Graduate Student Research On Women And Gender

Laura Barrett - ANTHROPOLOGY: Adult Fat Patterns

Adult fat patterns are of interest because of their relationship to health and their variability among populations and individuals. I have investigated sources of variation in early adult fat patterns and their ontogency, particularly the relationship between cigarette smoking and truncal fat distribution. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were used to evaluate the impact of smoking habits on the body size and shape of women 18 to 25 years of age.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States is a topic that has remained largely untouched by American historians. These reformers sought to revitalize society by producing homes, furniture, and other utilitarian objects that would benefit both middle-class housewives and working-class women. Research to date has highlighted the movement's male leaders and their collective achievements; but, since many of the "craftsmen" who produced arts and crafts objects were women, the immediate goal of this project is to produce an in-depth study of the cultural constructions of gender and work.

Janice Morrison - ANTHROPOLOGY: Women and the Family in the People's Republic of China

I am primarily interested in the effects of family legislation and policy, e.g. the Marriage Law, on the roles that women assume, particularly as they pertain to the one-child birth policy and the need to provide care for the elderly.

Catherine M. Stanford - ANTHROPOLOGY: Class, Gender, and Ethnicity in Central America

Working in the feminist neo-Marxist tradition, I am exploring class, gender; and ethnicity through a comparative study of Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, and Masaya, Nicaragua. Both study sites are rural but urbanizing communities located outside the main metropolitan areas of their respective countries. Contrasts in economic configurations are related to their commercial and agroindustrial sectors and their political history.

This research is based on the diaries of Elizabeth Lees Price, a nineteenth-century missionary's wife in present-day Botawana. Centering on her relationships with the Africans among whom she lived, it is concerned with the interplay among imperialism, domesticity, and Christianity between 1854 and 1883.

My first project, "Synthetic Hormone Contraception Distribution Policies for Teenage Women," investigates the moral, social, and economic implications of policies that would subsidize synthetic hormone contraception for young women. The second, "Is Contraception a Primary Good Necessary for a Just State?" is a Rawisian analysis of long-term contraception as a good for ensuring the principle of equal opportunity among the citizenry.

This research examines possible differences in background characteristics, which could relate to different electability criteria for women than for men.