The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Please join us in congratulating the 2025 GSWS/FQT awardees!
Eleanor Grauke, Caroll Smith Rosenburg Senior Thesis Award
Eleanor Grauke is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying History with a concentration in Political History. Her research interests lie in the histories of local political organizing, as well as the contemporary political relevance of histories and storytelling. At Penn, she is a Civic Scholar, Mayor's Scholar, and Wolf Undergraduate Humanities Fellow. Outside of the classroom, Eleanor is involved in The Daily Pennsylvanian, 34th Street Magazine, and the Kite & Key Society.
Lila Shermeta, Lynda S Hart Undergraduate Award
Lila Shermeta is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Art History with a minor in Creative Writing. On campus, she writes for Under the Button and works at the Kelly Writers House as the Brodsky Gallery Curator. There, she curates two exhibits per semester-- with focus on highlighting student work and artists who explore the bridge between writing and art. Her thesis, Fascism and Lesbianism: Class Politics in the Portraits of Romaine Brooks, culminates her research on the life and art of lesbian painter Romaine Brooks (b. 1876). After graduation, she hopes to work to broaden public access to fine art and attend graduate school to continue her research in the intersection of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Art History. In her free time, you can find her at the movie theater or meandering through a public park.
Marc Ridgell, Leboy-Davies Graduate Student Award
Marc Ridgell is a PhD student in Africana Studies and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Their dissertation uses critical ethnography to examine how Black LGBTQ+ respond to urban inequality and gentrification in the neoliberal city. This summer, they will be conducting preliminary ethnographic fieldwork on various Black and queer nightlife scenes in Philadelphia.
M. Edith Sklaroff, Leboy-Davies Graduate Student Award
M. Edith Sklaroff is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation "Anti-Eugenics: Theory and Practice in the Twentieth-Century United States" examines the historical entanglements of anti-eugenics and anti-colonialism, welfare rights, reproductive health, and anti-abortion politics to develop a theory of how both eugenics and anti-eugenics function as political epistemologies. Sklaroff's research broadly engages with family abolition, reproductive justice, and the intersection of political theory and public policy.
Thomas “Hank” Owings, Phyllis Rackin Graduate Award
Thomas “Hank” Owings is a doctoral candidate in political theory specializing in feminist and queer theory, contemporary political theory, and political theology. His dissertation thinks between affect theory, the phenomenology of the body, theology, and rightwing populism to argue that certain ways of experiencing gender, sex, and labor are central to and constitutive of contemporary populist movements. He previously received a master’s in political science from Ohio University and a master’s in religious studies from the University of Chicago. He holds graduate certificates in gender and sexuality studies from both Ohio University and Penn. At both Ohio and Penn, Hank has taught or assisted in teaching courses on international relations theory, American politics, political theory, and gender and sexuality studies. He is a first-generation and low-income student, which motivates his passion for making academia accessible and building the confidence of fellow FGLI students in the classroom. For the 2024-2025 AY he was a CETLI fellow for equitable and inclusive teaching.
His dissertation critically reconstructs the "political theology of affect" at the heart of Anglo-American rightwing populism. Looking at popular theological works from Catholic and Reformed publishers; the speeches and writings of rightwing activists like Phyllis Schlafly, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, and Margaret Thatcher; and the political theory of Patrick Deneen, Yoram Hazony, and Aleksandr Dugin, he shows how a theological style of "feeling" the body animates an affective economy which gestates authoritarian family styles and disciplinary practices of "love" against queer folks, feminist-coded women, and the working poor.
Maddalena Scarperi, Phyllis Rackin Graduate Award
I joined the Graduate Group in Ancient History at Penn in Fall 2020. Before then, I gained my BA and MA in Classics at the University of Trento. There I was an active member of the Laboratorio di Scienze dell’Antichità, and I worked on two different research projects under the supervision of Maurizio Giangiulio and Elena Franchi. I first dug into the religious history of Sparta, focusing on the festival of the Hyakinthiai and on the crucial role it played in the periodic renovation of the civic body and collective identity of the Spartan polis. During my master I broadened my interests to include Herodotus’ Histories, and in my Master thesis I attempted a close reading of some passages of the text (those related to the Spartan king Cleomenes I), trying to shed light on the intricate interplay between Herodotus’ declared intent of “telling what he had been told” and his active reworking of the material at his disposal so as to make it fit into his broader interpretation of history and of the role played by humans within it, a process which becomes particularly evident, I believe, in his accounts of powerful leaders. Since 2021, I have been a member of the steering committee of the Herodotus Helpline, a world-wide community of scholars dedicated to the study Herodotus and his work (you can check out the Herodotus Helpline’s past and upcoming seminars, publications, call for papers and other activities here). During my time at Penn, I have expanded my research interests to include Mediterranean mobility and post-colonial approaches to the history of marginalized and silenced communities, with an emphasis on Laconia and Magna Graecia. I am currently preparing a dissertation on Metapontum, where I look at both textual sources and material evidence to explore the lives of Metapontine local dwellers from a post-colonial, multi-scalar, and gender-based perspective.
Life and Social Encounters at Metapontum: A Multi-Scalar, Postcolonial, and Gender-based Approach
My dissertation examines from a multi-scalar, post-colonial, and gender-based perspective the lives and social encounters of local dwellers in the Metapontine plain (Southern Italy) in the archaic and classical period. The core questions I investigate in this project are the following: 1. How do the discursive representations of reality attested by the textual evidence relate to the actual, messy processes in the making traceable in the material evidence? Which and whose experiences are marginalized, silenced, erased in those narratives? 2. To which extent can experiences marginalized/erased/silenced in the archive be retrieved and recentered through a postcolonial rereading of the extant evidence, both textual and material? In asking the latter question, I am especially interested in investigating the experiences of women in the local communities and the roles they played in negotiating social encounters in the Metapontine plain and the surrounding area in historical times.
Lauren Bakst, Phyllis Rackin Graduate Award
I am a PhD candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. My research interests include performance studies, poetics, Black feminisms, queer theory, and critical pedagogies. My dissertation focuses on experimental scenes of lesbian and queer performance from the 1990s into the present.
At Penn, I co-organized the Poetry & Poetics Working Group from 2021-23. I was a recipient of a 2022 Sachs Grant for Arts Innovation, which supported Vol. 3 of the School for Temporary Liveness. I am also pursuing a graduate certificate in gender and sexuality studies.
As an artist working in experimental performance, my work has been presented throughout NYC by the Kitchen, Danspace Project, the Chocolate Factory, Pioneer Works, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, SculptureCenter, and the Drawing Center, among other spaces. My chapbook, more problems with form or, desire notes or, still woman was published by Wendy's Subway. I was previously Managing Editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal and an R&D Fellow at the New Museum. My writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, and the Brooklyn Rail. I teach in the Dance MFA at University of the Arts and have previously taught undergraduate courses at University of the Arts and the Cooper Union. I organize and curate the School for Temporary Liveness—a para-site for collective study and experiments in performance, practice, and pedagogy.
I have a B.A./B.F.A. in Dance & Gender Studies from Hollins University (2011) and an M.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (2022).
Apurva Prasad, Graduate Student Research Expense Grant
Apurva Prasad is a dual PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and South Asia Studies. Her research interests include women’s writing, authorship studies, adaptation studies, and the literary traditions of northern India—specifically in Hindi, Punjabi, and English—in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as legal histories from South Asia. She co-organized the annual Hindi-Urdu Workshop for Spring 2025. She is a member of the"Women and the Court" project, convened by Dr. Nadia Cattoni and Melania Gravier at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Recently, she presented her research at the Annual Conference for South Asia in Fall 2024 on a panel titled “Women In Law Courts: Archives, Performance, and Legibility,”. She also presented her dissertation prospectus at UPenn's Fall 2025 GSWS Graduate Student Colloquium.
Her project studies why authors go to court and how they defend their literature there, arguing that the legal apparatus is a crucial site for authors to protect their literary rights and reputation in postcolonial India (1980-2020). It centers the figure of the woman author, grappling with why she litigates and how gender complicates her authorial rights, making the ownership of the work she has authored more tenuous. This project is situated at the intersection of legal and literary studies to articulate a historically grounded intervention into how authors deploy the legal apparatus to protect their work, analyzing how “women’s authorship” is articulated and contested in court.
Apurva will be conducting archival fieldwork in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 in India supported by a grant from the department of South Asia Studies, the Dissertation Research Award offered by the School of Arts and Sciences and the GSWS Graduate Student Research Expense Grant.
Frank Meng, Graduate Student Research Expense Grant
Frank Meng is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Penn-Birmingham Transatlantic Fellow with the Penn Migration Initiative (PMI) and a Graduate Research Fellow with the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program. His research broadly explores how queer migrants navigate identity, belonging, and structural exclusion across transnational contexts. His work has been supported by the Turner Schulman Graduate Fellowship, the Center for the Study of Contemporary China Research Grant, the Alexander Grass Institute Research Grant, and the Jeffrey and Shari Aronson Family Foundation Research Grant.
Project Synopsis:
Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews and a year of ethnographic observations and at gender affirming care clinics, friend gatherings, and informal lunches and dinners with participants in Philadelphia, this research aims to investigate how transgender Chinese immigrants define their gender identities, articulate their sexual expression, and engage with legal recognitions in the United States, particularly amid shifting political terrain. By centering the “case” of transgender Chinese immigrants, this research explores how transgender migrants confront intersecting systems of cisnormativity and racialized surveillance, offering insights into how gender transition shapes immigrants’ sense of belonging and strategies of engagement in political and legal debates under conditions of structural precarity. Specifically, this research asks: how do transgender Chinese immigrants draw on their lived experiences to engage with political debates yet arrive at divergent strategies: from proactive participation to anti-identitarian refusal and to protective withdrawal? By examining these contrastive political positions, this research contributes to our understanding of how marginalized groups respond to political and social instability and legal vulnerability produced by intersecting social factors and state violence.
Liz Rose, Graduate Mentorship Award
Liz researches the intersections of trans theory and Black feminist theory in contemporary diasporic writing across the Americas, using translation as a method to illuminate critical, rhizomatic genealogies of trans feminist thought. They currently serve as Graduate Associate at the Philadelphia Trans Oral History Project through the Center for Feminist, Queer, and Trans Studies and coordinator of the Gender/Sexuality Reading Group through the English department.
Liz’s work is published in numerous places, most recently TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Qui Parle, and Hopscotch Translation.
Austin Svedjan, Graduate Mentorship Award
Austin Svedjan (any pronouns) is a Doctoral Candidate and Fontaine Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where they study sexuality studies, trans and queer theories, and American cultural production from the late nineteenth century to the present. They hold a BA in English from the University of Houston and an MA in English with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Louisiana State University. For the 2025–2026 academic year they are a Doctoral Fellow at the Wolf Humanities Center, where they are working on a project on trans autobiography, literary paratext, and the "truth" of medical transition.
Austin’s writing appears or is forthcoming in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, ASAP/J, among others. Along with John Paul Ricco, they are the editor of the recent special issue of Postmodern Culture on the “Afterlives of the Antisocial.” They were recently interviewed about the special issue on the podcast Gender Jawn.
Their current dissertation project tracks the emergence of the modern concept of "bad sex" through its historical interfacing with institutions of literary education (i.e. eugenic high school curricula, elite universities, HBCUs, feminist conferences) across the long twentieth-century United States. Offering a historical explanation for the present coincidence of culture narratives of decline surrounding both the “end of the English major” and the “sex recession,” the project traces how sex and reading both came to be thought of as “disciplines” whose pleasures could be deepened through educations in judgment—as well as what the political and aesthetic faults of that disciplinarity.
Austin coordinates Gen/Sex, the Department of English's Gender and Sexuality Working Group.
In tandem with their academic work, Austin is a Resident Artist at the Common Press, the University of Pennsylvania’s typography studio.
Rosemary Malague, Non-Tenure Track Faculty Award
Bio forthcoming.
Eva Pensis, Non-Tenure Track Faculty Award
Dr. Eva Pensis is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar whose work explores the contours and legacies of trans femme life and art within popular culture, nightlife economies, entertainment and performance industries. Her current book project approaches a performance history of lipsyncing (the record act) within queer nightlife by way of unearthing and attending to a counterhistory of transmisogyny and erotophobia within gay drag scenes and queer studies as a disciplinary formation. Two central claims that animate this book project involve the deidealization of queer nightlife (routinely deployed as a utopian space for trans life and performance “beyond” the conscription of everyday violence) as well as a commitment to studying the convergence of queer studies, queer of color critique, and feminist studies in attempting to form a politics around sex that deemphasized its economic labor market conditions (sex work)–conditions that are unevenly shared among marginalized women of cis and trans experience within the erotic industries.
Her writing has been featured in e-Flux, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ruckus, SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. As a nightlife organizer and performer, Eva co-founded a trans equity arts alliance that featured an all-trans cast that raised funds for mutual aid for trans artist-performers of color and the Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center.
Eva is a pole instructor, artist, pianist, and community archivist. She holds a PhD in Music (Ethnomusicology) and in Theater and Performance Studies from the University of Chicago as well as a BM in Piano Performance from University of Southern California. She is currently the postdoctoral fellow with the Trans Oral History Project at the University of Pennsylvania.
