Awards & More

Issue Date: 
November 15, 2010

Cindy Skrzycki, a senior lecturer in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of English and business correspondent for GlobalPost.com, was among 15 women in media honored during the Women and Girls Foundation (WGF) Gala Awards Ceremony on Nov. 6 at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Downtown.

The Pittsburgh-area women were recognized for “leading the way in print, radio, PR, TV, film, and on the Internet, and those utilizing multiple media to promote and amplify the voices of women and girls.”

Pitt alumni Sally Kalson (A&S ’72), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist, and Mary Robb Jackson (A&S ’74, ’74G), KDKA TV news reporter, also were among the 15 women honored.

Skrzycki joined Pitt’s Department of English in 2004 at the invitation of then-department chair David Bartholomae. Under her guidance, Pitt students have landed internships at organizations such as Bloomberg News, Dow Jones News Service, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Washington Post, CBS, CNN, NPR, Congressional Quarterly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and U.S. News & World Report.

Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, who recently earned her PhD in English at the University of Pittsburgh, is the recipient of the 2010 Eduardo Lozano Memorial Dissertation Prize, sponsored by Pitt’s Center for Latin American Studies. The prize honors internationally renowned librarian Eduardo Lozano, who developed and directed the Latin American collection at the University’s Hillman Library from 1967 until his death in August 2006.

Aguilera Skvirsky was nominated for her dissertation, titled “The Ethnic Turn: Studies in Political Cinema From Brazil and the U.S., 1960-2005.” Prior to her studies at Pitt, Aguilera Skvirsky received her bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in film at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

The Eduardo Lozano Memorial Dissertation Prize is awarded annually for the best doctoral dissertation at Pitt on a topic related to Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latin American communities in other countries. The prize, which includes a cash award of $1,250, is cofunded by contributions from Pitt’s Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures in the School of Arts and Sciences and other donations.

For the first time since the prize’s inception in 2007, the committee of Pitt faculty members awarded an honorable mention. The recipient is María Andrea Castagnola, who recently earned her PhD in political science from Pitt. Her dissertation is titled “Rethinking Judicial Instability in Developing Democracies: A National and Subnational Analysis of Supreme Courts in Argentina.”