2014 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award Recipients Named

ALBANY, N.Y. (May 20, 2014) - The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today presented the 2014 Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research Awards to University at Albany graduate student Tracey Casseus and undergraduate student Gail Bensen. </img>

Ms. Casseus, who just received her Master of Arts degree, with a concentration in History and Media, was awarded $500 for her ongoing project to create a 15 minute documentary about United Tenants of Albany, an area housing advocacy group. Professor Gerald Zahavi of the Department of History serves as faculty advisor to the project, which uses the United Tenants of Albany as a case study to examine the disproportionate impact of a lack of affordable housing on low income women.
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A History major, Ms. Bensen received $100 to support a planned study of gender and power during her Fall 2014 senior research seminar. Her project will explore the life and work of Kate Stoneman, Class of 1866 and later faculty member of the New York State Normal College (now the University at Albany), who became the first female lawyer in the State of New York. Professor Kori Graves of the Department of History will supervise the study.

The annual Award honors Professor Patricia Stocking Brown, who taught Biology and Women's and Minorities' Studies for 35 years at nearby Siena College.

Trained at the University of Michigan in comparative endocrinology, and a self-described feminist, Patricia Stocking Brown was the first female faculty member in the sciences at Siena. There she established an extraordinary career as a caring and rigorous teacher and researcher who promoted student research, feminist analytical thinking and evidence-based medicine. Brown was the wife of University at Albany Distinguished Teaching Professor of Biology Emeritus Stephen C. Brown.

Professor Patricia Stocking Brown died in 2004 from metastatic breast cancer. The University at Albany Libraries' Department of Special Collections & Archives holds Brown's papers along with those of the grassroots nonprofit Capital Region Action Against Breast Cancer (CRAAB!), which she co-founded in 1997 and the New York State Breast Cancer Network, a coalition of grassroots breast cancer groups around the state, she co-founded soon after.

Donors from the University at Albany's Women's Studies and Biology Departments, including Professor of Women's Studies Emerita Bonnie Spanier, established The Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research in University Libraries to support and promote students' interest in and use of primary materials related to the study of social justice, housed in the Department of Special Collections & Archives. Award applicants must be a registered University at Albany graduate or undergraduate student and currently engaged in or planning a research project/class paper related to feminist social justice. Awardees must utilize at least one manuscript or archival collection at the University as part of his or her research.