Pembroke Center
Tags Undergraduate

Barbara Anton Community Research Grant

Funding Opportunities

Undergraduate students doing an honors thesis involving community work related to the welfare of women and children are eligible to apply for the Barbara Anton Community Research grant. The grant provides $1,000 in research support.

Application materials should include:

  • a three to five page description of your honors thesis
  • a letter of support from your thesis advisor
  • a brief description of how you would use the grant funds, if awarded

The grant commemorates Barbara Anton’s many contributions to the Pembroke Center over nearly two decades as director of the Pembroke Associates organization.

2021/22 Recipient

Sydney Smith photo

Sydney Smith ’22
Africana Studies, Political Science
“‘I Am a Revolutionary Black Woman’: Black Power Visions in the Narratives of Women in the Black Panther Party”

While historical analyses of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense have thoroughly documented the organization's gender politics and ideology, there has been little attention devoted to the experience of women members. Though such research has drawn from the written and spoken words of women in the Party, previous scholarship has failed to critically analyze the experiences of sisterhood and motherhood that are central in these women's narratives. Sydney Smith's project considers the distinct ways that women in the Black Panther Party resisted the organization's heterosexism through their informal and supportive relationships with one another and their maternal experiences. Employing close reading analyses of the autobiographies of Elaine Brown and Assata Shakur, two Black Panther Party activists, Smith highlights how women members collectively challenged the sexism within the organization while remaining committed to its mission and expanded visions of Black liberation throughout the Black Power Movement. To locate these autobiographical texts as important insights into Black women's “double struggle” against racism and sexism is part of the critical project of easing the separation between racial justice and gender equality while also positing Black liberation organizations as a crucial site for redefining and reconfiguring ideas about Black womanhood.

Past Recipients

  • 2020/2021 - Connor Jenkins, History and Africana Studies
    “Fear gave speed to our steps”: Slavery’s Hauntings and the Long Lives of Plantation Geographies in Edenton, North Carolina from 1850 to 1880
  • 2019/2020 - Scarlett Bergam, Public Health
    “They should be taught self-respect, self-confidence and self-love”: The impact of education and conflicting social pressures on the sexual behaviors of South African Adolescents Living With HIV
  • 2018/2019 - Sophie Kupetz, History
    Prisoners Against Rape
  • 2017/2018 - Cleveish Bogle, Anthropology, Human Biology
    Articulating the Impact of Creative Youth Development on ¡City Arts!
  • 2016/2017 - Sage Fanucchi-Funes, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies
    Class and Racial Entanglements in Contemporary Midwifery
  • 2015/2016 - Yacine Sow, Health and Human Biology
    Project CARE Video Series: Encouraging Women to Make Contraceptive Choices while Incarcerated
  • 2014/2015 - Elaine Hsiang, Health and Human Biology
    Mapping (Un)Safe Spaces: LGBTQ Health Since the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
  • 2013/2014 - Evelyn Sanchez, American Studies
    State Sanctioned Motherhood
  • 2012/2013 - Julia Ellis-Kahana, Sociology
    Sailing a Social Movement into a Social Nonmovement: A Case Study of Self-Empowerment for Safe Abortion in Morocco
  • 2011/2012 - Chishio Furukawa, Applied Math-Economics; Environmental Studies
    Reading by solar lamps, replacing kerosene candles: Randomized evaluation of solar lamps as alternative to kerosene candles for children’s study in rural Ugandan households
  • 2010/2011 - Samuel McGowan, Africana Studies
    Patients and Power: The Development of a Health Infrastructure Gone Awry in Kibera, Kenya
  • 2009/2010 - William Lambek, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies; Africana Studies
    Migratory Identities: Political Identity Formation and Immigrant Community Organizing
  • 2008/2009 - Alison Cohen, Community Health
    Community-Based Participatory Epidemiology: Developing, Conducting, and Analyzing an Environmental Health Assessment with Communities for a Better Environment
  • 2007/2008 - Alison Fairbrother, Development Studies
    Intern for African Services Committee (ASC) based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopa, to create a pilot program in pediatric case management for HIV positive women and children living on an isolated mountaintop
  • 2006/2007 - Sarah Adler-Milstein, Development Studies
    Union of Workers of the Company BJ&B in the Dominican Republic–study of issues related to women, unions and the global market
  • 2005/2006 - Bathsheba Demuth
  • 2004/2005 - Keally DeWitt
  • 2003/2004 - Jammei Delphine Huang
  • 2002/2003 - Emma Kuby
  • 2001/2002 - Laura Hughes
  • 2000/2001 - Dara Kay Cohen