WSRC Research Highlights
Fall 2021
Maryam Ghodrati | The Visual Representation of Displacement
Maryam Ghodrati has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation “Between the Visual and the Verbal: An Aesthetic of Open Wounds in Post-Traumatic Experience of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)” is a comparative study of literary and artistic forms and genres that have responded to traumatic histories and their aftermath. Ghodrati is currently working on the visual representation of displacement. Through the analysis of painting, drawing, sculptor, photography, and film, created by both male and female artists of Kurdish and Palestinian origin, she investigates questions such as: How can a displaced body in exile prove its humanity? How are loss and wounding negotiated in visual representation and personal and collective histories from both male and female perspectives? And how culture, religion, ideology, and politics affect the way artists represent the human body?
Ama Saran | The Lived Experience of Older Women of African Descent (and Dissent) as They Daily Negotiate the COVID Pandemic
Ama Saran, PhD, MSW, has worked at the nexus of public health, social welfare, and community education for nearly fifty years in urban and rural, domestic, and international settings. Her research at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center will involve research primarily canted toward the lived experience of older women of African descent (and dissent) as they daily negotiate the COVID pandemic. Saran is privileged to collaborate with a Brandeis senior, Aisha Waggeh, of Gambian ancestry to research and produce an exploratory essay from a mix of divergent standpoints and social, cultural contexts, Islamic and Christian, young adults, and elders, northeast and southeast; COVID in dual/dueling? perspectives. Saran has submitted a preliminary proposal for a Bamberg, Germany based conference on the conceptualization of home in a myriad of settings and voices. Her proposal and presentation will focus on Home related to Homegoings within the context of COVID as part of an interlocking series with a consistent emphasis on mental health impacts, ritual and cultural transference and transformation. Saran’s goal is to produce a larger body of research centered on older women of Gullah Geechee ancestry as well, in the southeast coastal low country of South Carolina, Grits and Grief, Rice and Rituals.
Cascading Lives: Stories of Loss, Resilience, & Resistance
The WSRC is delighted to announce that WSRC Director Dr. Karen V. Hansen and her co-investigator, Dr. Nazli Kibria of Boston University, have been awarded the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge Grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Raikes Foundation. Their proposal, Cascading Lives: Stories of Loss, Resilience, & Resistance, was selected from 1,225 submissions and is one of 28 organizations from 18 states. Please view video here.
Innovative Research Into Gender and Women’s Issues
Working in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and at their intersections, the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) researchers and artists focus on vexing questions related to gender dynamics and inequalities. To illuminate the past and present, via empirical evidence and transcendent insight, the WSRC aims to construct a path to a more equitable future.
The WSRC acts as a nexus of three dynamic, integrated programs that operate on principles of interdisciplinary exchange and cross-generational partnership:
Suffrage and Citizenship
As the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment approaches, the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program, the Women’s Studies Research Center, and the Politics Department at Brandeis are celebrating women’s suffrage.
