Faculty and Staff
Core Faculty
Anima Adjepong
Associate Professor & Department Head, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3302 French Hall
Chandra Nirmala Frank
Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3322 French Hall
Lisa M Hogeland
Associate Professor, English and WGSS, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
214D ARTSCI
Carolyn J Peterson
Undergraduate Director, Educator Instructor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3316 French Hall
Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama
Associate Professor in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3314 French Hall
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.
Giao Q. Tran
Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3408 French Hall
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
Adjunct Faculty
Yvonne Fulbright
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French Hall
Melanie Rose Nipper
Instructor - Adjunct, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French East
Tristan Nichole Vaught
Instructor - Adjunct, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French East
Erin Mary Winchester
Instructor - Adj, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French East
Affiliate Faculty
Kristen Elizabeth Aanstoos
Asst Professor - Visiting, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5111 CLIFTCT
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.
Omotayo O Banjo
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Van Wormer Hall
Danielle Bessett
Professor (PhD, New York University), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
206C ARTSCI
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
Nimisha Bhat
Asst Librarian, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Langsam Library
Dana Elaine Bisignani
Dir Women's Center, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
830N Steger Student Life Cntr
RJ Boutelle
Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
110G ARTSCI
Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown
Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
260C ARTSCI
Jenny Ann Caplan
Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French Hall
Steve L Carlton-Ford
Professor (PhD, University of Minnesota), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
260D ARTSCI
Steve Carlton-Ford CV
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
260B ARTSCI
Erynn Masi de Casanova CV
Katherine Castiello Jones
Undergraduate Program Director (PhD, University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Sociology , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
260A ARTSCI
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.
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
Michelle Lindsay Colpean
Asst Professor - Educator, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
4241 CLIFTCT
Laura D. Dudley Jenkins
Professor of Political Science, Faculty Affiliate WGSS and Asian Studies , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5140 CLIFTCT
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.
Anjali Nichole Dutt
Assoc Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3259 CLIFTCT
Jenn Dye
Asst Dean, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
320 COLLAW
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.
Cassidy D. Ellis
Asst Professor - Educator, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
4242 CLIFTCT
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 Autoethnography, The Fat Studies Journal, Departures 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.
Muhammad U. Faruque
Associate Professor and Taft Center Fellow (AY 23-24), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5240 CLIFTCT
His book Sculpting the Self (University of Michigan Press, 2021) won the prestigious 31st World Book of the Year 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 Studies, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (Cambridge), Sophia, Journal 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/
Jan Marie Fritz
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
6213 DAA Addition
Jennifer Glaser
Associate Professor and Head of Department, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
248 ARTSCI
Janine C Hartman
Professor of History,, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5259 CLIFTCT
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
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
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.”
Joanna Seung Ah Huh
Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
ARTSCI
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.
C. Jeff Jacobson Jr
Professor, University of Cincinnati, Department of Anthropology, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
466 Braunstein Hall
Melissa Jacquart
Asst Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
CLIFTCT
Please visit my website for more information on my research and teaching: melissajacquart.com
Kristin Kalsem
Charles Hartsock Professor of Law | Co-director, Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
417 COLLAW
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.
Elizabeth Lanphier
Assistant Professor of Clinical-Affiliate, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Childrens Hospital Bldg R
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.
Amy C Lind
School of Public and International Affairs, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
CLIFTCT
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).
Annulla Linders
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
206D ARTSCI
Annulla Linders CV
Ailsa Lipscombe
Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
4234 Emery Hall
Lipscombe regularly presents research at the nexus of ethnomusicology, sound studies and critical disability studies at conferences across North America and Australasia. She was awarded the 2021 Charles Seeger Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology for her paper "When Silence Is Heard: Embodied Listening in Medical Facilities' Competing Sonic Epistemes." Her first monograph—titled Listening Beyond Crisis: Disability and the Medicalization of Everyday Life—is under contract with the University of Michigan Press, to be published within their Music and Social Justice series.
In her postdoctoral position at Te Herenga Waka, Lipscombe is building on her expertise in digital ethnography and the decolonization of research methodologies to explore ethical transformations of Indigenous archiving in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this work, she centers community engagement and an ethics of care, guided by her own intersectional positionality as a queer, disabled researcher whose family whakapapas (traces their genealogy to) the Māori iwi of Te Whakatōhea.
John A. Lynch
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
4263 CLIFTCT
Bradford Clayton Mank
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, James B. Helmer, Jr. Professor of Law, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
421 COLLAW
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.
Wanda McCarthy
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
253 CC West Woods Acad Cntr
Michelle McGowan
Asst Professor - Adj Volunteer, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
French Hall
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.
Laura R. Micciche
Area Director of Rhetoric and Composition, Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
225B ARTSCI
David Niven
Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5116 CLIFTCT
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
Angela Potochnik
Department Head; Professor; Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5215 CLIFTCT
Visit Potochnik's website.
Cheli M Reutter
Associate Professor, Educator, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
110-H ARTSCI
Stephanie N Sadre-Orafai
Taft Research Center Director & Faculty Chair
Critical Visions Co-Director,
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
1100C EDWARDS 1 Edwards 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).
Rebecca Sanders
Assistant Director, School of Public and International Affairs , Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5135 CLIFTCT
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.
Simone Nicole Savannah
Asst Professor - Visiting (F6), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
ARTSCI
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.
Sarah M Stitzlein
Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
610F Teachers College
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.
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
Patricia Valladares-Ruiz
Professor of Latin American and Caribbean literature and film., Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
5262 CLIFTCT
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 Culture, MLN: Modern Language Notes, Revista Iberoamericana, Romance Quarterly, Hispania, La Torre, Neophilologus, Monographic Review, Inti, 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
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
Ladan Zarabadi
Asst Professor - Adj, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
CC West Woods Acad Cntr
Emeriti Faculty
Beth S. Ash
Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Michelle A Gibson
Professor Emerita, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Deborah T. Meem
Professor of WGSS, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Kristi Ann Nelson
Professor Emeritus, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Van Wormer Hall
Staff
Amanda Rose Hogeland
Business Manager A&S Staffing Unit 5, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3420 French Hall
Nicole Kaffenberger
Program Manager, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3428D French Hall
Stephen Mark Struharik
Financial Administrator 1, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3409 French Hall