Andrés Henao Castro
Assistant Professor, Political Science, UMass Boston
Specializations:
My research seeks to rethink the relationship between politics and aesthetics in relation to gender-differentiated colonial logics of capitalist accumulation. While focused on that question, I also want to reimagine the relationship between ancient and contemporary political theory, via the prisms of decolonial theory, critical theory, psychoanalysis, settler colonial critique, Marxism, queer of color critique, critical race theory, and poststructuralism.
Course idea:
None specified
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Timothy Oleksiak
Assistant Professor, English, UMass Boston
Specializations:
Rhetoric and composition teacher-scholar with a specialization in listening as a rhetorical act, composition pedagogy, and queer feminist rhetoric.
Course idea:
A feminist rhetoric and composition studies course. The course functions as an introduction to feminist approaches to rhetoric.
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Karen Suyemoto
Professor, Psychology, Umass Boston
Specializations:
Psychological experiences and effects of racism
Psychological processes, experiences, and effects of resisting racism for people of color
Activism and psychology
Development and experiences of allies/accomplices
Solidarity and intersectionality
Anti-oppressive education
Course idea:
I would be interested in a course focused on activism/resistance, with particular attention to (a) interactions of the individual/group/structural levels and (b) solidarity and intersectionality, especially related to the dynamic of maintaining White supremacy through divide and conquer and resisting internalizing that dynamic.
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Heike Schotten
Associate Professor, Political Science, Umass Boston
Specializations:
Feminist theory
Queer theory (broadly construed, incl. queer history and queer of color politics/critique)
Trans studies
Critical theory (incl. biopolitics, settler colonial studies, empire studies)
Radical/left political theory
War on Terror
"terrorism"
Nietzsche studies
Israel/Palestine
Zionism
Academic freedom
Course idea:
The feminist sex wars; queer theory/trans studies [a course on the two fields' development, co-implication, intersections, contradictions, troublings, critiques]; lesbian feminism; a course on "radical criticism"/totalizing critique [feat., e.g., Afropessimism, anti-porn and TERF feminism]; a broad, interdisciplinary course on biopolitics; i'm sure there are others!
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Stacey Sloboda
Associate Professor, Art, Umass boston
Specializations:
18th Century Art
Architecture and Design History
Cross-cultural context and imperialism
Cultural geography
Women and art patronage
Course idea:
None specified
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Dana Miranda
Assistant Professor, Philosophy, Umass Boston
Specializations:
Africana Philosophy
Political Philosophy,
Existentialism
Psychosocial Studies
competency in Phenomenology, Philosophy of History, and Decolonial Studies. Generally, my work studies how historical and contemporary processes create structural arrangements that although normal, regularized, and relatively healthy to some are at the same time suboptimal and detrimental to others. This research aims to not only criticizes such “disordered” socio-political orders, but also aims to construct viable “counter-orders.”
Course idea:
I have an idea for a course entitled, "On Intimate Violence." This course will interrogate the ways in which intimacy is entwined with our conduct towards others. As human beings, we are involved in sexual, romantic and ethical relations with one another and such relations can either be pleasurable, ambiguous, or oftentimes violent. As such, students will be asked to examine the phenomenon of rape, practices that seek to eliminate the act, as well as ongoing philosophies that call on us to be ethical in our intimate relations. I would like for this course to be co-taught with someone from another discipline, perhaps working in feminist theory or sexuality, so that students could receive a full range of information. I also think it would be helpful to have two professors involved so that they could provide emotional support with these topics, while also adhering to Title IX policies and our duties as mandated reporters.
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Heidi Levitt
Professor, Psychology, UMASS Boston
Specializations:
LGBTQ+ gender and LGBTQ+ gender communities (e.g., trans, butch, femme, bear, leather, drag, families/houses)
Qualitative and mixed methods research
Feminist, critical, and constructivist epistemological perspectives to inquiry
Psychotherapeutic change and healing from stigma-related experiences
Course idea:
I would be interested in co-developing a course focused on LGBTQ+ gender identities and/or LGBTQ+ gender communities. The course could examine the practices and functions of genders using intersectional and social justice lenses, and engage multidisciplinary themes related to culture, sexuality, activism, physical aesthetics, gender theory, and identity.
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Chris A Barcelos
Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, UMass Boston
Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Specializations:
Critical public health
Sexualities studies
Queer of color critique
Transgender studies
Youth
Course idea:
none specified
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Christa Kelleher
Director of Policy and Research, Lecturer, UMass Boston
Specializations:
Identifying, analyzing, and promoting public policies that improve the conditions of women’s lives
Advancing women’s public leadership
State and local policy development
Course idea:
Non specified
Kelleher oversees research on women’s public leadership and a range of public policy issues that affect women, with a particular focus on women’s reproductive and maternal health.
Christa Kelleher has been teaching in the Center’s Graduate Certificate Program for Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy (previously Program for Women in Politics and Public Policy) since 2002 and currently teaches the Internship course with colleague Elena Stone. She has previously taught courses in sociology, community health, public affairs, and public policy at Greater Boston area institutions including Pine Manor College, Brandeis University, and Tufts University.
Kelleher’s federally funded doctoral study examined the complex issues facing Boston and Toronto-based mothers during the early postpartum period to inform public policies related to this important women’s health issue.
Her background includes work on political campaigns, in the Massachusetts Legislature, and in not-for-profit advocacy organizations.
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Sari Edelstein
Associate Professor, English, University Massachusetts Boston
Specializations:
Nineteenth-century American literature
Age studies
Women writers
Print culture studies
Course idea:
Aging and/or girlhood from an intersectional and interdisciplinary perspective
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Ann Withorn
Professor, Social Policy Emeritus
Professor Emeritus
Specializations:
Social policy
Poverty
Women and welfare
Course idea:
“Women/Welfare and the social state: Examining histories of intersections, conflicts and social meanings”
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Carney Maley
Lecturer of Women's and Gender Studies, UMass Boston
Specializations:
Women in U.S. social movements
Women in 20th century literature
Gender and popular culture
Course idea:
None specified
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Lynne Byall Benson
Lecturer of Women's and Gender Studies, UMass Boston
Specializations:
- History of women’s education
- Women and the media
Course idea:
None specified
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Chris Bobel
Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, UMass Boston
Specializations:
Embodiment
Feminist activism
Social movements
Health
Critical development studies
Course idea:
None specified
Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she teaches courses on Gender & the Body, Feminist Theory, Feminist Research Methods, Women in US Social Movements and Feminist Activism. Chris is interested, most broadly, in the social construction of embodiment, and the diverse efforts of actors to effect social change especially around issues that are stigmatized and otherwise marginalized and how feminist thinking becomes feminist doing at the most intimate and immediate levels. In short, she finds the body-- a site where social norms, cultural anxieties and political agendas come to life-- an endlessly fascinating subject of inquiry.
Chris is the author, most recently, of The Managed Body: Developing Girls and Menstrual Health in the Global South just released this month. Her other books include The Paradox of Natural Mothering, New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation and Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules, Challenging the Norms (co-edited with Samantha Kwan). Her current major projects in progress include a 2nd co-edited collection titled Body Battlegrounds: Transgressions, Tensions and Transformations (forthcoming with Vanderbilt University Press in Winter 2019), and serving as lead editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies [due out in 2020] and a new ethnographic project exploring contemporary activism inspired by grief and trauma.
Chris is past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research and often quoted in the mainstream media about the rapidly growing menstrual activist movement including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, NPR, USA Today, The Atlantic, El Mundo,Agence France-Presse, and the Associated Press.
For a complete list of her publications and public intellectual engagements, see https://works.bepress.com/chris_bobel/