Faculty and Staff

Core Faculty

Headshot of Anima Adjepong

Anima Adjepong

Associate Professor & Department Head, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3302 French Hall

513-556-0358

Headshot of Chandra Nirmala Frank

Chandra Nirmala Frank

Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3322 French Hall

513-556-4440

Chandra Frank is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She writes in the areas of feminist queer diaspora in Europe, archival methodologies, the politics of water, sexuality, race and Dutch empire, and visual cultures.
 
 
Headshot of Lisa M Hogeland

Lisa M Hogeland

Associate Professor, English and WGSS, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

214D ARTSCI

513-556-0927

Lisa Maria Hogeland holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. She previously served as Acting Director and Acting Associate/Graduate Director of the Center for Women’s Studies and now holds a joint appointment in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature and Women's Studies. She is the author of Feminism and Its Fictions: The Consciousness-Raising Novel and the Women's Liberation Movement. She is co-General Editor of The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume I: 17th through 19th Centuries, and of the forthcoming Volume II: 20th Century. She is working on a book on American women’s sentimental novels and their relevance to contemporary fiction. An award winning teacher, she prepares graduate students to teach the undergraduate Introduction to Women’s Studies and serves on M.A. committees, teaches such core graduate courses as Feminist Theory: Current Issues, and offers such cross-listed English/Women’s Studies courses as American Women Writers and Feminist Literary Criticism.
Headshot of Carolyn J Peterson

Carolyn J Peterson

Undergraduate Director, Educator Instructor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3316 French Hall

513-556-3917

Headshot of Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama

Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama

Associate Professor in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3314 French Hall

513-556-6654

Born and raised in Colombia, South America, Dr. Sanmiguel-Valderrama practiced law in Colombia for five years before migrating to Canada in her late 20s.  Dr. Sanmiguel-Valderrama earned her LLM in international human rights law at the University of Ottawa, where she also worked at the Human Rights Research and Education Center co-directing a women's project with CEMUJER in El Salvador (Central America) funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  In 2004, she graduated with her Ph.D. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, where she was also affiliated to CERLAC, The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at York University.

On the basis of extensive fieldwork in Colombia, her research and publications examine the contradictions between neoliberal international trade and military aid on the one hand, and respect for individual and collective human rights –in particular labor, environmental, and equality rights for women and racial minorities—on the other hand. These relationships and contradictions are examined through case studies where both trade and human rights laws and practices are in operation: first, the Colombian export-led flower industry. Her upcoming book (2012) is provisionally titled “No Roses Without Thorns: Trade, Militarization, and Human Rights in the Production and Export of Colombian Flowers” (click here to see book prospectus). Second, though the case of NAFTA and undocumented migration of Mexican and Central American into the USA.

Dr. Sanmiguel -Valderrama have published various articles in prestigious international academic journals presenting her research findings on the interrelationship between globalization, international trade, militarism, social reproduction, and human rights from multidisciplinary and transnational anti-racist feminist approaches. Her research have been supported by competitive grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, and the University of Cincinnati Research Council. Professor's Sanmiguel-Valderrama current areas of research and teaching are family-work conflict under globalization, the relationships between military aid, trade, and human rights in Colombia, feminist mothering, women, gender and law, international women's rights, and women's labor rights.

Headshot of Giao Q. Tran

Giao Q. Tran

Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3408 French Hall

(513) 442-9743

Dr. Tran is an Ohio-licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on research and treatment of anxiety and alcohol disorders. Dr. Tran has taught several graduate and undergraduate courses related to clinical psychology, health psychology, and research methods.
Headshot of Valerie A. Weinstein

Valerie A. Weinstein

Professor & Graduate Program Director of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Niehoff Professor of Film and Media Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3314 French Hall

513-556-6656

Valerie Weinstein earned her PhD in German Studies with a concentration in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University in 2000. She came to UC in 2012 after having served on the faculty at Williams College, University of Nevada, Reno, and Tulane University. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, from Feminist Theory to Nazi Cinema. Prof. Weinstein is the author of Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany (Indiana University Press, 2019) and co-editor, with Barbara Hales and Mihaela Petrescu, of Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936  (Camden House, 2016) and, with Barbara Hales, of Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2021). Weinstein has authored refereed articles and book chapters on gender, sexuality, and Jewishness in German film between the two world wars, and on other topics ranging from early twentieth-century anthropological film footage to Turkish-German literature, to music videos by the heavy metal band Rammstein.

Adjunct Faculty

Headshot of Yvonne Fulbright

Yvonne Fulbright

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French Hall

513-556-6776

Headshot of Melanie Rose Nipper

Melanie Rose Nipper

Instructor - Adjunct, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French East

513-556-6771

Headshot of Tristan Nichole Vaught

Tristan Nichole Vaught

Instructor - Adjunct, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French East

513-556-6771

Headshot of Erin Mary Winchester

Erin Mary Winchester

Instructor - Adj, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French East

513-556-6771

Affiliate Faculty

Headshot of Kristen Elizabeth Aanstoos

Kristen Elizabeth Aanstoos

Asst Professor - Visiting, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5111 CLIFTCT

513-556-3392

Dr. Aanstoos is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), and affiliate of the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). She researches the role of women and gender in peace processes and political and security outcomes in post-conflict states. Her current book project, based on her dissertation, examines the effects of different types of women's participation in peace processes on women's political empowerment in post-conflict states. Her other research interests include the Women, Peace, and Security agenda; peace processes and conflict resolution; gender and politics; gender and conflict; international security; international negotiations; diplomacy; military learning; and East Asian Security. Dr. Aanstoos's research has been supported by the Kugelman Citizen Peacebuilding Research Fellowship, the Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship, and a University of California Office of the President grant.

Dr. Aanstoos has a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Irvinea, an MA in Conflict, Security, and Development from King's College London, and a BSFS in International Politics from Georgetown University. Previously, she worked as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, where she served in Hong Kong, Doha, and Washington, DC.
Headshot of Omotayo O Banjo

Omotayo O Banjo

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Van Wormer Hall

513-556-2142

Omotayo Banjo, PhD (Penn State University, 2009) focuses on representation and audience responses to racial and cultural media. Her work has been published in peer reviewed journals including Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Communication Theory, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Media and Religion, and Race and Social Problems. She has also presented her research at regional, national and international conferences which include the International Communication Association, National Communication Association, Association for Education  in Journalism & Mass Communication, and the Collegium for African-American Research.  Dr. Banjo teaches courses related to media theory, identity, and race. She is also an affiliate faculty of Africana Studies, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, and Journalism.
Headshot of Danielle Bessett

Danielle Bessett

Professor (PhD, New York University), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

1022 Crosley Tower

513-556-4717

Danielle Bessett is Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty affiliate at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, where she teaches courses on medicine, family, and reproduction. She contributes to the Medical Scientist Training Program in UC's College of Medicine and is Director of the Kunz Center for Social Research. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she received her Master’ degree and Ph.D. from New York University and held the prestigious Charlotte Ellertson Social Science Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2008-2010.

Bessett's current research projects examine patient experiences of abortion care and disparities in contraceptive access, prenatal care, and infant mortality. Bessett co-leads OPEN, the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network, which conducts rigorous, interdisciplinary research to assess the reproductive health and well-being of Ohioans in the context of federal and state laws, regulations, and policies. Her research has also been supported by the National Science Foundation, among other funders, and has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, and Women's Health Issues. Bessett's monograph on women's pregnancy experiences, Pregnant with Possibilities: Constructing Normality in Stratified Reproduction, is under contract with New York University Press, and her co-edited volume, Ohio Under Covid, is forthcoming with University of Michigan Press. 

Bessett is a past board member of the academic Society of Family Planning, where she led the Junior Fellows Committee, and recently concluded her term as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Sociological Association's Medical Sociology section. She received the 2004 Dr. Mary P. Dole Medical Fellowship from the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association; the 2007 Rose Laub Coser Best Dissertation Proposal in Family or Gender Studies from the Eastern Sociological Society; the Cincinnati Women’s Political Caucus’s 2017 Outstanding Achievement Award; the 2021 Society of Family Planning's Mentor Award; and UC's 2021 Faculty Excellence Award from Office of the Provost and Office of Research. She is most proud of her student-initiated honors, including the 2012 “Professor Funnybone” award for funniest Sociology professor and the 2017 UC Women's Center Woman of the Year award for mentoring.

When Bessett is not working, you may find her hiking, knitting, traveling, reading, and/or spending time with friends. An ice cream aficionado, Bessett enthusiastically dances to 80's music and tries to prevent her three mischievous cats from burning through all of their nine lives.

Danielle Bessett CV
Headshot of Nimisha Bhat

Nimisha Bhat

Asst Librarian, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Langsam Library

513-556-1424

Headshot of Dana Elaine Bisignani

Dana Elaine Bisignani

Dir Women's Center, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

571 Steger Student Life Cntr

513-556-0173

Headshot of RJ Boutelle

RJ Boutelle

Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

110G ARTSCI

513-556-5924

RJ Boutelle is associate professor of English, affiliate faculty in Africana Studies, affiliate faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the author of The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny (UNC Press, 2023). He teaches courses on African American literature and 19th-century US literature.
Headshot of Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown

Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown

Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Crosley Tower

513-556-4700

Black Feminism; Sociology of Sport; Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Food Studies; Critical Race Feminism; Qualitative Methods 
Headshot of Jenny Ann Caplan

Jenny Ann Caplan

Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French Hall

513-556-2297

I am a scholar of American religion and popular culture. I specialize in American Judaism and work extensively with film, television, internet media, humor, graphic novels, video games, board games, and other sites of pop culture engagement.
Headshot of Steve L Carlton-Ford

Steve L Carlton-Ford

Professor (PhD, University of Minnesota), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

1009 Crosley Tower

513-556-4716

My recent work, Legacies of Injustice, examines the impact of the African slave trade and colonialism on today's human rights.in general, I am concerned with Peace, War, and Social Conflict; Militarization, Armed Conflict, Quantitative Analysis; Research Methodology

Steve Carlton-Ford CV
Headshot of Erynn  Masi de Casanova

Erynn Masi de Casanova

Professor of Sociology & Head of the Sociology Department, (PhD, City University of New York Graduate Center) , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

1017 Crosley Tower

513-556-4716

Gender; Work; the Body; Popular Culture; Globalization/Development; Latin American societies; U.S. Latinos/as; Ethnography and qualitative research methods.

Erynn Masi de Casanova CV

 
Headshot of Katherine Castiello Jones

Katherine Castiello Jones

Undergraduate Program Director (PhD, University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Sociology , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

1003 Crosley Tower

513-556-4750

Dr. Castiello Jones' research focuses on gender, sexuality, and culture. Her current research projects examine abstinence promotion in the US, and movements (re)claiming sexuality after experiences with purity culture. They also write extensively on topics related to games and game design including sexuality in games, inclusive design, and integrating feminist theories of play into game design scholarship. 
In addition to their research, they been writing table-top and live-action role-playing games (larps) for over a decade. Dr. Castiello Jones' games have been featured at festivals such as Indiecade and BlackBox Copenhagen, and she was an invited guest at The Smoke festival in London in 2020. 
Headshot of Carla Jeanne Cesare, Ph.D

Carla Jeanne Cesare, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Art History, Affilliate of Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

136 BA ANNEX

513-936-1777

Carla Cesare is a design historian whose focus is on design and identity as understood through everyday design practices. Her primary research era is the interwar period. She has an interest in the relationship of boundaries between space, body and material, particular relating to domesticity and femininity. Current projects include research on how women in design were networked through research, making and marketing in the 1920s and 30s; pedagogical methodologies for teaching history and theory to studio-based students; and a chapter in the upcoming Interior Urbanism Reader(Routledge) on the evolution of coffee shops, their history, forms, place-making and practices. Her doctorate in the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture is from Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England and her MA in the History of Design is from Parsons School of Design, NYC.
Headshot of Laura D. Dudley Jenkins

Laura D. Dudley Jenkins

Professor of Political Science, Faculty Affiliate WGSS and Asian Studies , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

CLIFTCT

513-556-3308

Laura Dudley Jenkins' research focuses on social justice policies in the context of culturally diverse democracies, including India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United States.

Her book Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India (Penn Press 2019) won the Hubert Morken Best Book Prize from the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). A study of mass conversions to Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism and ongoing efforts to prevent conversions, Jenkins reveals how "religious freedom" arguments and laws have actually undermined the religious freedom of women, lower castes, and religious minorities. 

Jenkins' book Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged (Routledge, 2003, 2009) examines competing demands for affirmative action on the basis of caste, religion, class, and gender and the ways the government identifies recipients through the courts, census, and official certificates. Her research as a Fulbright New Century Scholar in South Africa and India resulted in Affirmative Action Matters: Creating Opportunities for Students Around the World, co-edited with Michele S. Moses (Routledge 2014).

In her articles, she analyzes religious freedom and conversion, competing minorities’ claims for affirmative action, colonial and contemporary government anthropology, the role of social science in anti-discrimination law, reserved legislative seats for women, and the role of culture and the arts in sustainable development.

Jenkins' book chapters examine anti-Muslim political communication in the US and India, religious family laws, mass religious conversion as protest, comparative affirmative action, minority rights, historically Dalit colleges, anxious secularism, women and development, regulation of religion, and methodological diversity in political science. 

In addition to two Fulbrights, Dr. Jenkins has received fellowships from the Dartmouth Humanities Center and the United States Institute of Peace.

Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 
Hubert Morken Best Book Award 
APSA Religion and Politics Section 


Affirmative action matters: Creating opportunities for students around the world. (with Michele S. Moses). New York: Routledge, 2014.

Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2003, reissued in paperback by Routledge 2009.


 
Headshot of Anjali Nichole Dutt

Anjali Nichole Dutt

Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3259 CLIFTCT

908-770-4940

My research focuses on psychological processes that are associated with resistance to oppression and increasing the realization of human rights in different contexts. I collaborate with grassroots community organizations to conduct mixed-methods research, exploring how structural changes in communities such as women’s ownership of land, and women’s participation in educational workshops and cooperative enterprises impact women’s empowerment and well-being. I have also recently begun projects on neoliberal ideology and refugee rights. I teach courses in community and social psychology at the graduate and undergraduate levels. 
Headshot of Jenn Dye

Jenn Dye

Asst Dean, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

320 COLLAW

513-556-7467

Dr. Dye combines her interdisciplinary research, scholarly background, and community work to continue her work in the space of race, gender, and social justice in her current role as Director of the Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice.  As Director, she is responsible for overseeing programming, community outreach, Social Justice Fellows, among other initiatives.   

With a Ph.D. in political science, J.D., and graduate certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Dr. Dye's earlier research focused on marginalized communities, access to resources, and the resulting relationship to political power and structures.  Her more recent research focuses on race and gender and how these impact identity, agency, and political power, looking at systems and structures within soceity.  Dr. Dye has taught the following courses: Introduction to American Politics, International Relations, Introduction to Women's Studies, Women and Politics, International Human Rights, Criminal Justice Policy and Legislative Advocacy, and Political and Legal Processes.
Headshot of Cassidy D. Ellis

Cassidy D. Ellis

Asst Professor - Educator, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

4242 CLIFTCT

513-556-4440

Cassidy D. Ellis (PhD, University of New Mexico) is a critical cultural communication and media studies scholar. Her work is duly invested in unearthing ideologies that underly contemporary social debates and in unpacking the material histories of settler colonialism in the present. Her current project interrogates strategic anti-abortion rhetorics with a particular interest in discourses of race and personhood that produce a racialized conceptualization of "life" within the social imaginary. 

In addition to scholastic experience Dr. Ellis is a seasoned grassroots activist who has primarily worked on reproductive justice issues focused in the Deep South, West and Southwest. Her academic work and activist projects go hand-in-hand, both informing each other. Dr. Ellis believes that the best scholarship is praxis-based, applied, and informed by experiences of on-the-ground organizers. She is a co-founder of the Yellowhammer Fund (the first state-wide abortion fund in Alabama), a founding member and lead organizer of the West Alabama Clinic Defenders (a patient escort collective), the founder of the University of Alabama's Feminist Caucus (the first feminist activist organization on the campus), and has experience working in the nonprofit sector as well.

Her most recent scholarship will appear or has appeared in The Journal of AutoethnographyThe Fat Studies JournalDepartures in Critical Qualitative Research, QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking. She also has chapters the edited collections Reconstructing the South: Critical Regionalism and Southern Rhetoric (edited by Christina Moss & Brandon Inabet, University of Mississippi Press); Badass Feminist Politics: Exploring Radical Edges of Feminist Theory, Communication, and Activism (Eds. Sarah Jane Blithe & Janell C. Bauer, Rutgers University Press); The Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication (Eds. Bernadette Marie Calafell & Shinsuke Eguchi, Routledge Press).

The information on this page is partial. Click here to check out a more recent CV.
Headshot of Muhammad U. Faruque

Muhammad U. Faruque

Inayat Malik Associate Professor and Taft Center Fellow (AY 23-24), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

728C Old Chemistry Building

513-556-0139

Muhammad U. Faruque is the Inayat Malik Associate Professor and a Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati. He also holds a Visiting Scholar position at Harvard University. He earned his PhD (with distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Exchange Scholar at Harvard University and as George Ames Postdoctoral Fellow at Fordham University. He was also educated at the University of London and Tehran University. In addition to his formal college education, he has traveled throughout the world to learn and explore, and studied with many scholars in South Asia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, North Africa, and Malaysia.

His book Sculpting the Self (University of Michigan Press, 2021) won the prestigious 31st World Book Award from Iran. The book addresses “what it means to be human” in a secular, post-Enlightenment world by exploring notions of selfhood and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic philosophical literatures, including modern philosophy and neuroscience. He is the author of three books and over fifty academic articles, which have appeared (or are forthcoming) in numerous prestigious, peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes such as Philosophy East and West, Philosophical Forum, Journal of Contemplative StudiesArabic Sciences and Philosophy (Cambridge), SophiaJournal of Sufi Studies (Brill), Religious Studies (Cambridge), and Ancient Philosophy. He has delivered lectures in many North American, European, Asian, and Middle Eastern universities. He gives public lectures on a wide range of topics such as climate change, spirituality, meditation, AI, Islamic psychology, and Islam and the West. He is also a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Templeton Foundation Global Philosophy of Religion grant and the Title IV Grant, U.S. Dept. of Education.

While his past research has explored modern and premodern conceptions of selfhood and identity and their bearing on ethics, religion, and culture, his current book project entitled The Interconnected Universe: Sufism, Climate Change, and Ecological Living aims to develop a new theory of the human and the more-than-human world based on a cross-cultural, multidisciplinary approach that draws on the environmental humanities, on one hand, and Sufism and Islamic Contemplative Studies, on the other. Alongside developing a theory of what he calls the “interconnected universe,” this study also argues that Sufi contemplative practices support and foster an active engagement toward the planet’s well-being and an ecologically viable way of life and vision through an “anthropocosmic” vision of the self. He is also at work on a book on AI and the existential threats of information technology. He also just published an edited volume entitled From the Divine to the Human: New Perspectives on Evil, Suffering, and the Global Pandemic (co-edited with M. Rustom and published by Routledge). In addition, he has a forthcoming edited volume A Cultural History of South Asian Literature, Volume 3: The Early Modern Age (1400-1700) (co-edited with S. Nair).

In his personal life, he loves gardening (plant life fascinates him), spending time in nature, travelling (he always likes to explore new places!), trying out new cuisines, hiking, cooking, sports (esp. tennis, table tennis, and chess), and watching movies. He also has a passion for classical Indian (raag) and Persian music.

He is affiliated with the departments of Philosophy, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Religious Studies Certificate program.

Website: https://muhammadfaruque.com/
Headshot of Jan Marie Fritz

Jan Marie Fritz

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

6213 DAA Addition

513-556-0208

Dr. Jan Marie Fritz is a Professor in the School of Planning (and affiliated with the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Sociology) at the University of Cincinnati as well as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Human Rights and International Studies at the Danish Institute of Human Rights in Copenhagen, Denmark and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. She has received many awards including the DAAP College Award (University of Cincinnati) for Outstanding Research and Creative Work, the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology, the Ohio Mediation Association’s Better World Award for a distinguished career in mediation and awards from the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology and the practice division of the American Sociological Association.  She is a past Vice-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), the lead representative of the ISA to the United Nations and a member of the ISA Executive Committee.  She was  the founder and convener of the Cincinnati for CEDAW Community Coalition (CCCC) that led to a Gender Study of Cincinnati's city administration and the establishment of the Mayor of Cincinnati's Gender Equality Task Force.  She was appointed by the Mayor to be a member of the Task Force.  She also was appointed by the director of the US Environmental Protection Agency to be member of two US EPA advisory councils.  She currently is a member of NEJAC - the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.  She has written or edited more than 130 publications including the award-winning International Clinical Sociology, “Special Education Mediation in the United States,”  “Women, Peace, Security and the National Action Plans, “Addressing Environmental Racism,”  “Including Sociological Practice” inThe Shape of Sociology for the 21st Century, “Practicing Sociology: Clinical Sociology and Human Rights,” Moving Toward a Just Peace: The Mediation Continuum, (with Jacques Rhéaume) the award-winning Community Intervention: Clinical Sociology Perspectives and (with Tina Uys) Clinical Sociology for Southern Africa.  She edits Springer's Clinical Sociology book series.
Headshot of Jennifer Glaser

Jennifer Glaser

Associate Professor and Head of Department, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

248 ARTSCI

513-556-3129

Jennifer Glaser received her B.A. in English from Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st century American literature, comparative ethnicity, diasporic and transnational studies, Jewish studies, gender and sexuality, digital humanities, disability studies, and comics and the graphic novel. Her book, Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination, is was published by Rutgers University Press in 2016. She publishes work on  race, Jewish studies, viusal culture and disability studies. She is currently finishing a scholarly book on Jews, disability, and modernity. In addition to her scholarly work, she writes essays, short fiction, and cultural criticism, and is working to expand one of her published narrative non-fiction pieces into a full-length manuscript on mourning and technology. She has published or has publications forthcoming in venues such as PMLA, MELUS, Safundi, American Literature, ImageText, Images, Prooftexts, Early American Literature, the LA Review of Books, the New York Times, the Faster Times, the Forward, the UK Telegraph, and an anthology of personal essays from Random House.
Headshot of Janine C Hartman

Janine C Hartman

Professor of History,, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5259 CLIFTCT

513-556-1596

Professor of
History

Dept Romance Languages and Literatures
College of Arts & Sciences
717D Old Chem Bldg
Ph 556-1596
My field is the history of ideas. Current research interests are Catulle Mendés,Parnassian poet and his role as  witness to the  Franco-Prussian war, the Commune  insurrection and fall  of Paris in 1871, as  refracted through "ruin studies." Additional fields include witchcraft, ritual in early modern society and symbolic sovereignty in French colonial history..
Affliiate: History,Judaic Studies, Women & Gender Studies
Headshot of Emily Houh

Emily Houh

Gustavus Henry Wald Professor of the Law and Contracts | Co-director, Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

420 COLLAW

513-556-0108

Emily Houh, the Gustavus Henry Wald Professor of the Law and Contracts at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, has been teaching contracts, commercial law, and critical race theory since 2003 at UC Law, where she has twice won the Goldman Prize for Teaching Excellence and also serves as co-director of the College’s Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice. 
Prior to joining the faculty at UC Law, Professor Houh was an assistant professor of law (2000-2003) at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University.  A graduate of Brown University, Professor Houh earned her JD from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a founding member and article editor of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.  After law school, Professor Houh served as law clerk to the Honorable Anna Diggs Taylor, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, and then as a staff attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago and later as a commercial litigation associate at Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone, PLC, in Detroit. 
Much of Professor Houh’s past and current scholarship focuses on the interplay between contract law, critical race theory, and socioeconomic (in)equality.  Additionally, her recent research with UC Law colleague Prof. Kristin Kalsem looks at how participatory action research methods can be used to engage in critical race/feminist praxis, by exploring the raced and gendered nature of the “fringe economy.”  
Headshot of Joanna Seung Ah Huh

Joanna Seung Ah Huh

Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

ARTSCI

513-556-5924

Joanna Huh is an Assistant Professor of early modern literature and culture and an affiliate faculty member of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She received her dual B.A. in English and Biology from Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University, where her dissertation earned the Robert Manson Myers Award for best dissertation in English in 2020. Her work and teaching focus on early modern English drama, queer and anti-racist approaches to Shakespeare, and (early) modern theories of community and selfhood.
 
Her current project, Damaging Intimacy: Reimagining Communities in Shakespeare and Marlowe, explores the portrayal, in Renaissance texts as well as in early modern and current political theory, of how radical risk-taking and vulnerability can form the basis for community. Damaging Intimacy works to disrupt the narrative that as the subject becomes more modern, the subject becomes more bounded and then joins a community in order to protect those bounds. As an alternative, she envisions communities that are dependent on selves willing to embrace experiences, both costly and pleasurable, offered by unprotected existence. At a juncture consumed with security, protection, and boundaries, her work rethinks radical ways of being and belonging that reimagines new visions of how to ethically share life with others.
Headshot of C.  Jeff Jacobson Jr

C. Jeff Jacobson Jr

Professor, University of Cincinnati, Department of Anthropology, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

466 Braunstein Hall

513-807-3789

I am a clinically oriented medical and psychological anthropologist who specializes in the application of qualitative cultural and ethnographic methodologies to patient- and provider-centered health services research, and to problems of interpretation, validity, and translation of behavioral and psychological constructs and measures in health research. As a social scientist, my theoretical and methodological commitments align broadly with meaning- and discourse-centered approaches in the social sciences and with phenomenological, constructivist, and socio-linguistic traditions in medical and psychological anthropology. In my research, as in my teaching and advising, I emphasize attention to the kinds of humanistic, person-centered, and “experience-near” interviewing and analytic approaches highlighted in these traditions, particularly the focus within psychological anthropology on how people in the context of language, culture and socialization come to understand, characterize and construct their own and others’ minds, intentions, emotions or subjectivities. The wider aims and products of my research collaborations are not strictly anthropological nor are the venues in which they are published. I have three main areas of interest and collaboration which cover most of my publications as sole, lead, or major co-author: Trauma, Coping and Sense-Making; Health Services Research; and Occupational Health and Safety.
Headshot of Melissa Jacquart

Melissa Jacquart

Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

CLIFTCT

513-556-6324

My research focuses on epistemological issues in the philosophy of science, specifically on the use of models and computer simulations in astrophysics. My research also examines the role philosophy can play in general public understanding of science, and in science education. I’m also interested in ethics & values in science, science policy, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education, particularly developing effective teaching methodologies for philosophy.

Please visit my website for more information on my research and teaching:  melissajacquart.com​
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Kristin Kalsem

Charles Hartsock Professor of Law | Co-director, Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

417 COLLAW

513-556-1220

Professor Kalsem teaches in the areas of commercial law, bankruptcy, feminist legal theory, and law and literature, receiving several teaching awards since joining the faculty in 2001.  She also is co-director of the College’s Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice and the university's joint-degree program in Law and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, a pioneer program for which the College of Law is nationally known.
Professor Kalsem writes in the areas of women's legal history and the cultural study of law and received the 2012 Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award for her book In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, and Literature. She also writes about issues of gender, race, and class in the contexts of bankruptcy reform and consumer protection. Her scholarship has been published in such journals as the Harvard Women's Law Journal, the Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies, the UCLA Women's Law Journal, and The Michigan Journal of Race and Law.
Professor Kalsem has presented papers at national and international conferences, including meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Association of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. She has served as chair of the American Association of Law School's Section of Law and the Humanities and currently sits on the Executive Board of the Section.
Prior to joining the UC faculty, Professor Kalsem taught at the University of Iowa's College of Law and Department of English while completing her doctoral studies. Her interdisciplinary scholarship on 19th-century women and the law was supported by numerous fellowships and grants, including a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Grant and an American Fellowship from the Association of University Women.
Professor Kalsem practiced law in Chicago with the law firm Sidley & Austin before entering academia.
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Elizabeth Lanphier

Assistant Professor of Clinical-Affiliate, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Childrens Hospital Bldg R

513-803-8368

Elizabeth Lanphier is a faculty member in the Ethics Center and in the Division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UC College of Medicine and a Research Assistant Professor in the UC Department of Philosophy. Elizabeth is also affiliated faculty in the UC Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Center for Public Engagement With Science as well as a non-resident Fellow at the George Mason Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.

In addition to her published scholarship in peer reviewed journals and book volumes, Elizabeth has written for a variety of outlets including the Hastings Bioethics Forum and Ms. Magazine. Her research has also been featured in "The ethical questions raised by COVID-19 vaccines: 5 essential reads" and "50 years after Roe, many ethics questions shape the abortion debate" in The Conversation as well as "What is Trauma Informed Care?" in Health, and "We're All Second Guessing Ourselves" in The Atlantic. She was quoted in TIME Magazine for the article "How Do You Even Calculate Covid-19 Risk Anymore?" and was an expert cited in "Motivated Reasoning: Emily Oster's COVID Narratives and the Attack on Public Education" in Protean Magazine.

Elizabeth currently chairs the Committee on Accessibility and Inclusion for the North American Society for Social Philosophy, and is an elected Board Member of the Bioethics Network of Ohio. From 2021-2024 she was a co-chair of the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Affinity Group for the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities.
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Amy C Lind

School of Public and International Affairs, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

CLIFTCT

513-556-0675

Amy Lind is a Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and Faculty Affiliate of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Prior to joining SPIA in August 2024, she was Mary Ellen Heintz Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), where she held a faculty position for eighteen years (2006-2024). She has previously served as Taft Research Center Director (2019-2024), WGSS Department Head (2015-2018), and WGSS Graduate Director (2011-2015). In 2017-2018, she also served as Provost Fellow, in which capacity she oversaw assessment and reaccreditation in the College of Arts & Sciences. She also holds faculty affiliations in Sociology, Romance & Arabic Languages & Literatures, the Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies Program, and the School of Planning/DAAP.

Dr. Lind's areas of scholarship and teaching include international political economy, feminist international relations, comparative politics (Latin America/Global South), development and postcolonial studies, social movements, human rights. and feminist, decolonial, and queer studies. She has lived, worked, and conducted research in Latin America for over 40 years, including in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Chile. She is the author of Gendered Paradoxes: Women’s Movements, State Restructuring, and Global Development in Ecuador (Penn State University Press, 2005), and editor of four volumes, including Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance (Routledge, 2010) and Feminist (Im)mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America: Rights, Citizenships and Identities in Transnational Perspective (Ashgate Publishing, 2013, co-edited with Anne Sisson Runyan, Patricia McDermott and Marianne Marchand). Her forthcoming book, Constituting the Nation: Resignifying Nation, Economy and Family in Postneoliberal Ecuador (with Christine Keating), addresses the cultural, economic, and affective politics of Ecuador's postneoliberal Citizen Revolution. She has held distinguished visiting professor positions in Ecuador, Bolivia and Switzerland and has delivered invited lectures at institutions around the world. Currently she is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2022-2025). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (2019-2025).
 
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Annulla Linders

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

1001 Crosley Tower

513-556-4710

Qualitative Methods; Historical and Comparative; Social Movements; Culture; Capital Punishment; Abortion

Annulla Linders CV
 
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John A. Lynch

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

4263 CLIFTCT

513-556-6232

Dr. Lynch studies bioethics, health communication, and the rhetoric of science and medicine. He was previously the clinical research ethicist at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training at UC’s College of Medicine, and he has collaborated for more than 15 years with faculty at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center to research social and ethical issues related to returning genetic research results to families and adolescents. He is the author or editor of three books and more than 60 essays and articles. His 2011 book, What Are Stem Cells? Definitions at the Intersection of Science and Politics, received the 2016 Distinguished Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Health Communication Division, and his most recent book The Origins of Bioethics: Remembering When Medicine Went Wrong received the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine’s 2020 Book award.
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Bradford Clayton Mank

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, James B. Helmer, Jr. Professor of Law, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

421 COLLAW

513-556-0094

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor Mank teaches and writes in the areas of environmental law and administrative law.  A prolific scholar, he has authored many articles and book chapters on environmental justice, regulatory reform, standing, and statutory interpretation. He also has worked with the City of Cincinnati on a number of environmental ordinances and implementation matters, including climate change, environmental justice, recycling, and air pollution issues. 
 
He was named the James B. Helmer, Jr. Professor of Law in 2001 in recognition of his scholarly and teaching accomplishments. Professor Mank’s has also been honored with the 2004 Harold C. Schott Award and in 2001 with the Goldman Prize for Teaching Excellence. He was also awarded the Dean’s Award for Faculty Excellence in 2016.
 
Before joining the College of Law faculty in 1991, Professor Mank served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Connecticut.  He also was an associate with the Hartford, Conn., law firm of Murtha, Cullina, Righter and Pinney, where his emphasis was environmental law. 
 
Professor Mank received his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale University where he served as the Editor of the Yale Law Journal.  After graduation, he clerked for Justice David M. Shea of the Connecticut Supreme Court.
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Wanda McCarthy

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

253 CC West Woods Acad Cntr

513-556-5400

Headshot of Michelle McGowan

Michelle McGowan

Asst Professor - Adj Volunteer, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

French Hall

513-556-6453

Michelle McGowan is a Research Associate Professor in the Ethics Center and Division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center within the Department of Pediatrics in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences. She is the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Graduate Program Director.

Dr. McGowan conducts research on the gendered ethical and social implications of reproductive and genomic technologies, with a particular focus how users of reproductive and genomic technologies conceptualize the risks and benefits of the integration of these technologies into research, clinical, and consumer settings. Her research aims to illustrate how the perspectives of users of novel technologies – including patients, families, health care providers, researchers, and consumers - can contribute to bioethical and feminist theory and the development of institutional, professional, and social policies and practice guidelines. Her recent scholarship has focused specifically on oocyte donation, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and screening, fertility preservation, reproductive carrier screening, direct-to-consumer and clinical genomic testing, precision medicine, and participant-centric approaches to genomic research.

Dr. McGowan teaches courses on reproductive politics, gendered aspects of health, feminist methods and methodologies, and comparative health policy.
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Laura R. Micciche

Area Director of Rhetoric and Composition, Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

225C ARTSCI

513-556-6519

Laura R. Micciche teaches a wide variety of writing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as interdisciplinary workshops for faculty and students. Her research focuses on the collaborative, material realities that encompass writing, teaching, administrative, and editorial practices. She has published two monographs and three edited collections on writing-related themes: revision, writing pedagogy, collaboration and materiality, and rhetorics of emotion. In addition, she has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, many with collaborators, demonstrating her commitment to shared authorship. She has served in a variety of administrative roles while at UC, including Director of Composition, Assistant Director of Composition, Area Director of the Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Program, and Co-Director of the Copyediting & Publishing Certificate program. For six years, she served as editor of Composition Studies, an independent journal in rhetoric and composition, and is currently co-editor, with Chris Carter, of the WPA Book Series for Parlor Press. See complete CV for more info.
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David Niven

Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5116 CLIFTCT

513-556-3305

David Niven (Ph.D., Ohio State University) teaches American politics and conducts research on political campaigns, gerrymandering, political communication and death penalty policy. David is the author of several books including The Politics of Injustice: The Kennedys, The Freedom Rides and the Electoral Consequences of a Moral Compromise (University of Tennessee Press) and has published research in numerous journals including the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Polity, Social Science Quarterly, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and the Journal of Black Studies. David has testified as an expert witness and consulted on gerrymandering cases in state and federal courts and wrote an amicus brief submitted to the Ohio Supreme Court in Preterm Cleveland v. Yost. David's political analysis has been quoted widely including in the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Yorker. David has worked as a speechwriter for political and academic leaders including Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, and Ohio State University President Gordon Gee.
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Shailaja D Paik

Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

340 B ARTSCI

513-556-5679

I am Charles Phelphs Taft Distinguished Research Professor of History and Affiliate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies. My research, writing, and teaching interests lie at the intersection of a number of fields: Modern South Asia; Dalit studies; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; social and political movements; oral history; human rights and humanitarianism. As a historian, I specialize in the social, intellectual, and cultural history of Modern India. My first book Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014 ) examines the nexus between caste, class, gender, and state pedagogical practices among Dalit ("Untouchable") women in urban India. My second book The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022 https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34163) analyzes the politics of caste, class, gender, sexuality, and popular culture in modern Maharashtra. The book won the American Historical Association's 2023 John F. Richards Prize for "the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia" (https://www.historians.org/award-grant/john-f-richards-prize/) and the Association of Asian Studies 2024 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize (https://www.asianstudies.org/aas-2024-prizes/). I am working on several new book projects: Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India, Caste, Race, and Indigeneity in and beyond South Asia, and the Cambridge Companion to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. My research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Stanford Humanities Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies, Yale University, Emory University, the Ford Foundation, and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, among others. I have published several articles on a variety of themes, including the politics of naming, Dalit and African American women, Dalit women’s education, new Dalit womanhood, and kissing and nationalism in prestigious international journals. My scholarship and research interests focus on anti-colonial struggles, transnational women’s history, women-of-color feminisms, and particularly on gendering caste and subaltern history. I co-organized the "Fifth International Conference on the Unfinished Legacy of Dr. Ambedkar" at the New School of Social Research and I direct the "Ambedkar-King Justice Initiative" at the University of Cincinnati.
Cover of The Vulgarity of Caste by Shailaja Paik  
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Angela Potochnik

Department Head; Professor; Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5215 CLIFTCT

513-556-6340

Potochnik's research interests include philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, and history of logical empiricism, including especially the role of idealization in science, the properties of scientific explanations, arguments against levels of organization, the relationships between science and the public, and Otto Neurath. 

Visit Potochnik's website.  
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Cheli M Reutter

Associate Professor, Educator, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

110-H ARTSCI

513-556-0843

My specializations are African American literature and medical humanities.  Many of my courses include a service learning component and community engagement.
Headshot of Stephanie N Sadre-Orafai

Stephanie N Sadre-Orafai

Taft Research Center Director & Faculty Chair
Critical Visions Co-Director
, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

448 Braunstein Hall

513-556-3569

Stephanie Sadre-Orafai is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the production of difference and types among expert communities in the United States. Her ethnographic work examines media and cultural producers, emerging forms of expertise, the intersection of race, language, and visual practices in aesthetic industries, and forms of evidence and the body. She studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley (BA, 2000) and received her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at New York University in 2010, when she also joined the faculty at UC. She co-edited Visual Anthropology Review, the journal of the Society for Visual Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association from 2018–2021, and currently serves as the Director & Faculty Chair of the Taft Research Center

Her essays on casting, model development, and fashion reality television have appeared in several edited volumes (PDFs). She is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled Real People, Real Models: Casting Race and Fashion in 21st Century America, which examines the history of casting in the New York fashion industry, the rise of non-professional or "real people" models, and how modeling and casting agents produce models' bodies as forms of media, creating new articulations of mediation, visibility, and difference in the process. Building on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in the New York fashion industry, the book explores the political implications of how these new articulations are refracted through idioms of beauty, desirability, and justice. 

She is also working on a comparative project, Type by Design, that explores the overlapping concerns of inanimate (typefaces) and animate (models) type production in the commercial font and high fashion modeling industries in New York City. In both sites, there are tensions between visibility and invisibility, legibility and aesthetic nuance, and the management of lay and expert visions in producing culturally recognizable types and individual faces. Joining together ethnographic and archival research, she examines the mutually vivifying and dehumanizing dimensions of type production and what their professional practices can reveal about underlying changes in cultural ideas of “difference” and how they are visually encoded across time, technologies, and markets. This project extends her earlier comparative work on fashion and policing, where she examined the temporal dimensions of mug shots alongside casting photographs, and the spatial dimensions of street scouting and stop-and-frisk practices. 

She co-directs the Critical Visions Certificate, a joint effort between faculty in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and College of Arts and Sciences, which she established with Jordan Tate in 2011. The program is aimed at teaching students how to effectively combine critical theory and social analysis with art, media, and design practice. She co-edits CVSN, the experimental publication of student work from the program. Themes have included "space" (2013), "the future" (2015), "color" (2016), "surface" (2018), "identity" (2020), "land/water" (2022), "subject/object" (2023), and "artifact" (2024). 
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Rebecca Sanders

Assistant Director, School of Public and International Affairs , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5135 CLIFTCT

513-556-3316

Website: https://www.rebeccasandersphd.com

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Assistant Director of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) at the University of Cincinnati. I also direct the interdisciplinary International Human Rights Certificate and am affiliate faculty with the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

My research agenda addresses pressing global challenges at the intersection of international human rights, international security, and public health. I am especially interested in how societies grapple with rights tradeoffs in real and perceived emergencies and the dynamics of rights advancement and retrenchment.  

 
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Simone Nicole Savannah

Asst Professor - Visiting (F6), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

ARTSCI

513-556-5924

Simone Savannah, Ph.D. is a Black feminist writer and teacher born and raised in Columbus Ohio. She is the author of Uses of My Body (Barrow Street 2020) and Like Kansas (Big Lucks 2018). She is the winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize chosen by Jericho Brown.
 
Her work has been published in Apogee, The Fem, Powder Keg, GlitterMob, Shade Journal, BreakBeat Poets, and several other journals and anthologies. She earned her M.Ed and B.A. from Ohio University. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. 

Simone is also a certified personal trainer. 
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Sarah M Stitzlein

Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

610F Teachers College

513-556-2439

View full website, including publications and information about current writing projects, at http://sarahstitzlein.wix.com/portfolio 

I am a Professor of Education and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati.  As a philosopher of education, I use political philosophy to uncover problems in education, analyze educational policy, and envision better alternatives.  I am especially interested in issues of political agency, educating for democracy, and equity in schools.  I consider how to best educate citizens, with special attention to addressing current struggles in democracy related to matters of truth, political dissent, polarization, populism, and political hope.

I am Co-Editor of the journal, Democracy & Education and President of the Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society. I am a scholar of American Pragmatism and previously served as President of the John Dewey Society.

I have received the the University of Cincinnati Jack Twyman Award for Service Learning, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and Golden Apple awards.  At my previous university, I earned the University of New Hampshire Outstanding Professor award.  I am also the recipient of the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Development Fellowship. 
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Evan Torner

Associate Professor of German Studies and Film / Media Studies; Undergraduate Director of German Studies; Director, UC Game Lab, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

4253 CLIFTCT

513-556-2749

Evan Torner defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org). His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.
Headshot of Patricia   Valladares-Ruiz

Patricia Valladares-Ruiz

Professor of Latin American and Caribbean literature and film., Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

5262 CLIFTCT

513-432-6845

Professor Patricia Valladares-Ruiz's major research and teaching interests focus on race, gender, sexuality, geographical imagination, and political dissent in Latin American and Caribbean literature, cinema, and popular culture.

She is the author of Narrativas del descalabro: La novela venezolana en tiempos de revolución (Tamesis, 2018), Sexualidades disidentes en la narrativa cubana contemporánea (Tamesis, 2012), the editor of Afro-Hispanic Subjectivities (Cincinnati Romance Review, 2011), and the coeditor of El tránsito vacilante: Miradas sobre la cultura venezolana contemporánea (Rodopi, 2013).  Professor Valladares-Ruiz has also published book chapters and articles on Latin American and Caribbean literature and cinema in scholarly journals such as Revista Hispánica Moderna, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Studies in Latin American Popular CultureMLN: Modern Language Notes, Revista Iberoamericana, Romance Quarterly, Hispania, La Torre, Neophilologus, Monographic ReviewInti, eHumanista: Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies, Cuadernos de literatura, and Letras Femeninas.

Research and Teaching Interests: Latin American and Caribbean literature, film, and popular culture; Neo-slave narratives; geographical imagination in early colonial Spanish America; digital humanities and textual analysis; large language models in humanities research; migrant literature; critical analysis of AI; politics and aesthetics.

Theoretical interests: Cultural Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). 

www.patriciavalladares.com
   
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Rina Williams

Associate Dean for Social Sciences; Professor of Political Science; Affiliate Faculty, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and Asian Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

155A ARTSCI

513-556-5858

Rina Verma Williams received her A.M and Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, and B.A. (Political Science) and B.S. (Chemistry) from the University of California at Irvine. She is currently serving as Associate Dean for the Social Sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her home department is the School of Public and International Affairs, with affiliate appointments in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; and Asian Studies. Her areas of specialization include South Asian politics; women and gender; ethnicity and nationalism; religion and politics; and politics of the developing nations. She has published extensively in these areas, inlcuding numerous articles and two books with Oxford University Press. Before coming to UC, she taught at the University of Virginia and University of Houston.
Headshot of Ladan   Zarabadi

Ladan Zarabadi

Asst Professor - Adj, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

CC West Woods Acad Cntr

513-732-5245

Emeriti Faculty

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Beth S. Ash

Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Beth Ash received her undergraduate degree in literature with high honors from the University of Michigan and holds a MA and PhD in English from the University of Virginia. She is the author of Writing In Between: Joseph Conrad and the Psychosocial Dilemmas of Modernity and numerous journal articles and book chapters on the topics of literary modernism, feminism as critique, and feminist revisions of psychoanalysis. Although a new joint appointment with the Center, she has long been teaching the undergraduate Feminist Theory and the graduate Feminist Theory: Foundations for the Center. She also offers seminars on feminism and psychoanalysis, assists with student advising, and serves on MA committees.
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Michelle A Gibson

Professor Emerita, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Michelle Gibson is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Women's Studies. She received her Ph.D. from Ohio University, where her areas of study were American Literature, Composition Research and Pedagogy, and Creative Writing. Her scholarship has continued in all three of these areas. Much of her work applies queer and postmodern identity theories to pedagogical practice and popular culture. She also continues to write and publish poetry. With Jonathan Alexander, she edits QP: Queer Poetry, an online poetry journal, and she and Alexander also edited a strain of JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition entitled "Queer Composition(s)". She co-edited (with Deborah Meem) Femme/ Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go and Lesbian Academic Couples. With Meem and Alexander she is writing Finding Out, an introductory textbook for use in introductory LGBT courses.
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Deborah T. Meem

Professor of WGSS, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

513-515-2657

Deb Meem specializes in Victorian literature, LGBTQ studies, and 19th C. novels by women. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1971 with a double major in English and music, then after a decade away from the academy returned to graduate school in English at Stony Brook University, where she earned a Ph.D. in 1985. Her work has appeared in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Feminist Teacher, Studies in Popular Culture and elsewhere. She has edited four long-forgotten books by Victorian journalist, novelist, and antifeminist Eliza Lynn Linton: The Rebel of the Family (Broadview, 2002), Realities (Valancourt, 2010), The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (Victorian Secrets, 2011, with Kate Holterhoff), and Sowing the Wind (Victorian Secrets, 2015, with Kate Holterhoff). With Michelle Gibson she has co-edited Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want To Go (2002) and Lesbian Academic Couples (2005), both published by Haworth Press. Her co-authored book Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies (with Michelle Gibson and Jonathan Alexander) was published by Sage Press in 2009; its second edition appeared in 2013, and the third edition is due in 2017. Deb served as Head of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from 2008-15. When not in that position, she teaches Sexuality Studies in the Department of WGSS and occasionally literature in the English Department. She serves on UC’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, and was also longtime co-chair of the LGBT faculty/staff Task Force at UC.
 
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Kristi Ann Nelson

Professor Emeritus, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

(513)556-4691

Staff

Headshot of Amanda Rose Hogeland

Amanda Rose Hogeland

Business Manager A&S Staffing Unit 5, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3420 French Hall

513-556-4720

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Nicole Kaffenberger

Program Manager, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3428D French Hall

513-556-6776

Headshot of Stephen Mark Struharik

Stephen Mark Struharik

Financial Administrator 1, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

3409 French Hall

513-556-6688