Carly Woods wins the 2007 Tamara Horowitz Graduate Student Paper Prize
Communication doctoral student Carly Woods has been named as the first-place recipient of the 2007 Tamara Horowitz Graduate Student Paper Prize from the University of Pittsburgh's Women's Studies Program.
Woods' winning paper, "The Male Body in Pain: Reading Disabled and Chronically Ill Masculinities" explores how masculinity is rhetorically constructed in Murderball (2005) and Sick (1997), two documentary films dealing with disability and chronic illness. Drawing from feminist theorist Rosemarie Garland Thomson's taxonomy of the four primary visual rhetorics of disability, Woods compares and contrasts images in the films with representations of masculinity that assume able bodies. Her analysis contributes important texture to the interdisciplinary study of masculinity by showing how disability and chronic illness can work as modes of rhetorical expression.
An interdisciplinary selection committee appreciated Woods' "well-written" paper, lauding it for "open[ing] up a space within existing critical conversations about masculinity for a consideration of the disabled or ill body." The prize carries a $400 cash prize. Originally written for "Masculinities in Theory and Practice," a graduate seminar taught by French and Italian Literature assistant professor Todd Reeser in fall 2006, Woods' paper has been accepted for presentation at the National Communication Association convention in Chicago, upcoming in November 2007.
Last year, Woods penned the third-place prize winning paper in the same competition. She is currently finishing her coursework for a Ph.D. in Communication and is a Women's Studies Teaching Fellow for 2007-2008.
