 | Sarah Stillman |
Winning the Elie Wiesel 2005 Prize in Ethics Essay Contest was yet one more item on the already-daunting résumé of Yale College junior Sarah Stillman, who was named to USA Today's elite All-USA College Academic Team earlier this year.
The $5,000 prize for her essay about sweatshop workers also follows such achievements as writing a book for teenage girls at the age of 15 and making a documentary film about the Barbie-doll culture as a high school senior.
While the young writer maintains a 3.95 average as she pursues simultaneous bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology, she writes articles on globalization and feminism for a variety of publications and wins prizes for her poetry.
Stillman has won the Wright Memorial Prize for Journalism and the J. Edward Meeker Prize for Freshman English at Yale, and she is the founder and editor-in-chief of Manifesta: The Yale Feminist Journal.
As a writer, Stillman says, she sees her work as a vehicle for changing people's lives, and she is -- both in word and deed -- a human rights activist. The book she wrote in high school, "Soul Searching: A Girl's Guide to Finding Herself," offers young women techniques for self-discovery such as meditation and journal writing, which she practices herself. There are more than 30,000 copies in print, and foreign rights have been sold in countries around the world, including China, Russia, Germany and the Netherlands, among others. A companion book to "Soul Searching" was published in 2001.
The Yale junior's commitment to the activity of writing as a means to self-knowledge and personal salvation finds more unusual expression. As a freshman at Yale, she co-founded a tutoring program at the maximum-security prison in Cheshire. That program spawned a creative writing class, "The Soul Knows No Bars," which Stillman continues to teach. Her activities with local prisons have, incidentally, led her to establish a national network of college outreach programs for inmates of correctional facilities.
The daughter of labor activists, Stillman comes by her dedication to workers' rights naturally, and she says it is largely this passionate concern that informs the research she conducts. The documentary she directed and filmed, "Barbie Unbound," was an exploration of the ubiquitous doll as a cultural icon, but the film also ended up being an exposé of the hardship of female workers at a Barbie factory in Thailand. Last summer a fellowship from the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization allowed her to study the struggle for rights of women workers in China, and the previous summer, also on a research grant, she studied a rights movement among indigenous Guatemalan refugees.
In her prize-winning essay, "Made by Us: Young Women, Sweatshops and the Ethics of Globalization," Stillman offers a personal account of her exposure to the exploitation of female workers, from a Chinese toy factory where the average worker is 14 years old, to a sweatshop in Honduras where girls earn 55 cents an hour working 12-hour shifts six days a week, and are often obliged to put in unpaid overtime. Despite the gloomy statistics, though, Stillman expresses the conviction that public awareness of such inequities is the first step toward eradicating them.
Acknowledging the challenges globalization poses to workers generally and women in particular, she remains upbeat. "I can't afford to be negative," she says of the future.
-- By Dorie Baker
T H I S
Student writer's works cast light on injustices
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Yale committed to offering overseas opportunities to all undergraduates
Project funded by Class of 1957 is adding music education . . .
International festival marks 10th year of arts & ideas
Student writer's works cast light on injustices
COMMENCEMENT 2005
Yale celebrates its newest graduates with pomp
Baccalaureate Address
Honorary Degrees
Commencement 2005 Photo Gallery
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPSOutgoing SOM dean named to Trippe chair
Andrews to hold Koopmans post
Glazer appointed to Hunter chair
Hayes designated as Weis Professor
Morris to assume Fisher chair
Study: More students expelled in preschool than in later years
Team sheds light on RNA quality-control system
Music linked to decreased need for sedation
Biologists successfully extract and analyze DNA from extinct lemurs
Law deanship endowed with Goldman family gift
Harvey Goldblatt is reappointed as Pierson master
Radio interview leads Ruff to a 'magical' discovery
Head coach post endowed in honor of late Yale tennis star
Swimmer donates Olympic gold to alma mater
Tsunami-causing earthquake yields new data about Earth's core
Children develop cynicism at an early age, says study
'Lost' papers of journalist noted for her stories on Russian Revolution . . .
All hail Hale!
New risk assessment program will provide early genetic screening
Works by young playwrights to be staged as part of Drama School project
Internationally renowned tenor joins the faculty as voice teacher
Workshop explores chronic disease prevention
MacMicking named a Searle Scholar for infection research
Elimelech garners Clarke Prize for water research
Congresswoman to speak at benefit gala for cancer research
Student Awards and Fellowships
Search committee named for School of Music dean
Memorial to honor Dr. Alvin Novick
Campus Notes
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