The 2020 Barbara and Donald Smalley Graduate Research Fellowship in Gender and Women's Studies has been awarded to Tiffany Harris, a graduate student in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership. The Smalley Fellowship is awarded to a graduate minor in Gender and Women's Studies whose dissertation proposal promises to make an outstanding contribution to the field of gender and/or sexuality studies.
Harris's dissertation is a "place-based inquiry" that juxtaposes outsider assumptions about Atlanta with the "'insider' narratives by Black women who call it home." Harris "centers Black women's lived experiences and regional sensibilities to examine the past, the present, and then imagines a 'speculative future' regarding Atlanta archives, pivotal infrastructure transformations, and increasingly shifting dynamics defining city limits." Harris draws on some intriguing and creative methodologies for her research, utilizing "autoethnography and 'the speculative'....to trace hauntings or ghostlike figures blurring and undergirding various outlooks informing the city's "Black Mecca" image." In doing so, Harris documents "the deep-rooted relationship between Black women and futurity," and "challenges hegemonic paradigms toward an intentional practice of otherworld making."