rdi.emory.edu - Race and Difference Initiative

Kate Winskell, Visiting Assistant Professor, Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, and Assistant Director, Center for Health, Culture and Society
swinske@sph.emory.edu

Craig Womack, Associate Professor of English, cwomack@emory.edu

II. Supporting Faculty

Rudolph P. Byrd, Professor of American Studies, ILA and the Department of African American Studies, rbyrd@emory.edu

Andy Ditzler, Media Specialist, Marian K. Heilbrun Music and Media Library, andy.ditzler@emory.edu

Andrew Francis, Assistant Professor of Economics, Andrew.Francis@emory.edu

Jim Grimsley, Senior Resident Fellow in Creative Writing, Director, Creative Writing Program, jgrimsl@emory.edu

Pam Hall, Associate Professor of Religion, pmhall@emory.edu

Leslie M. Harris, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, lharr04@emory.edu

Vanessa King, Assistant Law Librarian for Reference, vanessa.king@emory.edu

Walter Melion, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History, walter.melion@emory.edu

James Meyer, Winship Distinguished Associate Professor of Art History

Jill Robbins, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religion, jrobbi2@emory.edu

Judith Rohrer, Chair and Associate Professor of Art History, judith.rohrer@emory.edu

James Steffen, Film Studies and Media Librarian, Theater and Dance Subject Liaison, Marian K. Heilbrun Music and Media Library jsteffe@emory.edu

Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Associate Professor ILA and Women's Studies, kwalla2@emory.edu

Regina Werum, Associate Professor of Sociology, regina.werum@emory.edu

III. Graduate Students

Moya Bailey, Women's Studies Department
mzbaile@emory.edu

Moya Bailey examines the hypersexualization of the black body along with queer theoretical interventions into women's studies in her dissertation, "The Illest: Contemporary Examinations of Black Women's Pathology in Popular Culture," looking in particular at how media circulated representations of the black female body that created consequences for those bodies in the medico-juridical system of the United States.

Margaret E. Boyle, Spanish & Portuguese Department
meboyle@emory.edu

Margaret Boyle is writing a dissertation entitled "Bad Girls on Stage: Spectacles of Deviance and Rehabilitation in Early Modern Spain."

Monique Carry, Sociology Department
ccarry@emory.edu

Monique Carry's dissertation, "Safe Space between a Rock and a Hard Place?" A Search for Resilience among African American and Latina Lesbian and Bisexual Women," explores positive adaption through sexual identity acceptance and disclosure among African American and Latina women, while taking into consideration how cultural experiences with discrimination and community acceptance affect well-being.

Amy Cobden, Anthropology Department
acobden@emory.edu

Amy Cobden's dissertation is on behavioral endocrinology of bonobos, of interest mainly due to their use of sexual behaviors in conflict management. She interconnects her work in evolutionary theory with feminist theory.

Derrick D. Cohens, English Department
dcohens@emory.edu

Derrick Cohens is interested in African American literature and (black) gay/lesbian literature/theory as interventions that refuse to prioritize race or sexuality, allowing each category to manifest itself while calling attention to their tenuousness.

Brent Dawson, English Department
mckenzie.park@gmail.com

Brent Dawson studies the role of gender and desire in early
modern historiography and ethnography with an eye toward the
recurrence of these problematics in the current globalizing
era.

Catherine Doubler, English Department
cdouble@emory.edu

Katie Doubler specializes in Renaissance literature with particular focus on sacred eroticism in metaphysical poetry and early modern lesbianism.

Jillian Ford, Division of Educational Studies
jcford@learnlink.emory.edu

A fifth year doctoral candidate, Jillian Ford's research focuses on social justice education in out-of-school contexts; her dissertation is titled "From Queering the Body Politic to Queering the Politics of the Body: Political Activism among Queer Youth of Color."

E. Regina Helfrich, Philosophy Department
gina.helfrich@gmail.com

Gina Helfrich is completing her Ph.D. with a dissertation titled "Solidarity as Social Transformation: Towards a Queer Humanism."

Anne Koch-Rein, Institute of the Liberal Arts
akochre@emory.edu

Anne Koch-Rein has interests in American Studies, transgender and queer studies, in particular the (re)-metaphorizations of Frankenstein, "dysphoric knowledge" and metaphors in transgender knowledge production.

José Arnaldo Larrauri-Santiago, Spanish & Portuguese Department
jlarrua@learnlink.emory.edu

Jose Larrauri-Santiago's dissertation, "Rupture, Diversity, Excess: Homosexual Discourse in Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature," examines the evolution of homosexual discourses in tandem with the development of Puerto Rican literature, culture, and national identity debates.

Joe Madura, Art History Department
jmadura@emory.edu

Joe Madura's recent work has focused on contemporary queer minimal art, performance, and photography, including curatorial work on the Andy Warhol polaroid show at the Carlos Museum, "Big Shots," about which he spoke at a Studies in Sexualities gathering in December 2008.

Kile M. Ortigo, M.A. Department of Psychology
kortigo@emory.edu

Kile Ortigo is interested in more sophisticated conceptualizations of sexuality and the role it plays in human life. Particular areas of interest include the interplay of the attachment and sexual systems, the ethics of scientific research in sexuality, and therapeutic work with queer/LGBT and gender minorities. Kile was awarded the 2009 Studies in Sexuality Graduate Essay Contest for his paper, "Queering Psychology: Towards an Ethical & Sophisticated Study of Sexuality."

Emily Parker, Philosophy Department
eaparke@LearnLink.Emory.Edu

Emily Parker's dissertation is titled "Feminist Aporetics: On Negativity and Alterity," and reflects her interests in feminist theory and psychoanalysis, the relationship between the queer and the feminist, and philosophy and the body.

Abigail Parsons
Department of Women's Studies
abyparsons@googlemail.com

Abigail Parson's work looks at constructions of female
queerness, especially lesbianism and tomboyism, in southern
film and fiction. She is particularly interested in work by
Dorothy Allison, Fannie Flagg, Carson McCullers and Rita Mae
Brown, and film adaptations of work by queer southern
authors. Other research interests include lesbian history
and culture, contemporary feminist and lesbian writers,
queer and feminist film theory, and gender-based
countercultural movements.

Janelle Peters, Graduate Division of Religion
Janelle.Peters@emory.edu

Janelle Peters's dissertation, "Leveling the Playing Field: Egalitarian Athletic Metaphors and Veils in 1 Corinthians," details how the apostle Paul opposes imperial support for male combative sports by using metaphors of running competitions, which awarded prizes to both men and women, and argues that rather than protecting weak women from sexual assault by angels, as scholars have claimed, Paul validates female prophets by giving them the honorable veiled heads of Roman emperors and priests.

A. Rez Pullen, Women's Studies Department
rez.pullen@gmail.com

Rez Pullen's work focuses on the intersections and divergences between transgender subjectivity, feminist theory and queer theory with a particular interest in how feminist theory and queer theory have configured transgenderism, as well as how recent work in transgender theory questions the role of the "wrong body syndrome" in medical discourse. She also studies how transgender subjectivity critically calls into question language's (presumed) ability to describe what we think of as "sex," "gender" and "desire" and the relationships between these categories.

David Rubin, Women’s Studies Department
drubin3@emory.edu

David entered the PhD program in Women’s Studies at Emory in 2005. His dissertation draws on feminist, queer, and disability theories to query the contested meanings and materialities of intersex in contemporary culture, scholarship, and activism. His areas of specialization include women's and gender studies, feminist and queer theory, LGBT studies, disability studies, and transnational feminisms. He holds master’s degrees in women’s studies and comparative cultural and literary studies from the University of Arizona and is the author of “Women’s Studies, Neoliberalism, and the Paradox of the ‘Political’,” in Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, edited by Elizabeth Kennedy and Agatha Beins (2005); and (with Miranda Joseph) “Promising Complicities: On the Sex, Race and Globalization Project,” in A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, edited by George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry (2007).

Brandy Simula, Women’s Studies Department
bsimula@emory.edu

Brandy Simula Graduate Fellow in Women’s Studies. Brandy’s dissertation project draws on queer and feminist theory and the sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism to examine the operation of gender and power in BDSM interactions. She attended the National Sexuality Resource Center’s Summer Institute on Sexuality in 2008 and has presented work on feminist and queer approaches to non-normative sexual practices at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society and the National Women’s Studies Association.

Elizabeth Venell, Women’s Studies Department
evenell@emory.edu

Elizabeth “Lizzy” Venell’s dissertation project, Queer Projections: Representing Sexuality in Experimental Film, stages a theoretical and practical redefinition of queer cinema, emphasizing the role of experimental form in the representation of queer sexualities. Papers presented: “Queer Figures, Women’s Studies” (Southeastern Women’s Studies Association Conference, 2008), “Six Women and One Final Girl: On The Descent (2006)” (Emory University Women’s Symposium, 2007), and “Queer Corporeality and Queer Eye for the Red Sox,” (Rutgers University, New Directions in Feminist Scholarship: Graduate Conference in Women’s and Gender Studies, 2006). In 2007 Elizabeth won the LGBT Essay Contest for her paper, “Ambiguity, Articulation, and Affirmation of Queer Female Desires.”

Shruthi Vissa, Women’s Studies Department
svissa@emory.edu

Dissertation title (Under Revision): Romancing the Nation: Masculinity as Nationalist Imperialist Spectacle in American Heterosexual and Lesbian Romance Novels. Papers Presented: “Queering the Marriage Plot? Love and Heteronormativity in the Queer Romance Novel.” Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, February 2008. “Queering the Marriage Plot? Love and Heteronormativity in the Queer Romance Novel.” South Eastern Women’s Studies Association Conference, North Carolina, March 2008.

Angela Willey, Women’s Studies Department
awilley@emory.edu

Angela Wiley's dissertation, “‘Science Says She’s Gotta Have It’: Monogamy, Non-monogamy, and Biomedical Discourse,” looks at the role of biologizing discourse in the cultural and historical reproduction of compulsory monogamy. Her publications include:

“‘Christian Nations’, ‘Polygamic Races’, and Women’s Rights: Toward a Genealogy of Monogamy and Whiteness” Sexualities 9:5 (December 2006):530-546.

“‘Science Says She’s Gotta Have It’: Reading for Racial Resonances in Woman-Centered Poly Literature” in Meg Barker and Darren Langdridge (eds.) Understanding Non-Monogamies. New York: Routledge, 2009.

She taught “Lesbian/Gay/Queer Studies” (WS 365) in Spring 2007.