Faculty News
Publications, Awards, and Public Engagement
Allison Alexy (Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Culture and Women’s and Gender Studies) authored a book, Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan, that will be published by the University of Chicago Press later this year. Misuzu Press (Tokyo) will publish a Japanese translation of Intimate Disconnections.
Debotri Dhar (faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies) authored an article, ‘Teaching Culture in a Globalized Era: Strategies from a Postcolonial Feminist Classroom,’ published in Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy in December 2019. Forthcoming is ‘Teaching Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in a Feminist Classroom: An Intersectional, Transnational Perspective,’ in Feminist Formations. She also curated, edited, and wrote a critical introduction for a forthcoming book of twelve original essays, Love is Not a Word: The Culture and Politics of Desire. The book will be published in May by Speaking Tiger, one of India’s top independent presses.
On November 19, 2019, Dhar led a discussion on ‘Feminism through a South Asian Lens,’ as an invited speaker for the Global Perspectives on Feminism Series organized by U-M multicultural organizations Elevate, South Asian Awareness Network, and Paani. On February 24, 2020, she organized and addressed a public symposium on ‘Gender Violence, Immigrant Vulnerability, and the State.’
Abigail Dumes (Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies) authored an article, “Lyme Disease and the Epistemic Tensions of ‘Medically Unexplained Illnesses,’” published in Medical Anthropology on December 20th. On January 3rd, Dumes appeared on WEMU 89.1’s First Friday Focus on the Environment, discussing her work to eliminate lead from drinking water in Michigan’s public schools. On March 3rd, she testified before the Michigan House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation in support of House Bills 5104 and 5105, which would require the installation of water filtration systems in schools and daycare centers. On March 18, she received a UM Public Engagement Faculty Fellowship for 2020-2021.
Cynthia Gabriel (Lecturer, Women’s and Gender Studies), with Mickey Sperlich and Noelle M. St. Vil, co-authored an article, “Preference, knowledge and utilization of midwives, childbirth education classes and doulas among U.S. black and white women: implications for pregnancy and childbirth outcomes,” published in Social Work and Health Care on November 4.
David Gold (Associate Professor, English, Education, and Women’s and Gender Studies), with Jessica Enoch, co-edited an essay collection, Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2019.
Diane Harper (Professor, Family Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s and Gender Studies) was listed among the top 100,000 scientists in the world in a database of citation metrics published by PLoS Biology.
Petra Kuppers (Professor, English, Women’s and Gender Studies, Theater and Dance, and Art and Design) authored a book of poems, Gut Botany, published by Wayne State University Press in March 2020. A video reading of the opening poem is available here.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (Professor, American Culture, Spanish, and Women’s and Gender Studies) received a National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) Think-Act Tank Grant to organize the Queer/Cuir Américas Symposium, which was held on September 20, 2019. The NCID grant also allowed the sixteen visiting scholars and activists to participate in a three-day work meeting leading towards the publication of a special issue of GLQ on "Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable" as well as the publication of two additional journal issues in Argentina and Brazil.
Ruth Tsoffar (Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies and Comparative Literature) authored a book, Life in Citations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture, published by Routledge in September 2019.
Promotions
Amal Hassan Fadlalla, to Professor, Women's Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), effective September 1, 2020
Ruth Tsoffar, to Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies and Comparative Literature, effective September 1, 2020
LaKisha Simmons, to Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies and History, effective September 1, 2019
Graduate Student News
Job Placements
Molly Brookfield (PhD Candidate, History and Women’s and Gender Studies) accepted a position as Assistant Professor, History and Women’s and Gender Studies, at Sewanee: The University of the South.
Ozge Savas (PhD Candidate, Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies) accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Bennington College.
Zach Schudson (PhD Candidate, Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies) accepted a tenure-track position in Gender Psychology at California State University, Sacramento.
Publications, Awards, and Public Engagement
Jasmine An (PhD Candidate, English and Women’s and Gender Studies) authored three poems published in Boyfriend Village, an online publication of the Black Warrior Review, through a writing residency supported by a Rackham Pre-Doctoral grant and an English Diversity Allies graduate student research grant.
Will Beischel (PhD Candidate, Psychology; Women’s and Gender Studies Certificate) received the Feminism & Psychology Student Presentation Award at the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Conference.
Molly Brookfield produced an episode of the History Department’s Reverb Effect podcast, “Street Harrassment, Then and Now.”
Kayla Fike (PhD Candidate, Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies) received a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship for 2020-2021.
Bri Gauger (PhD Candidate, Urban and Regional Planning; Women’s and Gender Studies Certificate) received a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship for 2019-2020. She also authored a book chapter, “From the Women’s Movement to the Planning Academy: Feminist Urban Planning, 1970-1985,” forthcoming from West Virginia University Press in Feminist Geography Unbound: Discomfort, Bodies, and Prefigured Futures (eds. Banu Gökarisel, Michael Brian Hawkins, Christopher M. Neubert, and Sara H. Smith).
Tugce Kayaal (PhD Candaidate, Middle East Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies Certificate) organized a panel for the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association on November 17-19, titled "Composing Sexed Subjects: Love, Affection, Desire in the Middle East," and presented a paper titled "Groovy Kind of Love: Adolescent Female Same-Sex Desire and 'Illicit Intimacies.' She also authored an article, "' Twisted Desires:' Boy Lovers and Male-Male Cross-Generational Sex in the Late Ottoman Empire (1912-18)," forthcoming in Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques in Summer 2020.
LaVelle Ridley (PhD Candidate, English and Women’s and Gender Studies), authored a book review of C. Riley Snorton's Black on Both Sides: The Racial History of Trans Identity (2017), published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies in October 2019. She also authored an article, "Imagining Otherly: Performing Possible Black Trans Futures in Tangerine," published in the “Trans Futures” special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, in November 2019. Also in November, she participated in a roundtable at the National Women’s and Gender Studies Association Conference honoring Susan Stryker and her pioneering work in the field of transgender studies.
Sunhay You (PhD Candidate, English and Women’s and Gender Studies) received a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship for 2020-2021.
