Chadwick Roberts, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at UNC Wilmington, is the 2014 recipient of the Janet Mason Ellerby Women’s and Gender Studies Scholarly Award. The award was created in honor of retiring English and Women’s and Gender Studies professor Janet Mason Ellerby’s many contributions to feminist scholarship and activism. Each year, the award is distributed to a faculty member whose teaching and research relates to women’s and gender studies.  

Department chairs recommended nominees for the award. Rick Olsen of the communication studies department suggested Roberts for the award.  

“Chadwick’s efforts in scholarship, teaching and service embody and express the highest aspirations for which this award exists,” Olsen said. “If women and gender studies is to become integrated into the consciousness of the academy and our students it will be through scholar-teachers like Chadwick.”  

Roberts’s interest in women’s and gender studies started when he was young and has only grown with time. 

“The entire time I was a student, even as an undergraduate, I had been interested in gender issues,” Roberts said. “I went to film school, and even then I could think back, that I was interested in female directors and representations of gender on film and things like that. I would say that there hasn’t been a time when I wasn’t interested in it as a student or an instructor.”

As he continued beyond his undergraduate degree, Roberts knew that he would eventually work with women and gender studies. He was offered a job at UNCW teaching the very subject that he was interested in. 

There are many reasons why Roberts finds women and gender studies interesting. He claims that gender is an important classifying category that people use to identify with each other. 

Discovering the gender of a child was an example that Roberts used to prove that gender plays a bigger part in human interactions than most people may realize.

“I think it’s important to think about how much it orders our thought process and what we feel we can do with our lives and who we see ourselves to be in the world,” Roberts said. “I don’t understand why there isn’t more attention paid to it. A lot of people want to ignore it and say it doesn’t matter, but if it doesn’t matter why do we have these big gender reveal parties or have ultrasounds earlier and earlier?”

Roberts found out that he was nominated for Ellerby’s award in January, and his feelings of happiness escalated in mid-March, when he heard he was selected as the award winner. He plans to use the scholarship money for books to help with his upcoming presentation for the National Women’s Studies Association conference, which will be held in Puerto Rico in November of 2014.

Michelle Scatton-Tessier, director of the Women’s Studies Resource Center, said that the Janet Mason Ellerby Women’s and Gender Studies Scholarly Award will be officially presented during the Purple and Lavender Celebration. The celebration usually happens right before graduation and is the event during which the LGBTQIA resource office and Women and Gender Studies department highlight their affiliates’ achievements. The previous recipient of the faculty award will present the new recipient with the award.

Roberts hopes that his work within the women’s and gender studies field will show people that the subject is really important. He believes that as long as there are injustices happening to people based on their gender, his work will continue.

Roberts plans to continue his studies in women and gender by teaching several courses during the summer. He will be teaching COM495/WGS495 “Media, Identity and Difference,” which is part of a successful, ongoing collaboration between communication studies and women’s and gender studies at UNCW.