The 2024-2025 Chamberlain Awards

Each recipient was awarded three thousand dollars ($3,000) to help defray expenses incurred
while working on a memoir or biography of a woman, in print or other media, such as film,
podcast, bibliography, database, or website. Awardees also received a one-year membership in
WWWL (including dues).

Michelle Frank, “The Daughter Particle: The life and science of C.S. Wu.” Michelle Frank is an
independent researcher, a graduate of the Biography and Memoir Program at The Graduate
Center, CUNY. and a 2023-2024 Sloan Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Michelle
is writing a biography of the Chinese American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, exploring the
turbulent international events that shaped Wu’s pathbreaking career, and the cultural and political forces that threatened to erase Wu from history.

Vanessa Troiano, “Susan Weil: Artistic Trailblazer.” Vanessa Troiano is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art
History, at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her biographically-based dissertation surveys the career
of the contemporary American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930). Vanessa’s scholarship challenges the
ongoing erasure of women artists by conferring agency onto Weil and inscribing her
achievements into art history.

Poupeh Missaghi, “Mourning Diaries for Nika / from Atash.” Poupeh Missaghi is an Assistant
Professor of Literary Arts and Literature at the University of Denver. Her project is a
compilation and translation of the writings and artwork of Atash Shakarami, the aunt of Nika
Shakarami, the 16-year old Iranian girl who was murdered in 2022 by the Islamic Republic
regime because of her activism in the Woman Life Freedom movement. Both biography and
autobiography, the project is a double-layered narrative of two generations of Iranian women
who have committed their lives to dismantle patriarchal systems of oppression.

Maricarmen Canales-Moreno, “Sola Sierra, Cueca Sola. A Woman of Substance in the Struggle
for Democratic Rule in Chile.” Maricarmen Canales-Moreno is a Ph.D. candidate in History at
The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her subject, Sola Sierra, wife of a disappeared union leader,
transitioned into a human rights campaigner and leader, one of the most significant figures in the struggle against the military dictatorship and for democratic rule in Chile. Situating Sierra in the larger context of the Cold War, Maricarmen’s biography explores Sierra as an activist who made a place for women in the pantheon of Chile’s pro-democracy activists.

Susan Goodier, “Dignity in Freedom: The Life and Advocacy of Louisa Jacobs.” Susan Goodier
is a 2023-2024 Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Susan is writing a biography of
Louisa Matilda Jacobs, the daughter of Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl (1861). Teacher, activist, business woman, domestic laborer, and institution builder, Louisa
Matilda Jacobs’ life illuminates the unique challenges faced by her generation of mixed-race
people in the decades following the Civil War. Studying Louisa Matilda Jacobs in historical
context, Susan explores parental relationships, race and race relations, education and reading, health and illness, movement and travel, religion, and the myriad ways in which women such as
Jacobs struggled to achieve independence.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.