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Syracuse University, College of Arts and Sciences

Graduate Student Awards in Women's and Gender Studies

Joan Lukes Rothenberg Graduate Student Service Award

The Joan Lukas Rothenberg Graduate Student Service Award recognizes the work of a WGS teaching assistant or CAS student who has contributed to feminist education on campus through direct service to the Women's and Gender Studies Department, and/or the larger SU community. Joan Lukas Rothenberg was recognized as both an artist and activist. She was a founding member of the first women’s consciousness-raising group which evolved in to the Women’s Information Center in 1972. Ms. Rothenberg was in the process of completing her Ph.D. in Social Science and a CAS in women’s studies when she died in 1990.  

Past Winners

  • 2023: Taveeshi Singh
  • 2022: Ionah ME Scully
  • 2021: Feminist of Color Graduate Students Collective (Mirella Pretell, Natalie Gallagher, Julissa Collazo Lopez, and Lida Colon, representatives)
  • 2020: BIPOC Graduate Student Group (Ionah ME Scully, representative)
  • 2019: Laura Jordan Jaffee
  • 2018: Seth E. Davis
  • 2017: Laura Jordan Jaffee
  • 2016: Kimberly Natalia Williams
  • 2015: Sherri Williams
  • 2014: Meredith Madden
  • 2013: Rebekah Joy Orr
Toni Taverone Graduate Paper Prize

The Toni Taverone Graduate Paper Prize recognizes excellence among graduate students in Women’s and Gender Studies classes. Selected papers demonstrate an exceptional grasp of gender analyses and/or feminist theory. Toni Tavarone earned her Ph.D. in Social Science from Syracuse University in 1983 and was a certificate of advanced studies student in the early days of the women’s studies program. In the early 1980’s she was active in the Syracuse Peace Council and with the Socialist-Feminist Collective, a study group of local women who published the groundbreaking journal, Salt City Press. 

Past Winners

  • 2023: Bread and Roses: Bramsh Khan, Poonam, Argade, and Taveeshi Singh: Organization of the Dalit History Month events
  • 2022: Emine Naz Oktay, "Loving Wisdoms in Discomfort"
  • 2021: Ionah Scully, “Braided Stories of Desire: A Nehiyaw Two Spirit Methodology of Homecoming”
  • 2020: Reneé Brown, “Of Reputation and Respectability: An Exploration of Higglers Subjectivity in Downtown, Jamaica”
  • 2019: Danae Michelle Faulk, “Fat Across Borders: Transnational Feminism Interventions in Fat Studies Praxis” AND Joss Rae Willsbrough, Category Is…: The Transforming “Realness” of Drag”
  • 2018: Shanique Mothersill "Re-rooting: Decolonizing Black Women's Hair"
  • 2017: Abel Gomez "Decolonizing the Chicana Spirit: Indigenous Religion and Chicana Feminism"
  • 2016: Joe Edward Hatfield “Katrina at the Intersection: Gender, Race, Class, and the Environment in Trouble the Water”
  • 2015: Laura Jordan Jaffee “Unsettled Global Disability Frameworks: Settler Colonialism and Disability in Israel/Palestine” and Ariane Vani Kannan “Decolonizing Model Minority Suicide”
  • 2014: Sean Wang “’They Don’t Pay Taxes, They Don’t Assimilate’: Feelings of Injustice in Local Anti-Immigration Activism”
  • 2013: Sean Wang “Militarism and Development: Theoretical Implications of American children in U.S. involvements abroad”