Rice Ph.D. student selected as fellow by Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Rice University English Ph.D. candidate Abby Goode will expand her research on the racial, reproductive and sexual contours of sustainability in 19th-century American literature during the next year, thanks to an award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

ABBY GOODE

Goode was one of 10 doctoral students chosen for the foundation’s Women’s Studies Fellowship, which is the only national program that supports dissertation work on women’s and gendered issues and helps cover expenses incurred while completing research. Goode’s dissertation is titled “Democratic Demographics: A Literary Genealogy of American Sustainability.”

“I have always been interested in American literary studies and gender and sexuality studies, but my challenge was to make a new contribution to those fields,” Goode said. “In my early years in the program, I became interested in representations of reproduction, and during my exams and prospectus-writing stage, I found that scholars had written little about the literary and cultural roots of the concept of sustainability — a concept that I see as intimately related to reproduction, especially at the population level. This turned into a dissertation topic that has allowed me to explore the American literary roots of sustainability, as well as the racial and reproductive contours of such an important yet hotly debated concept.”

Goode, a native of Bangor, Maine, said she anticipates she will use the award’s stipend for conference and research-related travel as well as supplies, which will be significant expenses for her. “This year, for instance, I traveled to Vancouver, Canada, for the Modern Language Association conference to present my research, and last year I traveled to the American Antiquarian Society research library in Worcester, Mass., to examine documents for one of my dissertation chapters.”

Following the completion of her studies at Rice, Goode plans to pursue teaching and research opportunities in academia. Her dissertation director is Caroline Levander, professor of English and vice president for strategic initiatives and digital education.

Created in 1974, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation’s Women’s Studies Fellowship supports the final year of dissertation writing for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose work addresses these topics in interdisciplinary and original ways. Each fellow is granted $5,000 for expenses, such as research-related travel, data work/collection and supplies connected with completing their dissertations. In addition, their dissertation titles are publicized with leading scholarly publishers at the conclusion of the dissertation year. For more information, visit http://woodrow.org/fellowships/womens-studies.