This is one of a series of posts featuring Fellows from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation network.

The Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies supports the final year of dissertation writing for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose work addresses women’s and gendered issues in interdisciplinary and original ways. The 2016 class of Fellows includes Sarah Roth, a doctoral candidate in English at Northwestern University. Ms. Roth shares the way her home and academic life have influenced each other:

I didn’t quite realize, until I entered graduate school with a toddler and another child on the way, how bizarre the combination of academic and mother can seem to people. I was a bit of a freak in both of my main social circles, always worried about heteronormativity at playgroup and about pinkeye in seminar. This experience, distressing as it sometimes was, was very productive for my work— from the conception of my dissertation projection to theorizing the mind/body. But it also really enriched my life more broadly. I felt lucky to be able to (often, to be forced to) hold these two perspectives in mind simultaneously.

Ms. Roth’s dissertation title is An Interesting Condition: Reproduction and the Un-Domestication of the Victorian Novel. For more information on the 2016 Women’s Studies Fellows and a list of their dissertation titles, click here.

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