Welcome Back, Second-Year MA Candidates
We are delighted to welcome back our second-year MA candidates as they continue their endeavors and their theses and projects.
Ebonee Brown is a second-year MA candidate in the Department for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. She is currently continuing her thesis project that examines gender performance and Atlanta’s Trap music genre under the supervision of committee chair Dr. Manoucheka Celeste. Ebonee aims to work full-time within her community while continuing their research.
Ecem Ece is a second-year Women’s Studies MA student. They are currently working on their MA project, under the advisement of Dr. Maddy Coy. The project explores the practice of positionality and discusses the relationality of knowledge production and situating identities. They will continue their writing and activist work with LGBTQ+ communities in Turkey.
Beth Holden is a second year Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies MA student. She is currently working on her thesis, “How Do We Reach Recovery? A Feminist Analysis of Drug Use Recoveries,” that investigates the ways in which we conceptualize and categorize substance use and substance use recovery, under the advisement of Dr. Trysh Travis.
Kelsey Malles is a second year Women’s Studies MA student currently working on her non-thesis project under the supervision of Dr. Anita Anantharam. Her project explores plant-based lifestyles and how the same systems that uphold racism, classism, and sexism also sustain speciesism. She will continue working on her project to create a comprehensive guide for participants taking tours of Peacefield Farm Sanctuary to enable a holistic understanding of dietary impacts.
Nagdeska Paulino is a second-year master’s student, and their research revolves around women’s studies and colonial studies within environmentalism. She argues that climate change is both a product of and tool for colonialism and proposes that climate studies must be done interdisciplinarily to be effective. They are working on a non-thesis project, an art exhibition displaying their research, with Dr. Maddy Coy as their committee chair.
Elisa M. Rios is a second-year Women’s Studies MA student. She is currently working on her thesis which centers the racial and ethnic identity formation of Afro-Latinas through oral herstories under the supervision of committee chair, Dr. Jillian Hernandez. She aims to empower and uplift Afro-Latinas’ voices.
I’m so grateful to the incredible mentors and professors in the Women’s Studies Department who gave me the tools to create change, and for the work they do every day to bring us closer to a world of justice.
– Zoe Terner, UF Class of 2022
(see D.C. Internships Transform Knowledge into Policy and Action)
This story appears in the Fall 2022 issue of the Gender, Sexualities, & Women’s Studies Newsletter. Read more from the issue.