The Women’s Studies Research Center Internship:
Student-Scholar Partnership (SSP)
Project Proposal Form Fall 2013 – BOTH New and Continuing
SCHOLAR INFORMATION
Name: Ellen Rovner
Brandeis WSRC Affiliation: Visiting Research Associate
E-mail: erovner@brandeis.edu
Are there dates during the semester when you will be traveling/unreachable? Please specify.
Possible late October trip to National Parks for one week; exact date yet to be determined.
Third week in November trip to Chicago for 2014 American Anthropological Association Meeting
PROJECT INFORMATION
Title of Project: Women Making Food and Feminism
Please circle one:
Is this project: Continuing from the Spring 2013 SSP program
or
a brand-New Project?
Describe your research project in three sentences for advertising purposes. (More detailed description
will be given later in this app.)
Are women empowering themselves and their families in the kitchen? For many women, food and
feminism remain a cultural oxymoron, a retrograde sign of women’s lack of empowerment, despite the
relatively recent emergence of female food professionals and women “taking back” the kitchen. And,
if we have truly “left the kitchen,” what have we lost?
STUDENT PARTNER INFORMATION
Have you participated in the Student-Scholar Partnership in prior years?
(Please specify year and student’s name if yes)
Yes _____ No _X____
What is your timeline for work to commence on your research project this semester? We can begin
working together as soon as student is ready.
Student-Scholar Partnership
Spring 2013
Project Proposal
Scholars and faculty members participating in the SSP Program are required to meet with their
student research assistants on a weekly basis for supervision.
Please explain how you will fulfill this commitment. Where do you plan to hold supervision meetings?
I will meet with student at the WSRC or the Brandeis Library/campus at a mutually convenient time
every week. If the student’s schedule permits, I would like the student to accompany me and help
conduct ethnographic interviews.
How will you manage time together when one of you is traveling/vacationing?
On rare occasions that weekly supervision sessions cannot be held face-to-face, I expect that
ubiquitous internet access will allow for little interruption in our work processes. In addition, many of
student’s research responsibilities can be fulfilled independently.
Hiring Criteria Reminder: The SSP is designed for Students and Scholars to work together for 50
hours on a project in the Scholar’s area of expertise. All candidates who apply must be considered.
Final choices should be made based on student’s background, skills and level of interest. Decisions
may not be made based solely on academic year standing.
Qualifications Needed for Student Partner: Please indicate below any Required or Desired skills
pertinent to your job description. NOTE: Year of Standing (i.e. Sophomore, Junior, Senior) may
NOT be used as a sole criterion. Please see Coordinator if you have any questions.)
Related coursework:
Anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, media studies, women’s histories, psychology
Technical Skills:
Internet and library research, interviewing, manuscript editing, video (desired, but not required),
analytic writing skills, social media expertise
Past Experience:
Ideally, student has conducted academic work outside a classroom setting at a designated field site; has
experience interviewing research informants; has worked on community-based research projects;
successfully completed work that has required student to be engaged in problem-solving activities;
comfortably engages with social media; video experience (desired, not required)
Similar Professional Interests:
Scholarly interest in food, the formation of cultural identities, writing, gender, feminist theory,
especially theories of intersectionality, ethnographic research
Other (please indicate):
Student-Scholar Partnership
Spring 2013
Project Proposal
Student will be able to state needs and enjoy collaborative, possibly open-ended or long-term projects.
Student will be comfortable formulating ideas, contributing to research process, as well as
independently implementing and carrying out assigned tasks.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please submit a curriculum vitae and a detailed explanation of the following:
1. Please give a detailed description of your project.
2. What role will the student play in the project? Please be specific regarding expected
responsibilities.
3. How will your project benefit from the student's participation?
4. What specific knowledge or skills will the student acquire from carrying out this work?
5. What do you foresee to be the mutual benefits of the mentoring relationship?
6. Please feel free to add any other information you feel relevant.
Any questions? Please direct them to the Student-Scholar Partnership Coordinator, Kristen Mullin,
Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, MS 079, Waltham, MA. 02454-9110
Email: mullin@brandeis.edu
I am working on refining my dissertation-based research into publishable form(s) and applying my
research to bring disparate groups of women together in community. My research interests are directly
related to growing up in a secular, but somewhat insular Jewish cultural milieu in which women
simultaneously constructed and challenged families’ Jewish American identities through food. Though
I heard plenty of complaining about endless domestic chores, there were also satisfying hours spent
socializing in the kitchen; most of the women I knew seemed to enjoy the near total control they
exercised over family life as domestic “experts.” At college in the late sixties, however, my exposure
to Second Wave feminism’s disdain for women’s domestic lives, as exemplified by women’s roles in
the kitchen, left me feeling confused and questioning: How do we define empowerment? Many years
of thought, life experience, and successful Ph.D. research exploring women and food have spawned a
new, but related set of questions: Can cooking and women’s involvements with food be considered
acts of feminist empowerment? Or, are women’s complex relationships to food and domestic life
retrograde signs of women struggling for empowerment? Have women really left the kitchen? If true
for many American women, along with gaining opportunities for meaningful life paths outside the
domestic sphere, what have we lost?
Bringing some of these questions into my doctoral research, I worked primarily with older Jewish,
lower-income women in Chelsea, MA, women who no longer consider themselves to be actively
involved or interested in cooking. Yet, I found that these women consciously and unconsciously
exploit food and memory to maintain a struggling, aged Jewish community in Chelsea. I observed
how women’s food voices, the intimate connections women share through varied food conversations,
actions, and practices, are employed by this dwindling group of Jewish women to create individual as
well as communal value, and to reinforce their own strong and tenuous Jewish female identities--ideas
of self that have been challenged by the loss of families, places, and institutions that had shaped and
supported them throughout much of their lives. Through my involvements in the Chelsea community,
I met immigrant Latino and Somali women who also appear to turn to their culturally distinctive food
voices for social connections, strength, and personal expressions of loss and aspirations.
Student-Scholar Partnership
Spring 2013
Project Proposal
I would like to involve an SSP participant with me on a collaborative journey to not only explore these
questions and observations, but also to help generate new inquiries into women’s personal means of
identity constructions/re-constructions and empowerment through their relationships to food in daily
life. To begin, I am working on an article, a power point conference presentation, and developing a
book proposal that require several disparate tasks which will be helpful to both the student and me:
1) Research publishing criteria for journals, websites, and social media outlets that would be
receptive to the research described above.
2) Help develop article for written and on-line publications by analyzing argument, critiquing
format, and performing simple editing tasks. Student will be noted as contributor or coauthor to article(s), depending on extent of involvement.
3) If student’s time allows and student is available, s/he will accompany me to interview
women on meanings of home for November presentation to the American Anthropological
Association.
4) Student will assist in development of Power Point presentation for AAA conference.
5) Help draft book proposal for dissertation-based research that will expand to include recently
arrived, low-income immigrant women, as well as younger, middle-class women of Jewish,
Latino, and Somali backgrounds.
6) Student will help develop annotated bibliography on topic of food and feminism.
7) Student and I will search my transcribed and un-transcribed taped interviews for relevant
data.
8) Student will identify websites, blogs, and social media outlets with content relating to
feminism, women’s issues, and food. Student will assist in designing means of
participation so that we develop a platform through social media from which to research
and promote our work.
I expect to work with student for at least an hour per week as s/he assists me with research, publishing,
and social media tasks, and as I share my areas of expertise through supportive collaboration. If time
allows, I will be available to meet student outside of our weekly WSRC sessions to continue our work.
Though I understand the SSP commitment is one semester, and I particularly would like to achieve a
higher comfort level and familiarity with social media, have article ready for publication, and
presentation successfully completed during the semester, I foresee needing additional assistance
through the academic year as book ideas develop into a format and new research opportunities arise.
As our relationship deepens, I hope the student will feel enriched and more confident about delving
into his/her own research interests. S/he will be part of an academic relationship that is not based on
pleasing a professor or competing for grades. Rather, we will be an intellectual team that approaches
scholarly issues and problems as exciting, albeit at times frustrating, puzzles containing varied, often
interlocking paths to successful completion. And, in addition to my expertise in varied facets of
culinary anthropology such as memory and the senses, I have much to teach her about the application
of anthropological and feminist theory on the ground. Importantly, the mentee’s location at the WSRC
will expose the student to other female scholars committed to meaningful work and social change who
create and flourish within a supportive feminist environment. Specifically, the student will sharpen
writing and analytical skills, will be exposed to the expanding areas of scholarly work on food, and
will develop greater qualitative research skills. S/he will have the satisfaction of experiencing the
value of his/her contributions to efforts that will be completed by the end of the semester, the article
and presentation, while also taking part in larger projects of establishing a social media platform and
developing/implementing a book proposal.
Student-Scholar Partnership
Spring 2013
Project Proposal
For me, mentoring a student is one of the most gratifying aspects of academic life. While a teaching
fellow in graduate school, I had great pleasure forming close relationships with students and
participating in their academic and personal growth. At Brandeis we are fortunate to draw from a
curious, innovative, and well-prepared student body consisting of many young people who question
passionately and openly struggle with new ideas and experiences. Within this environment, I can learn
much from the mentee, especially new approaches to problem solving and perspectives that age and
experience have likely limited for me. Finally, along with learning and re-learning together many of
the skills and methods that I have described as beneficial to the mentee, we will hopefully form a
relationship that renews and supports us both professionally and personally for a long time.
Student-Scholar Partnership
Spring 2013
Project Proposal