04/30/08 - Women’s Studies recognizes two students with 2008 Jameson Prize

Tasha Dubriwny presents Brittany Autumn Swihart as winner of the 2008 Henry Jameson Prize Not pictured: Mingde Mark Chia

The Women’s Studies Program has named Brittany Autumn Swihart and Mingde Mark Chia this year’s Henry Jameson Prize winner and runner-up. The award, a recognition of the best undergraduate papers addressing women’s lives and roles, was presented April 30 at the annual women’s studies spring luncheon.

Swihart, a double major in English and Spanish, wrote the winning submission in the fall of 2007, her first semester at Texas A&M. It is titled “Shakespeare and the Father-Daughter Relationship: a Case Study of Portia in The Merchant of Venice.”

Swihart said she chose to write about Portia because that character was unique among the women of the plays she read in her Shakespeare class. “We had the super-rebellious daughters and the supersubmissive daughters, but Portia wasn’t either type,” she said.

Chia was chosen as runner-up for “Navigating Difference in the Wide Sargasso Sea,” which explores author Jean Rhys’ approach to gender difference and racial difference in her 1966 “prequel” to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

“Wide Sargasso Sea is unique in that it forces one to examine one's gendered identity in more complex terms, [such as] race, ethnicity, class, sexuality [and] culture, without necessarily privileging one over the other or assuming that all categories are equal,” said Chia, who studied at A&M last spring as an exchange student from the National University of Singapore. “This is something women’s studies must always return to.”

Prize honors a father and his values
Partly the result of another father-daughter relationship, the Jameson Prize was established in 1989. Dr. Betsy Jameson initiated the award in honor of her father Henry Jameson, who attended veterinary school at A&M. His wife, Dr. Grace Jameson, now provides the funds for the annual prize.

Betsy Jameson said an award for exemplary work in women’s studies is a suitable tribute to her father’s memory for several reasons. First, he was an enthusiastic supporter of educational and professional opportunities for women, starting in his own family. He supported his wife in completing medical school and in practicing psychiatry, despite taking “some flak for that because it was the 1950s and it wasn’t usual for women to have careers,” Betsy Jameson said.

Henry Jameson continued to stress the importance of education to his four children, two of whom are women. “[My parents] both let my sister and me know that we could and should use all of our abilities and do whatever we wanted to do, and he put us all through any college or university we wanted to go to,” Betsy Jameson said. “But more than that, he let me know that he valued my mom’s strength and her professional accomplishments and that that was part of what he loved about her,” added the University of Calgary history professor. “That made those things more possible for me.”

She said her father’s support of education for everybody extended outside his own home. She recounted his story of coming to A&M from New Jersey in the 1930s. Noticing the prevalence of uniformed men, he asked, “Where’s the military base?” and was informed that all students were expected to participate in the Corps of Cadets. His next question, “So where are the women?” would prompt another startling revelation.

“He was always very disturbed by the fact that women were not allowed at A&M and also that it was racially segregated,” Betsy Jameson said. “He spent a lot of his time as a very loyal Aggie wanting to change those things.”

Years later, he was excited to see an article by a woman from A&M published in a women’s studies journal, she said. “I knew that he was pleased that women had been admitted, and I know that he would be pleased with this award.”

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Jackie Upshaw

Contact: Claudia Nelson, claudia_nelson@tamu.edu, 979.845.7994