Each According to Her Perceived Ability: An Experimental Study of Seller Discrimination in the Mao-orabilia Market at the New Silk Alley" on Chinese women's experiences in the Beijing marketplace
Gensler Prize Recipients:
2012
Caitlin Rose Willis '12, "Letting It All Go Straight to My Hips"
2010
Molly McGowan Farber
"Divergent Discourses in Egypt's Twentieth-Century Feminist Movement"
2009
Christine Bachman
"Grabbing Madonna's Crotch: Queering Gender, Sexuality, Race, Class and Age"
2008
Alison Glassie
"Love Your Mother"
2007
Noor Puthawala
"Inventing Marriage: 'Tradition' in Indian and Diasporic Cinemas"
2006
Maureen O'Brien
"Women Playing Women: The Secret Power of the Musumeyaku in the All-Female Takarazuka Revue Company"
2005
Stephanie Morales '05 won the Gensler Prize for her senior thesis presentation. "Four Women or 'I Guess They'd Rather I Strip for A Living': The Politics of Hairbraiding".
2004
Lila Buckley
"The Newborn Kingdom: Voices of Urban Chinese Women and the Politics of Reproduction"
2003
Margaret Aleles
2002
Laura Bloom
John Kent
2001
Amanda Cecil
Lisa Engelstein
"A Feminist Approach to Bioethics"
2000
Elizabeth Young
1999
Nicole Lanthier
Stephanie Saldana
1998
Sarah Edson
Pratima Sipahimalani
1997
Karen Francolla
1996
Gretchen Elias
1995
Carolina Clutz
Katherine Berry
Evelyn Holley
1994
Gretchen Anderson
"Sylvia Plath and the Language of Female Eroticism"
Cynthia Coe
Iffath Sharif
"Beyond Survival: The Role of Credit in Rural Women's Socio-Economic Development"
1993
Rosemarie Recchia
Jeffrey Spencer
"Teaching Old Mosques New Tricks: Modernization, Political Islam, and the 'Woman Question' in Algeria and Tunisia"
1992
Wendy Staats
Sarah Woodard
1991
Erica Sasaki
Andrea Schaefer
1990
Tracey Gallin
Jessica Lindert
