2024 ISSG Prize Winners Announced!

By
Columbia U ISSG
May 09, 2024

Congratulations to the 2024 ISSG Prize Winners and Honorable Mention Recipient:

Mira Mason, winner of the 29th annual ISSG Queer Studies Award for their winning essay, “Where Blackness and Transness Leave" 

Yeukai Zimbwa, winner of the 16th annual ISSG Women's and Gender Studies Award for their winning essay, “Black Female Embodiment's Desirous Disruptions in Shakespeare's Sonnets to "a woman collour'd il."

Noah Edelman, co-winner of the 7th annual ISSG Feminist to the Core Essay Award for their winning essay,  “Women Who Give: The Gender-Bending Power of Supernatural Women to Fix Wealth-Based Injustice in Marie de France."

Justin Chen, co-winner of the 7th annual ISSG Feminist to the Core Essay Award for their winning essay, “A Mother’s Journey: Exploring Immigration & the Female Identity."

Daniel Wolf Schneider, honorable mention recipient of the ISSG Queer Studies Award for their essay, “Smell the Flowers While You Can: Queer Flora, Unnatural Representation, and Ecologizing the Art of the AIDS Crisis."

We interviewed the students to learn more about their work and their plans for the future.

Mira Mason

Mira Mason, winner of the 29th annual ISSG Queer Studies Award for their winning essay, “Where Blackness and Transness Leave" 

  1. What inspired you to focus on your topic for this submission?

In my Trans Studies class, taught by Professor Paisley Currah, we talked a lot about different conceptions of transness that have forwarded within the field and how those different conceptions relate to other kinds of identities, especially race. I’ve read articles, essays, books in Black and Trans Studies since I was in high school, so I was super excited to talk about the intersection of my interests with my peer in the class. When it came time to write my final essay, I decided that I wanted to take a stab at thinking about the relationship between blackness and transness in a way that I hadn’t seen before. And so, my essay was born!

  1. How have you been able to integrate your interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the work you have done here at Columbia/Barnard?

I double major in English and Gender Studies, so a good chunk of my classes directly focus on Gender and Sexuality studies. But even in the English and Core classes I’ve taken, even in my course work that I’ve taken at Oxford during my semester abroad, my knowledge of Gender and Sexuality studies has given me the tools to more richly unpack and understand the texts I’ve encountered.

  1. What are your plans for the future?

This summer, I’ll will start doing research for my thesis, which will focus on the poetry of Norman “N.H” Pritchard. And in the Fall, I’ll be applying to graduate school!

Yeukai Zimbwa

Yeukai Zimbwa, winner of the 16th annual ISSG Women's and Gender Studies Award for their winning essay, “Black Female Embodiment's Desirous Disruptions in Shakespeare's Sonnets to "a woman collour'd il."

  1. What inspired you to focus on your topic for this submission?

I developed a deep interest in early modern poetics and sonnet writing in specific during a course I took in my sophomore fall on 17th century English literature. Ever since then, I have been studying the history and literary culture of early modern England with a particular focus on the emergence of colonialism, England's position in the broader world of European imperial power, and the literary constructions of racial difference that form an integral part of these histories. These interests converged to form the topic of my essay, which attends to the ways that the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets disrupts generic processes of meaning-making by refracting the male sonneteer's semantic authority to impose meanings on racialized female bodies.  

  1. How have you been able to integrate your interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the work you have done here at Columbia/Barnard?

I have been able to integrate my interest in Gender and Sexulaity Studies into the research that I have done as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at Barnard. My research has explored the gendered process of race-making at work in early modern English literature and culminated in my essay on Shakespeare's sonnets, which also forms a part of my senior thesis. Over the course of the past year, I have also been learning about queer southern African photography, painting, and media for a digital humanities project that I began during my junior spring as an Athena Fellow with Barnard's Athena Center for Leadership. I continue to work on this project, and you can learn more about it here.

  1. What are your plans for the future?

In the future, I hope to pursue an English PhD after taking a gap year!

Justin Chen

Justin Chen, co-winner of the 7th annual ISSG Feminist to the Core Essay Award for their winning essay, “A Mother’s Journey: Exploring Immigration & the Female Identity."

  1. What inspired you to focus on your topic for this submission?

My essay and artwork is inspired by the most complicated relationship in my life -- my mother. I found this desire to recontextualize the stories and mythologies in Literature Humanities through an unconventional narrative. The narrative not spoken about in class: the intersection between being a Chinese immigrant and the female identity. I wanted to understand my place in this world, which was inexplicably tied to storytelling. I found that to understand the importance of my own identity, as a first generation, gay and Chinese American, I had to gaze upon my mother.

  1. How have you been able to integrate your interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the work you have done here at Columbia/Barnard?

Within and outside the classroom at Columbia, I have found my discussions and readings all harken back to concepts within Gender and Sexuality Studies. In understanding any assignment, my own identity often arises in unexpected ways. In my academic pursuits, I have sought to explore crossovers between cultural identity, sexuality, and femininity. This has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the complexities surrounding these issues and to challenge prevailing narratives. Overall, it has been through reading, introspection, and discussions that I have integrated Gender and Sexuality Studies in my education.

  1. What are your plans for the future?

For the future, I hope to use my interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies in combination with my passions in Cognitive Science and Visual Arts to engage in a multifaceted education working to understand the intersection of these areas. I want to research and understand the way gender, culture and sexuality can influence psychology and neuroscience.

Noah Edelman

Noah Edelman, co-winner of the 7th annual ISSG Feminist to the Core Essay Award for their winning essay,  “Women Who Give: The Gender-Bending Power of Supernatural Women to Fix Wealth-Based Injustice in Marie de France."

  1. What inspired you to focus on your topic for this submission?

My first entry point into the Lais was from an economic perspective examining the system of gifting and largesse associated with supernatural characters in the work. As I studied the lais more closely, though, it became clearer and clearer to me that the central organizing idea of these supernatural interactions was a subtle destabilizing of gender norms relating to this concept of economic justice. I was extremely lucky to get the advice of my professor on this topic; Professor Zingesser specializes in French literature and gender/sexuality, and she encouraged me to look more deeply at the gender dynamics at play in the economic system of the lais. Once I knew what to look for, the essay felt almost inevitable and was an absolute joy to write.

  1. How have you been able to integrate your interest in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the work you have done here at Columbia/Barnard?

I’m fascinated by the intersection of gender with public health and climate issues. My primary academic interest is environmental health, and I’m planning to major in environmental biology. The impacts of climate change are already falling disproportionately on women, and the many current obstacles faced by women’s health advocates are only being compounded by the acceleration of climate change. Last summer, I read Robin Wall Kimmerrer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and was amazed at how much interdisciplinary work can be done at the intersection of culture, gender, and climate. In particular, I feel that the fields of environmental health and population and community health will, in the coming years, need to make major strides to address both the gender and racial inequalities exacerbated by climate change. This is an area where environmental researchers need to collaborate with sociologists, and I’m particularly
inspired in this sense by Dr. Jeffrey Hall, a sociologist at the CDC studying health equity who I had the honor of meeting a couple years ago through a program at the CDC Museum.

More recently, I took Professor Juan Pablo Comínguez’s class on Latinx Health, and got to delve into the particular issues Latinx women face in the healthcare and immigration systems, from the many-pronged difficulties in accessing reproductive care, to bias in the medical system, to the complicated effects of American imperialism in South and Central America on human rights and human health. One of the most important topics we examined was the invisibility of women with
HIV, a continuing issue in a world where HIV is often viewed as a disease exclusively impacting men. For anyone interested in exploring the topic further, I recommend looking at Lucia Egaña Rojas’s project Síndrome de la Desaparición Femenina or taking Professor Comínguez’s excellent class, which is being offered again in the fall.

  1. What are your plans for the future?

This summer, I’ll be working on campus as a research assistant in the eco-epidemiology lab studying lyme disease with Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser. In the long term, I’m hoping to work on mitigating and reversing climate change, with particular attention to the disparities in health impacts of climate change and the unique relationships different communities have to the natural and built environment. After I graduate, I’m considering volunteering in the peace corp, seeking a job at the CDC, or going to graduate school for an MPH, PhD, or DrPH in environmental health.

Daniel Wolf Schenider

Daniel Wolf Schneider, honorable mention recipient of the ISSG Queer Studies Award for their essay, “Smell the Flowers While You Can: Queer Flora, Unnatural Representation, and Ecologizing the Art of the AIDS Crisis."