GWS held our annual awards day on May 8, 2025.  Congratulations to all of our award winners!

• 2025 Joan Callahan Award for Scholastic Achievement:  Nina Bradley
• 2025 Kate Black Award for Activism:  Mariana Escobedo de la Pena & Damaris Paulino Escobar
• 2025 Jan Oaks Feminist Creativity Award:  Kamryn Lin
• 2025 Space, Place, & Southern Grace Fund for Feminist Studies: Damaris Paulino Escobar
• 2024-2025 Tomasky Leaders: Damaris Paulino Escobar, Jenn Knight, Mariana Escobedo de la Pena, Ryan Yonts
• GWS graduate certificate awardees: Aubrey Keller, Kay Hales, Kaycie Bolin
• 2025 OPSVAW Graduate Fellowship: Jingxue Zhang

Congratulations to our GWS PhD graduates:  Dr. Lukas Bullock, Dr. Heather Carpenter, Dr. Alina Hechler, Dr. Lee Mandelo & Dr. Snehal Sharma!!!  Graduation picture below. 

Congratulations to Frances Henderson for winning a 2025 UK Outstanding Teaching Award!

Elizabeth Williams and Anastasia Todd have been promoted to Associate Professor.  Congratulations!

Ellen Riggle was selected as the 2025 winner of the Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize for outstanding contributions to research at the University of Kentucky.  Congratulations!

Aria Halliday's interview with esteemed emerita professor Dr. Ann duCille was published in Feminist Theory and can be read here

Ellen Riggle has a new collaborative article in press:
Yang, Y., Riggle, E. D.B., Wanga, F., Wua, M., Suna, Y., Liuf, H., & Dai, L. (2025). Chinese Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Positive Identity Measure (C-LGB-PIM). Journal of Homosexuality. This article is a collaboration with Yawen Yang, a Master's student in Wuhan, China, and her colleagues and advisor (Lisha Dai), to translate into Chinese and validate the LGB-PIM scale as the  女同性恋者、男同性恋者、双性恋者的积极身份测量（C-LGB-PIM). This is the thirteenth known language translation of the LGB-PIM scale (Riggle et al., 2014) and extends the scale's accessibility.

Congratulations to Jingxue Zhang, who has been chosen for a WRD Excellence in Teaching Award.  This award honors graduate instructors that have demonstrated teaching excellence inside and outside the classroom.  

Ellen Riggle has a new creative non fiction essay, Assigned at Birth, published in Writers Resist.

Ellen Riggle has a new article released in New Ideas in Psychology: An International Journal of Innovative Theory in Psychology titled "Understanding the potential impact of ostracism on LGBTQ health disparities".  

Aria Halliday's newest publications include the article "Diversity of Consumption: Mattel's Collectible Black Bodies" published in the Black Scholar and a review of Rob Goldberg's book Radical Play for The American Historical Review. You can read Dr. Halliday's review here. 

Ellen Riggle's newest publication, "Traumatic Accumulation and Enumeration: A Poetic Voice for Experiences of Prejudice and Discrimination in the Academic Workplace" was published in the March edition of ADVANCE Journal.  
Frances Henderson's recent piece "Social Media and the Study of Feminisms" is in the most recent edition of CELT's Greater Faculties. 

Congratulations to Aria Halliday for being awarded the Marie Rich Endowment Fellowship.  

Ellen Riggle, Jenn Hunt, and former Post-Doc Abby Folberg have a new publication titled "Tolerance of homonegativity and transnegativity predicts negative evaluations of LGBT people and LGBT-supportive policies among US-based heterosexual, cisgender participants" in the Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Lukas Bullock, whose chapter "Confrontations in Kentucky: Housing Justice in the Bluegrass State" will be appearing in the forthcoming book Dispatches from the Threshold (March 2025).  The book chronicles the various ways that tenants fought for housing justice across the globe during Covid-19 and Bullock's chapter provides a first-hand account on the activism that flourished throughout central and eastern Kentucky.

Lee Mandelo's book The Woods All Black has been included on the year's NPR Recommended Reading/Books We Love list.  Congratulations, Lee!

Congratulations to Snehal Sharma for being accepted to the conference "Authoritarianism, Law, and the Remaking of Society" this June. 

Congratulations to Jingxue Zhang for being one of two recipients of the Feminist Formations/NWSA 2024 paper award for the paper, "Counter-Reproductive Memory: Chinese Young Women Against State Pronatalism".   

Aria Halliday's newest book, Black Girls and How We Fail Them (UNC Press) will be released in Feb 2025: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469686110/black-girls-and-how-we-fail-them/

Aria Halliday was recently quoted in two articles, one in the Washington Post and the other in USA Today.  

Congratulations to Elizabeth Williams, who was selected to be among six inaugural Lewis Honors College Faculty Fellows.  You can read the UK Now story here.

GWS grad student, Shubhangi, recently wrote a review for "Speak Out!: The Brixton Black Women's Group" published by Verso Books and edited by Milo Miller, for the LSE Review of Books.  You can read the review here.

Aria Halliday was recently interviewed for the leading paper in Denmark, Politiken. You can read the piece here

Check out some of Carol Mason's recent media/publications:

• Interviewed by Mary Reynolds, “How the Right Sets the Mood: Carol Mason on Sentimentalism and Resentment” in The Public Eye Magazine, Spring 2024 (Somerville, MA: Political Research Associates).
• “How Opposing Abortion Serves Populism,” in Still the Age of Populism? Re-examining Theories and Concepts, ed. Bernhard, Kreppel, and de la Torre (Routledge, 2024): 117-127.
• Featured in Charleston Gazette Mail retrospective analysis of 1974 Textbook Controversy. https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/education/textbooks-to-tea-party-controversys-effects-felt-far-beyond-wv-border/article_c1a564e1-7553-5744-9d8f-673cb5ccef34.html

Lukas Bullock was selected as a recipient of the 2024 UK Outstanding Teaching award, in the TA category.  Congrats, Lukas!  See pictures below from the awards ceremony. 

Jingxue Zhang & Lukas Bullock have been awarded a 2023-2024 College of Arts & Sciences Certificate for Outstanding Teaching. Congratulations!!!

Nelson Jiajie Meng won the 2024 graduate student paper prize at the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies and was accepted to the 2024 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workship taking place June 4-7, 2024.  Congratulations, Nelson!

Jenn Hunt won the 2024 A&S Innovative Teaching Award.  Congratulations!