2023 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award Recipient

by Jodi Boyle - April 28, 2023

Andelina Dreshaj
Andrea Carolina Miranda Pestana

ALBANY, N.Y. (April 28, 2023) – The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today announced that third-year doctoral student Andrea Carolina Miranda Pestana was the 2023 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award recipient.

Miranda Pestana is working with rare books from the Latin American & Caribbean Book Collection in the Department of Special Collections & Archives to examine how criminalized, incarcerated, and peasant women have used literature, journaling, and solidarity networks to promote collective love, affection, and healing as critical aspects in dismantling patriarchal systems in México to achieve social justice. In the project, Miranda Pestana will also examine how political revolutions can be conceived as actions developed by women collectives to disband neoliberal policies and exploit communities imposed by Latin American nation-states, corporations, and the patriarchal system. This project is for independent coursework with Professor Alejandra Bronfman for Miranda Pestana’s doctorate in the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies.

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 social justice. Awardees must utilize at least one departmental collection as part of their research.