Research
The faculty of Maryland's Women's Studies department has an international reputation for innovative contributions to the creation of new knowledge and new institutional formations. Research and scholarship conducted by our faculty, both core and affiliate and by graduate students is grounded in intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches to studying historical, political, social, cultural and economic aspect of gender as they intersect with national formations, emerging processes and products of subjectivity, health, labor, technology, families, media, education, and tourism.
Four broad areas of intellectual concentration in the graduate program reflect the research resources faculty offer and students can draw upon and extend. The four areas: Race and Racialization; Art, Culture and Social Change; Bodies, Genders and Sexualities; and Gendered Labor, Households and Communities include research and scholarship that examines U. S. and global transformations, social movements and knowledge production.
A. Lynn Bolles’s research focuses on the African Diaspora particularly the Caribbean. She is author of the We Paid Our Dues, (1996) Sister Jamaica (1996), and co-author of In the Shadows of the Sun (1990). Dr. Bolles’ research focuses on the importance of political economic analyses and the gendering of globalization. A major focus of her work contextualizes women’s lives grounded in an understanding of race, ethnicity, gender, class and other differences in the English-speaking Caribbean and throughout the developing world. Titles of her recent published work include: “The Caribbean is on Sale Globalization and Women Tourist Workers in Jamaica,” in The Gender of Globalization edited by N. Gunewardena and A. Kingsolver (SAR 2007) “Of Land and Sea: Women Entrepreneurs in Negril, Jamaica,” in Women’s Labor in the Global Economy edited by S. Harley (Rutgers, 2007), “In the Struggle: Women in Trade Unions in Latin America and the Caribbean” co-authored with Marva Phillips, Lecturer, School of Continuing Studies University of the West Indies Mona, in The Personal and the Political edited by N. Lebron and E. Maier (UNIFEM, 2006), The Golden Goose; Race, Gender and Globalization,” in Cultura y Desarrollo edited by M. Marell and F. Vacheron (UNESCO, Havana, Cuba 2005). “Daughters of the Caribbean: Lives and Experiences” in La Diversidad Culture en el Caribe edited by N. Morejon (Casa las Americas, Havana 2005) “Terror of Terrorism: Its Impact on Women’s Lives in the Caribbean,” (SOULS 2004) and “Women and Development” in Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean (2nd Edition, 2009). She is currently working on an ethnographic book project on women’s work in tourism in Negril, Jamaica.
Elsa Barkley Brown’s research focuses on African American political culture with an emphasis on gender. She is co-editor of the two-volume Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (1993) which received the Leticia Woods Brown Memorial Publication and Edited Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians and the Anna Julia Cooper Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Black Women's Studies.
Bonnie Thornton Dill’s research focuses on intersections of race, class and gender with an emphasis on African American women and families. Her most recent work is a forthcoming collection on the emerging field of intersectionality with Ruth Zambrana entitled Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice. It will be published by Rutgers University Press and available in late 2008. Her recently published articles include: “Disparities in Latina Health: An Intersectional Analysis” with Ruth E. Zambrana in Amy J. Schulz and Leith Mullings eds., Gender, Race Class & Health. (Jossey-Bass, 2006); “Future Directions of Feminist Research: Intersectionality” with A. McLaughlin and A.D. Nieves, in S. Hesse–Biber, ed., Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis (Sage, 2007). Her new work in progress focuses on race, class and gender in higher education and includes the project, Stress of Success –a study of the impact of job stress for Black and Latina faculty on health outcomes as well as a second related case study of programs that have produced Black women PhD’s in non-traditional fields.
Seung-kyung Kim’s research focuses on gender and labor politics, transnational feminist movements, transnational migration and citizenship, and Asia and Asian America. She is the author of Class Struggle or Family Struggle?: Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea (1997) and co-editor of Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (2003). Her recent articles include “Global Citizens in the Making?: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families” (2007); “Family, Gender and Sexual Inequality” (2006); “Women’s Studies as Interdisciplinary Discipline: Identity and Institutionalization of Women’s Studies in Korea” (2006); “Gender Policy in Korea: Toward a New Partnership among Government, Civil Society, and the Academy” (2005); “Martyrs, Victims, and Warriors: Mapping Women Workers on South Korean Labor History” (2005). She is currently working on two book projects: Women’s Movements in Democratic South Korea: The Trajectory of Institutionalization and the Loss of Autonomy, and Global Citizens in the Making?: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families.
Keywords: Gender and labor politics, Transnational feminist movements, Transnational migration and citizenship, Feminist theory
Katie King's' transdisciplinary research on writing technologies, culture and cognition works across disciplines and knowledge worlds, with an eye for intersectional issues and opportunities to queer theory and methodology. She uses feminist technoscience methods to explore media historically and theoretically, with tendrils in a range of disciplines – anthropology, literature, sociology, economics, history, classics, folklore and communications. Among her projects are historical investigations into seventeenth century Quaker women's reenactments and scientific revolutions, analysis of effects on scholarship of academic capitalism in restructuring economies, the globalizing communications work done by science-styled television documentaries, and transnational alterations in what counts as writing as a result of reconceptualizations of the knotted string recording device called the Inka khipu. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is a Fellow of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). She is also a member of the advisory board of the Open Humanities Press. Her first book was Theory in its Feminist Travels: conversations in U.S. women's movements. She has two others nearing completion now, Speaking with Things, an introduction to writing technologies, and another, Networked Reenactments, flexible knowledges under globalization. She has been published in the journals Writing Technologies, Criticism, Feminist Theory, camera obscura, Configurations, TEXT, Communications, and Cultural Studies.
Keywords: media, technoscience, feminist theory, cognition
Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr.’s research and teaching interests include masculinity, queer studies, popular culture, and black cultural performance and politics. His writings include “’Out’ in the Club: The Down Low, Hip Hop, and the Architexture of Black Masculinity,” published in Text and performance Quarterly (2008), “Transformance: Reading the Gospel in Drag” published in the Journal of Homosexuality (2004) and a book manuscript, currently under review entitled Queering the Closet: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Sexual Passing.” This manuscript, based on his dissertation research, maps the evolution of the “Down Low” (DL)-men who traditionally identify as “straight” while having sex with other men-refusing to employ the standardized descriptors of sexual identity. It is ethnographic and media-centered exploration, which addresses the layered complexities of the representation of DL men and their lived experiences. Most importantly, this project challenges the utility and traditional understanding of the closet, especially when considering minoritized experiences and different constructions of queerness. Presently, he is working on a project which investigates the odd intersections between black heterosexual and white gay men’s performances of “Big Momma.” This project examines the role of excess, camp and historical understandings of black women within the (mis)shaping of these black female impersonations.
In addition to the traditional academic pursuits, he is also staging his one-man show, See-Saw: An (im)Balance of Identities. McCune is also doing the preliminary research and interviews for a play which explores and revises notions of the “racist south” in the mid-twentieth century, based on his grandmother’s experience in rural Mississippi. This play, though not void of conflict and traces of racism, tells an alternative to the hostile and antagonistic stories of black-white relations. .
Claire Goldberg Moses’ research and teaching interests focus on feminist theory and histories of feminist organizing (U.S., French, international, transnational) and on the history of European women. She working on a new book examining the complexities of the movement of ideas of feminism – specifically “French feminism” between France and the U.S. in the 20th century. Her publications include U.S. Women in Collective Struggle, ed. with Hartmann (1995); Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism, with Rabine (1993); French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (1984), winner of the Joan Kelly Prize for the year’s best book in women’s history; and “Made in America: ‘French Feminism’ in the Academy,” Feminist Studies (Summer 1998), which also appeared in Australian Feminist Studies (1996), Nouvelles Questions Feministes (in translation, 1996), Cinquantenaire du Deuxième Sexe, ed. Delphy and Chaperon (in translation, 2002), and Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981-2001, ed. Cèlestin, DalMolin, and Courtivron (2003).
Deborah Rosenfelt’s publications include Encompassing Gender: Integrating International Studies and Women's Studies, with Lay and Monk (2002), "Tell Me A Riddle" (Tillie Olsen) (1995); Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class, and Race in Literature and Culture, with Newton (1986); "Women's Studies and Curriculum Transformation," with Schmitz, Butler, and Sheftall, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, ed. Banks and Banks (1995); "'Doing' Multiculturalism: Conceptualizing Curricular Change," in Multicultural Course Transformation in Higher Education, ed. Morey and Kitano (1997), and other essays on curricular change and articles on 20th-century American women's literary and cultural history. She has recently served as Project Director of a series of grants on internationalizing and gendering the curriculum funded by The Ford Foundation, and is the founding director of the International Consortium of Graduate Studies in Women and Gender.
Michelle Rowley’s research interests fall into the two broad categories of Race and Racialization and Bodies, Gender and Sexuality. Her present research focuses on the work of feminist NGO movements within the Anglophone Caribbean and examines feminist strategies of state engagement on policy issues such as abortion, sexual harassment and the rights of sexual minorities. Her publications include: “Crafting Maternal Citizens? Public Discourse of the ‘Maternal Scourge’ in Social Welfare Policies and Services in Trinidad”, “A Feminist’s Oxymoron: Globally Gender-Conscious Development,” “When the Post-Colonial State Bureaucratizes Gender: Charting Trinidadian Women’s Centrality Within The Margins,” and “Rethinking Interdisciplinarity: Meditations on the Sacred Possibilities of an Erotic Feminist Pedagogy.” Dr. Rowley recently received funding to conduct research in the National Archives in Surrey, England on enslaved women’s reproduction under pre-emancipation slave codes in the Anglophone Caribbean. Her present book-project is an examination of the limitations of “gender-mainstreaming” within national machineries. She explores the extent to which this U.N. driven policy-approach has effectively advanced the pursuit of a more gender-just Anglophone Caribbean and argues that the potential effectiveness of gender-mainstreaming may require us to go beyond “gender.”
Ruth Enid Zambrana’s work focuses on the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and other contextual variables in disparities in the provision of public health, human services and education with an emphasis on Latino women, children, and youth. Emerging scholarship is on inequalities in racial/ethnic women’s health and disparity, knowledge production and public policy. Co-authored books include Health Issues in the Latino Community (2001); Drawing from the Data: Working Effectively with Latino Families (2003), and a co-edited anthology (forthcoming, 2008) entitled Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice. She has published extensively in her field, has served on several editorial boards including the American Journal of Public Health and Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
Affiliate Faculty Research Areas
Coming soon
The following dissertations have been completed:
- Clare Jen, PhD(2008)
Dissertation Title: "Technoscience Race - Nation - Gender Formations in Public Health Discourses - Na Young Lee, PhD (2006)
Dissertation Title: The Construction of U.S. Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Transformation and Resistance - Laura A. Logie, PhD (2008)
Dissertation Title: An Intersectional Gaze at Latinidad, Nation, Gender, and Self-Perceived Health Status - Heather Emily Rellihan, PhD (2007)
Dissertation Title: Ad/ministering Education: Gender, Colonialism, and Christianity in Belize and the Anglophone Caribbean - L. Ayu Saraswati, PhD(2007)
Dissertation Title: The Maze of Gaze: The Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesia. - Sarah Tillery, PhD (2007)
Dissertation Title: Performing Fatness and the Cultural Negotiations of Body Size - Kimberly Williams, PhD (2008)
Dissertation Title: Casualties of Cold War: Toward a Transnational Feminist Ecology of U.S. Russia Policy
The following dissertations are in progress:
- JV Sapinoso - "Quare" to "Kweer": Towards a Queer Asian American Critique"
- Nikki Stewart - "Visual Resistance: Vision, Power, and the Black Girl Mediascape"
- Denise Shupiko - "Russian - Western Anti-Trafficking Networks"
- Barbara Boswell - "Black South African Women Writers: Narrating the Self, Narrating the Nation"