Flinchbaugh Wins Fraker Prize

On the afternoon of Thursday, March 6, members of the Middlebury community gathered in Le Chateau Grand Salon to celebrate the Alison G. Fraker Essay Prize and its nominees. Director of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Professor Sujata Moorti and Director of Chellis House Karin Hanta led the event, at which the winner of the prize was revealed.

Established in 1990 by Drue Cortell Gensler, a member of the class of ‘57 and a Middlebury College trustee, the prize honors the memory of Alison Gwen Fraker ’89.

Fraker was a vocal feminist at Middlebury. She played an instrumental role in the creation of both the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department, and a center for women on campus. A few weeks before her graduation in 1989, Fraker was killed in a car accident. Today, both the essay prize and a reading room dedicated to Fraker in Chellis House honor her memory.

In keeping with Fraker’s efforts, the award goes to a student whose essay on a topic specifically concerning women and gender studies is judged best. Professors nominate the works of their students, excluding senior theses, and a committee of rotating professors reads and judges the essays.

Past essays awarded the Alison Fraker Prize have been on topics such as masculinity and Mexican immigration, domesticity in missionary China, and marriage promotion in the urban ghetto.

This year there were 13 nominees for the prize. At the end, there were two honorable mentions, Rebecca Crochiere ’14 and Sarah Champ ’17, and one winner, Anna Flinchbaugh ’14.

Flinchbaugh won the prize with a zine rather than an essay. A zine is comparable to a miniature magazine—a self-published work, usually on a specific subject. In Flinchbaugh’s case, it was gender presentation. Her piece, titled, “Pandrogyny,” was for her Foundations in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies class. Moorti nominated Flinchbaugh.

Flinchbaugh chose to write a zine rather than the traditional essay because it gave her an opportunity to convey her message in a broader way. “I just really loved the possibility that [zines] allowed for incorporating other media, and for incorporating different kinds of voices...With a zine, you can include things that wouldn’t fit within a linear path,” she said.

She added that this allowed her to look at gender studies from different sides, something that she hopes her zine will continue by “open[ing] up a space for that discourse.”

Crochiere earned honorable mention for her essay, “A Woman in a Man’s Arena--A Feminized Performance of Sports.” She wrote the piece for her Intro to Sociology of Gender class and was nominated by her professor, Laurie Essig, for the award.

Speaking about her essay, Crochiere said that she tried to “view how she engaged in sports through a feminist lens,” in the end realizing that she had portrayed a certain kind of femininity throughout her life-long athletic career.

Champ also earned honorable mention for her essay, “Zumba Fitness: Fun or a Perpetuator of Enlightened Sexism and Latina Iconicity?” She wrote her paper for Foundations in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, one of the first classes Champ had taken on the subject. Moorti also nominated Champ for the prize.

Champ said that she “analyzed something in the media through a feminist lens” for the essay, focusing specifically on “the appropriation of Latina identity and Latina iconicity...with the perspective of enlightened feminism.”

In keeping with Flinchbaugh’s idea to spark conversation, the reception for the Alison G. Fraker Essay Prize was an opportunity for the guests to discuss the essay topics and more. Each presenter said a few words about the nominees, the nominees described their work, and if the professors who nominated the students were there, they spoke up as well.

All who were in attendance left having heard more about gender, sexuality and feminist studies and having paid tribute to Fraker, her memory, and the message she worked hard to send to the Middlebury campus in her time here.