The Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is excited to announce that Haley Strassburger has been selected as the recipient of the WGSS Diane Fowlkes Research Award for the 2022-2023 academic year! Established by Diane L. Fowlkes, the founding director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (then the Women’s Studies Institute), the Diane L. Fowlkes Research Award honors the dedication to the field of Women’s and Gender Studies demonstrated by a group of committed faculty who worked to get the Institute established at GSU. Its goals are to continue the legacy of committed scholarship by supporting engaged research in the field.
Haley Strassburger’s graduate thesis explores the role of the pregnant woman, as well as the demonic fetus, within horror and supernatural media by combining elements of media content analysis, discourse analysis, and feminist strategies of archival work. Through an analysis of the novel and film Rosemary’s Baby, as well as the television series Angel, this project seeks to evaluate the impact of this heavy-handed trope in contemporary media, as well as offer religious, historical, and political contextualization for the prevalence of this media archetype.
Congratulations, Haley!