On Monday, April 15. nine graduating Women's Studies and Gender & Health students gathered in front of family, friends, classmates, and advisors to present thesis projects at the 2019 Women's Studies Honors Symposium. The theses, which emerge from a year-and-a-half of hard work in the department's Honors Program, explored an array of topics related to women and gender, from circumcision narratives of women in Ethiopia to the influence of cultural expectations on South Asian American women's career decisions. 

Women's Studies Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Sara McClelland began the symposium by commenting on the outstanding diligence and quality of this year's cohort. She then turned the microphone over to the students themselves, who each gave a ten minute presentation of their work. Between sessions, students answered questions about their work from members of the audience.

Students and their thesis titles are as follow: 

Mari Alvarez
TRANSforming Healthcare: An Examination of Cisnormativity in Patient Provider Interactions
(Advisors: Andrea Bolivar and Rosario Ceballo)

Kate Austin
Riot Grrrl: Zines and the Exploration of Third-Wave Feminist Thought
(Advisor: Petra Kuppers)

Kalei Glozier
The Influence of Outness: Social and Sexual Experiences of Gay Men at the University of Michigan
(Advisor: Elizabeth Armstrong)

Allie Mangus
Appropriate Punishments for Perpetrators of Sexual Assault
(Advisor: Abigail Stewart)

Carly Marten
ኤፍ ጂ ኤም (“ef ji em”): A Case Study of Circumcision Narratives of Women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
(Advisors: Timothy R. B. Johnson and Savithry Namboodiripad)

Vidhya Nadarajan
Who was left out?: The sex and gender disparity in pain
(Advisor: Nesha Haniff)

Miloni Shah
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? Cultural Expectations and Career Choices of South Asian American College-Aged Women
(Advisor: Donna Nagata)

Hanna Simmons
Novel Influences on National HPV Vaccination Programs: State Legitimacy and Political Freedom in Rwanda and Romania
(Advisor: Anna Kirkland)

Shriya Suresh
What do women want in postpartum specialty maternal care? A Case Study
(Advisor: Joanne Bailey)

To read students' abstracts, see the Honors Symposium program. Look below to see a photo gallery from the event (or check out high quality photos on our Facebook page). 

Women's Studies Honors Symposium 2019

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