The GCWS Motherboard Writing Prize
Honoring exceptional research & writing in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The GCWS Mother Board Writing Prize
Our annual recognition of students, awarding written work that exemplifies interdisciplinary inquiry, innovative thinking, and intersectional investigation.
This prize is an annual award honoring student research and writing in the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Two students will be recognized each year with a $500 award for unpublished written work that exemplifies the following three tenets central to the GCWS mission: interdisciplinary, innovation, and intersectional perspective.
Interdisciplinarity: Does this essay move across disciplinary boundaries?
Innovation: Is this essay original? Does it bring a fresh perspective to its topic(s)?
Intersectional perspective: Does this essay display an awareness of intersectional considerations at play in its topic(s)? The committee might also consider here, if relevant, how the author takes their own positionality into account.
Eligibility & Judiciary process
Students currently matriculated in a Masters or Doctorate program at one of the nine GCWS member institutions and who have been or are currently enrolled in a GCWS seminar are welcome to apply. Papers need not have been written for a GCWS course.
Submissions will be reviewed by a selection committee of GCWS affiliated faculty. Faculty will use this rubric to evaluate papers.
We will select a winning submission written by an eligible student in a Masters program and a winning submission written by an eligible student in a PhD program. The qualities that will be considered when evaluating the essays remain the same for both groups of students.
Each award comes with a $500 prize. The recipients of the writing prize will be announced the following Fall semester.
Submission date EXTENDED: August 28, 2023
All submissions must be complete by August 28, 2023. Complete submissions include:
Completed Writing Prize Submission Form
Paper (as a PDF, no more than 5000 words*)
Curriculum Vita (as a PDF)
Faculty support submission form
*Appendices and works cited are not counted toward word count.
The winner will be notified in the fall semester. For more information or questions, please contact the GCWS Program Manager at gcws@mit.edu
Mother board prize background
This writing prize is dedicated to the ‘Mother Board’, the feminist intellectuals who together conceptualized and brought the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies into existence.
From their initial conversations around Ruth Perry’s kitchen table, founding faculty built the Consortium to be a program that would train the next generation of feminist scholars in the interdisciplinary thinking and research that is at the heart of Women’s Studies.
The pioneering founders in whose name this prize is awarded are:
- Joyce Antler (Brandeis University)
- Laura Frader (Northeastern University)
- Carol Hurd Green (Boston College)
- Barbara Haber (Radcliffe College)
- Alice Jardine (Harvard University)
- Ruth Perry (MIT)
- Christiane Romero (Tufts University)
Submission Requirements:
1.) Complete and submit the Motherboard Writing Prize Submission form.
Please have your paper and CV ready to upload as PDFs before filling out the form. The paper should be saved as “Last Name_Paper Title.pdf”.
2.) Have a member of your institution's faculty fill out a FACULTY SUPPORT SUBMISSION FORM.
We require all entrants to have written support from a faculty member of their or another GCWS member institution who is familiar with their work and can speak to the merits of the submitted paper. You may ask an advisor, a faculty member from your GCWS course, or another faculty member with whom you have worked closely.
You may not provide commentary on your own work.
Please forward the faculty member the Faculty Support Submission Form, and request that they fill out the form before the deadline for submission.
Past Mother Board prize Winners
2023
Ph.d. Winner: “The Memory of the ‘Enemy’: Conjuring a Postsecular Insāniyat in Meherjaan”
Sahid Mondal, Ph.D., English, Brandeis University
Masters Winner: “The American Criminal (In) Justice System: Race, Class, and Gender in the Carceral State”
Lila Shakti, Masters, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University
2022
Ph.d. Winner: “Carpool Dakwah: Queer Mockery, Social Media Preacher, and Discourses of Gendered Expertise in Indonesia”
Amirah Fadhlina, Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University
Masters Winner: “THE TRANSFORMATION OF VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENTS IN THE #METOO ERA: A BODY OF LITERATURE WORTH A RECKONING”
Mira Revesz, Masters, Gender & Cultural Studies, Simmons University
2021
“WItnessing Wrongful imprisonment: an analysis of the telling of kalief browder’s story and the biopolitics of black innocence”
Erin Tatz, Ph.D., Political Science, Boston University
Honorable Mention:
“Masculine Renunciation or Rejection of the Feminine? Revisiting J.C. Flügel’s ‘Psychology of Clothes’”,
Chloe Chapin, Ph.D., American Studies, Harvard
2020
“Early muslim responses to the child marriage restraint act 1929”
Ateeb Gul, Ph.D., Religion, Boston University
Honorable Mention:
“Gender and the Measurement of Fertility”, Marion Boulicault, Ph.D., Philosophy, MIT
2019
"TO TAKE A KNEE: ‘HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT’, KNEELING, AND OTHER GESTURES OF SUBMISSION IN BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTEST PERFORMANCES"
Teri Incampo, Ph.D., Theatre and Performance Studies, Tufts University
2018
"Materiality, Affect, and the Archive: The Possibility of Feminist Nostalgia in Contemporary Handkerchief Embroidery"
Mariah Gruner, Ph.D.,American and New England Studies, Boston University
Honorable Mention:
Doing Gender, Doing Networks: Exploring Individual Networking Strategies in High Tech, Ethel Mickey, Ph.D., Sociology, Northeastern University
2017
"Queering the 'McConaissance': Matthew McConaughey and Hollywood's Conditional Courting of Diversity"
Sarah Leventer, Ph.D. Candidate, American and New England Studies, Boston University
2016
"Morally Accounting for Sex Selection Online in Turkey"
Burcu Mutlu, PhD Candidate, History; Anthropology; Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015
"Fiction as Archival Data: Building a Feminist Transatlantic Genealogy from Zora Neale Hurston to Erna Brodber"
Elizabeth Polcha, Ph.D., English and American Literature, Northeastern University
Honorable Mention:
"Expanding Our Picture of Stereotype Threat"
Stacey Goguen, Ph.D., Philosophy, Boston University
2014
"Suit(ed) for Success? Feminism, Neoliberalism, and Gendered Self-Sufficiency"
Emily Cummins, Ph.D., Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University
Honorable Mention:
"Whose Welfare? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Harvard Business Publishing Cases"
Michelle Kweder, Ph.D., College of Management, University of Massachusetts Boston
2013
"I'm not just a robot who does well in school": How Undergraduate Women Negotiate Achievement Identities"
Elizabeth Blair, Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
2012
"A Surprising Sisterhood: The Feminist Alliance of Housewives and Prostitutes, 1973 - 1983"
Amanda Strauss, Combined MA/MLS Program in History and Library Science at Simmons College
Honorable Mention:
"Veiled Periphery: Rural Kurdish Women in Turkey and the Practice of Veiling"
Feyza Burak Adli, MA in Anthropology at Brandeis University
2011
"Feminist Explorations into Shifting Analytics: Gender and Development as a Professionalized Social Movement"
Amy E. Hanes, Dual MA in Sustainable International Development and Women's and Gender Studies, Heller School for Social Science and Policy, Brandeis University (completed Spring 2011)
PhD in Anthropology, Brandeis Universty (begun Fall 2011)
2010
Land, Women, and the Rule of Law in Rwanda: How Far Have We Come?"
Aparna Polavarapu, Masters student of International Affairs, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Honorable Mention:
"To Control Their Destiny: Girls' Mobility and the Stakes of Schooling in Colonial Natal"
Meghan Healy, PhD candidate in the Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
2009
"Written in Blood: AIDS and the Subversion of Elegy"
Nino Testa, PhD candidate in the Department of English, Tufts University
2008
"The Story of Kausar Bano: An Exploration of How Gujarati Muslims Perceived, Understood, and Reacted to the Violence Inflicted Upon Their Community During the 2002 Gujarat Carnage"
Elizabeth Mount, Masters student of Gender and Cultural Studies, Simmons College
Honorable Mention:
"Breastfeeding Advocacy and the Need for a Relational Approach"
Miranda Waggoner, PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, Brandeis University
