2024 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award Recipients Named
by - May 24, 2024
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 24, 2024) – The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY announced the 2024 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award recipients are University at Albany graduate student Nodiaus DiTonno and undergraduate student Alice Russo.
Ms. DiTonno received $500 for her research on how hegemonic feminism does not prioritize intersectional thought, which in turn can lead to exclusionary practices. She recently completed her first year in the Master of Arts program in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is a Teaching Collective Graduate Assistant. Ms. DiTonno’s research, initially explored in the department’s Feminist Theory course this past year, is under the supervision of Dr. Barbara Sutton. Ms. DiTonno is expanding her topic for presentation and for her final M.A. project by examining whether and how intersectional thought relates to queer feminist politics from a historical perspective based upon archival materials.
A member of the Class of 2024 who was a History honors and political science major, Ms. Russo received $250 for her research studying political activism and policy reform of women’s political organizations in the New York State Capital Region during the interwar period. Ms. Russo specifically reviewed how the League of Women Voters changed, influenced, and reformed policy in Schenectady County. Professors Kori Graves and Michael Taylor of the Department of History served as project advisors. Ms. Russo received her Bachelor of Arts degree earlier this month and will enter the Rockefeller College Public Administration/Public Policy graduate program at the University this fall.
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 manuscript or archival collection at the University as part of their research.