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Dana Rognlie selected for UO Public Impact Graduate Fellowship

Dana2015Dana Rognlie, Philosophy Department Doctoral Candidate, was selected to receive a UO Public Impact Graduate Fellowship for her academic and activist work regarding campus sexual violence. The fellowship provides a stipend of $6,000 for the 2015-16 academic year and opportunities to share her research with the greater community.

Abstract of her work:

Courage In the Academy: Acting to Eliminate Sexual Violence
“In both my dissertation and political advocacy, I take seriously the sexual violence and social injustice rampant within our society, particularly on college campuses, and think through a conception of courageous political action that might help make abstract principles of equal access to education a concrete reality. I do this through an engagement with the Ancient Greek concept of ἀνδρεία, translated both as ‘manliness’ and ‘courage,’ which I define as the habitual ability to judge and act well in the face of an uncertain future. As such, I think through the relation of action and courage at the same time as thinking through the performance of gender in anxiety (cf. Butler). I do this through an engagement with philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Arendt, Kierkegaard, and Beauvoir, especially, to arrive at a philosophical consideration of potential policy that would make education materially accessible for every-body. I take seriously the skyrocketing cost of tuition as well as the fact that one in five women on college campuses is a survivor of sexual assault (cf. “Not Alone,” whitehouse.gov). These issues are not unrelated, and I seek to utilize my dissertation research to think through my own experience advocating with students, staff, and educators in a non-profit I co-founded, the League of Educators and Students Slashing Tuition (LESS-T), campus and Oregon labor unions, and the University of Oregon Coalition to End Sexual Violence. In the final chapter of my dissertation, which I hope to write with the aid of the UO Public Impact Graduate Fellowship, I critically analyze contemporary campus culture and policy to explain the ethical importance of widespread mandatory curriculum on sexual violence to make concrete our yet unrealized ideals of equality.”

For more information about the Fellowship, see:
https://gradschool.uoregon.edu/impact-fellowship