Niagara University’s women’s studies program honored four students for their work examining women, gender, or feminist issues at its annual awards ceremony on March 18, 2025. Entries were submitted by students across numerous disciplines in both the writing contest and in the creative entities contest, which was established last year.
“Students are doing the important work of drawing attention to women’s issues and how gender, race, class, and other social locations shape women’s lives and experiences,” said Dr. Carrie Glenn, assistant professor of history and director of the women’s studies program. “This contest matters because we know that women and girls are still not equal to men and boys in the United States and more globally, both at the individual and institutional levels. The women and girls in our lives, and in our classrooms, tell the story. Statistics tell the story. This contest creates a space for some of those stories to be told.”
Political science major Ava Palo received first prize in the writing contest for her paper, “Women’s Movements in South Korea and the United States: A Comparative Analysis.”
One judge noted, “Her paper—a comparison of women’s movements for equality in South Korea and the United States across nearly 200 years—is ambitious in scope. The paper connects women’s movements with wider political-social movements in both countries, such as the fight for abolition in the United States and the process of democratization in post-war South Korea. As such, it makes a clearly valuable contribution to the field of women’s studies. The analysis of the international effect of the #Metoo movement which resonated both in the United States and South Korea is especially strong.”
Second place went to political science major Emilee McGrane for her work, “The Impact of Gender Inequality in ‘Le Livre d’Emma’ and ‘Mavis,’” which she submitted in both English and French.
Judges noted that “Emilee’s originality in comparing contemporary portraits of Black women across two different media—a visual work of art (‘Mavis’) in the university’s Castellani Art Museum collection and a novel (‘Le Livre D’Emma’)—set her work paper from others. By working with ‘Mavis,’ a piece by American artist Alison Saar, and putting it into conversation with the class text— ‘The Book of Emma’ by Quebecois-Haitian author Marie-Celie Agnant— Emilee showed a clear commitment to issues of race and gender equality. In this way, Emilee’s essay stands as a prime example of her dedication to equality and justice and absolutely deserves to be celebrated.”
For the second consecutive year, Narges Kazemi, a computer and information sciences major, received first place honors in the creative entities contest. Her original piece of artwork, “Afghan Women’s Erasure by the Taliban,” made of newspaper clippings from Afghan and foreign news sources that frame an Afghan woman’s eyes, was designed as a response to the silence of the international community regarding the numerous daily violations of Afghan women’s rights, including the right to an education.
Judges said the headlines Narges “meticulously copied in Dari and English announce new decrees depriving women of their freedoms. The eyes at the center of her piece, which she said ‘symbolize the stifled tolerance of Afghan women, their resistance, and their sorrow under the obligatory black hijab’ are vigilant but unseen—deprived of vision and yet refusing to disappear. Her work offers not only a critique of the Taliban’s policies toward girls and women, but it also offers an incisive critique of media coverage and the international community’s short attention span and performative activism.”
Second place went to Elizabeth Whipple, a Spanish education major, for the fictional feminist magazine she created called The Feminist Post. It examined a host of gender biases and stereotypes in U.S. society, including the problematic nature of gender reveal parties, the impact of policing clothing on the LGBTQ+ community, wage disparity, and occupation discrimination.
Judges noted that a highlight of the entry was an interview Elizabeth conducted with her grandmother, Virginia, who came of age in the 1960s and '70s. Virginia recounted her experience of sexism in high school sports, noting that no athletic extracurricular activities were available to them beyond cheerleading.
New York Times bestselling author Lyz Lenz provided the keynote address at the banquet.