Now I understand why this is a research university. You can research literally anything here.
- Name
- Arusa
- Class of
- 2026
- International Studies
Arusa Malik loves fictional superheroine She-Ra and prefers comics to novels. As a First-Year Fellow with the Sheridan Libraries, she combed through comics, postcards, political cartoons, and even soap to understand feminism and women’s movements in the United States. Malik, who is majoring in political science and international studies, enjoyed identifying feminist symbols in her research. She found the same cats, big hats, flowers, and hyper-feminine items in 1920s suffragette postcards that she did in 1970s liberation comics about Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
The 1970s It Ain’t Me Babe Comix (a title taken from a Bob Dylan song) focused on stories of multiple female superheroes from a new angle. “It was fascinating and combined a lot of the superheroes I read about as a kid,” Malik says. “It also inspired my final project.”
Malik’s First-Year Fellow experience led to her becoming a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, which gives Krieger School students $10,000 to conduct research over three years. Her focus has shifted to analyzing foreign policy responses between the Yugoslav Wars and the Global War on Terror.
