Monday, August 1, 2011

Research by 2010 Lewis N. Cotlow Fund Awardees Featured in Huffington Post

Research conducted by recent GW alumni and 2010 Lewis N. Cotlow Award recipients Elizabeth Nistico (BA Int'l Affairs, 2011) and Samuel Schall (BA Int'l Affairs, 2011) was highlighted in an article detailing "Sugar Daddy" relationships in the August 1, 2011 Huffington Post.

The article states:

"As two enterprising anthropology undergraduates at George Washington University, Elizabeth Nistico and Samuel Schall tackled the phenomenon of sugar daddy culture for a recent school project. Schall studied young, gay sugar babies, and Nistico explored the straight scene. Of their study's 100 participants, more than half said the money they received financed their education. On average, the relationships lasted between three and four months.

Nistico found that some of the sugar babies used the excuse of the economic downturn for behavior she thinks they would still have otherwise condoned. 'We concluded that people who say they have a sugar daddy to pay off their loans are people who would already contemplate being in that relationship if the economy was doing just fine,' says Nistico, whose subjects frequently mentioned the recession, a bad economy or debt as motivating factors in their decisions."


In 2010, Nistico and Schall received a Lewis N. Cotlow Award to support their project: "Sugar Daddies: The Reality of Affluent Cross-Generational Relationships in New York City"

The project examined how members of the Sugar Daddy culture in New York City view their relationships in a wider cultural context and how they conceptualize love, sex, survival and personal identity in the realm of the relationships.

The full article can be accessed online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/seeking-arrangement-college-students_n_913373.html

More information on the Lewis N. Cotlow Fund for Student Research, including past projects, can be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~anth/atgw/cotlow.cfm

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