Women’s and Gender Studies Affiliated Faculty

 

The following faculty are important contributors to the success of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, as well as being remarkable scholars and teachers whose expertise in women’s and gender issues places them at the forefront of their individual fields of study.

 

Stacy Alaimo (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is a Professor of English and Distinguished Teaching Professor. She is an internationally recognized scholar who has published many articles and books on feminist theory, gender and environment, and women writers and activists. Her publications include, Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space (Cornell, 2000), the edited collection, with Susan J. Hekman, Material Feminisms (Indiana, 2008), and “Insurgent Vulnerability and the Carbon Footprint of Gender,” which was part of the 2009 “Gendering Climate and Sustainability” conference in Copenhagen. In the 1980s and 1990s she did feminist activism and volunteer work.  From 1994-1998 she served on the UTA Women’s Studies Advisory Board. Professor Alaimo teaches graduate seminars on feminist theory, including seminars on the new materialisms and feminist science studies. Although she currently teaches a wide range of undergraduate courses, many of which focus on the environment, she includes intersectional analyses of gender, race, class,and sexuality in every course that she teaches.

 

Enid Arvidson (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts) is Associate Professor in the School of Urban and Public Affairs, and has a multidisciplinary background (Ph.D., Economics, and Master’s, Regional Planning, both from University of Massachusetts; Bachelor’s, Geography, from University of California Santa Barbara). She specializes at the intersection of these fields, namely in critical urban theory, urban political economy, and the development and restructuring of capitalist cities. Her research and teaching is influenced by what has become known as feminist epistemology, and its implications for urban theory and policy. She served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board from 1998-2007.

 

Melia Belli (Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles) is an Assistant Professor of Asian Art History who has recently joined the UTA Women's and Gender Studies Advisory Board. Her primary area of research is royal Hindu funerary art in northwest India. She has also published and given papers at international conferences on gender in Indian art of various media. These include constructs of masculinity in northwestern Indian men's folk songs and the politically-motivated artistic commissions of Indian queens and contemporary female politicians. Her classes on Asian art frequently consider the roles of women as subjects, patrons, artists, and viewers in artistic traditions that are typically presented as male-dominated.

 

Karabi C. Bezboruah (Ph.D., University of Texas at Dallas) is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA) with a background in economics, law, and management. She teaches courses in the management of the nonprofit sector and public administration. Her research on nonprofit institutions in developing countries focuses on advancing knowledge in the participation by women in nongovernmental organizations and the resulting socio-economic impact on them. Specific areas include women's financial empowerment, social positions, and decision-making, on which she has authored several articles in academic journals and has presented at conferences.

Kimberly Breuer (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is a lecturer in the Department of History and is also the director of the department’s AP distance education effort. She specializes in the conquest era in the Americas, focusing upon the gendered relations between American Indians and Europeans. She is also interested in the pedagogy of large classroom instruction, specifically the convergence of techniques utilized in online, blended, and face-to-face classes and the correlation of active learning to student retention in these settings. Another area of pedagogical interest is the incorporation of the history of science as a method to develop students’ critical thinking skills (reflecting interests she developed in her previous career as an aerospace engineer). She has been a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies advisory board since Fall 2010 and teaches a course on Gender, Sexuality and Social Deviance in Colonial Latin America.

 

Stephanie Cole (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an Associate Professor of History. She specializes in nineteenth-century American social history, specifically the intersections between gender, race, work, and sex. She is the co-editor of several volumes, including Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the US South and Southwest  (Texas A&M, 2004) and Texas Women/American Women: Their Lives and Times  (forthcoming, University of Georgia Press). She has published on domestic violence, interracial marriage, and domestic service, including articles in Social Science History and Ohio Valley History. She frequently served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board from 1996 until 2006, and continues to help plan Women’s History Month. She teaches three courses for Women’s Studies—HIST 3310: US Women’s History to 1880, HIST 3311: US Women’s History since 1880, and HIST 3309: Women and Work in Transatlantic Perspective—as well as a graduate course in US history entitled Gender, Race, Sex and Marriage.

 

Beckey Crow (Ed.D., University of North Texas) is a Clinical Assistant Professor. Dr. Crow has taught for the Department of Kinesiology since 1988. In addition to teaching Women's Health Issues (lecture and on-line), she is teaching Behavioral Dynamics of Exercise & Sport and Swimming. Her interest is in fitness and empowering her students to make healthy choices in every area in their lives. Dr. Crow has served as a Hearing Officer for UTA for several years and is the Aquatics Coordinator for the University.

 

Rebecca Deen (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department. She has been at UT Arlington since earning her doctorate in 1997. She researches US Politics, including the role of women in the political process and the US Presidency. She has published articles in journals such as Women in Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Congress & the Presidency, State and Local Governance Review and Judicature. She has served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board, has taught WOMS 2310 and regularly teaches POLS/WOMS 4316, “Women in the Political Process.”

 

Dana Dunn (Ph.D., University of North Texas) is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Special Advisor to the President. Her areas of teaching and research focus are gender stratification and gender and work. She is the editor (with P. Dubeck) of Workplace/Women's Place (3rd edition, Roxbury Publishers, 2006), and numerous articles and book chapters on women's paid employment. Her current research is focused on women's volunteer work and on women faculty in STEM fields. Dr. Dunn regularly teaches Gender Roles (SOCI 3334) and Gender and Society (SOCI 5330). She was past Director of the Women's Studies Program (1995-1997) and currently serves on the Women's and Gender Studies Advisory Board. 

 

Norma Figueroa (Ph.D., University of Puerto Rico) is an Assistant Professor of Architecture. Figueroa is both an architect and historian who has extensively researched the history of the architecture profession from a gendered perspective. She completed her master studies in architecture at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and as an exchange student at the Architectural Association in London. Figueroa taught at the School of Architecture in Puerto Rice and the Gulf University in Kuwait -- countries where she practiced architecture as well. Her research has been published by several academic journals and presented at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She currently teaches design studio, color in design, and architectural graphics.

Susan Gonzalez-Baker (Bio to be added).

Kevin Gustafson (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean of the Honors College. A specialist in medieval and early modern literature, he has published an edition and translation of the Middle English alliterative poem Cleanness (Broadview, 2010) and articles on a variety of medieval and early modern works. He regularly teaches ENGL/WOMS 3364: Gay and Lesbian Literature, as well as other undergraduate and graduate courses on gender and sexuality in literature.

 

Dustin Harp (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin at Madison) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication where she teaches journalism courses. Harp's research is concerned with issues of power and voice in the public sphere. Her research, mostly from a feminist and critical perspective, focuses on women and marginalized groups, journalism, and digital/social media. Examples of her work include studies examining the marginalized status of female political bloggers, the discursive constructions of Sarah Palin, and rape discourse in the news. Her book, Desperately Seeking Women Readers: Newspapers and the Construction of a Female Readership (Lexington, 2007), argues that historically news organizations perceived men as citizens while constructing women as consumers. Harp previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin. At UTA, she is developing a new course on Race, Gender, and Media.

Susan Hekman (Ph.D., University of Washingon) is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of Graduate Humanities. She has published in the methodology of the social sciences and feminist theory. Beginning with Gender and Knowledge in 1990, she has published five additional books in feminist theory: Moral Voices/Moral Selves, The Future of Differences: Truth and Method in Feminist Theory, Private Selves, Public Identities: Toward a Theory of Identity Politics, the collection co-edited with Stacy Alaimo, Material Feminisms, and The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures. She has taught introduction to Women’s Studies, Feminist Political Thought, and Topics in Gender Studies. She has served on the Women’s Studies Advisory periodically since its creation.

 

Desirée Henderson (Ph.D., University of California San Diego) is currently the Director of the Women’s & Gender Studies program, as well as an Associate Professor of English. She specializes in early American literature and women writers and is the author of Grief and Genre in American Literature, 1790-1870 (Ashgate, 2011), as well as essays published in Early American Literature, Legacy, and the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. She served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board from 2006-2010 and frequently teaches ENGL 3370: Women in Literature, as well as upper-division and graduate courses on women writers and gender issues in literature.

 

Adrienne E. Hyle (Ph.D., Kansas State University) is Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Partnerships and International Programs. She researches/writes in the areas of leadership, and K-12 and higher education faculty and gender issues, and has authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in addition to co-authored books exploring the socialization of women faculty (From girls in their elements to women in science: Rethinking socialization through memory-work), international uses of the research method memory-work (Dissecting the mundane: International perspectives on memory-work), and women leaders in higher education (Women at the top: What women university and college presidents say about effective leadership). Currently, the developmental levels of gender awareness in the discipline of leadership focus her work. Additional interest in educational globalization have grown from her work with international doctoral cohort programs, two in Thailand and one each in the United Kingdom and Belize.

 

Penelope Ingram (Ph.D., University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia) is Associate Professor of English. A specialist in feminist and postcolonial theory, Ingram is the author of The Signifying Body: Toward an Ethics of Sexual and Racial Difference (SUNY Press, 2008). She has published articles in feminist review, Cultural Critique, New Literary History, Philosophy and Literature, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a book that revisits the question of the role of the female spectator in film. She teaches Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies (WOMS 2310), as well as ENGL 4340: Literature by Women and graduate courses in feminist theory and criticism.

 

Heather Jacobson (Ph.D. Brandeis University) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. She specializes in the sociology of the family and qualitative research methods. She is the author of Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference (Vanderbilt, 2008), as well as chapters and articles on various aspects of the contemporary American family. She served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board from 2007-2009. She teaches several classes, including Sociology of the Family, that are cross-listed with Women's Studies.

 

Ritu G. Khanduri (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is a cultural anthropologist with research specializations in media, globalization, history and science in the contexts of feminist ethnography, colonial and contemporary India and the South Asian diaspora. She has recently completed her manuscript, "Caricaturing Culture in India" and authored articles in Contemporary South Asia (in-press), Visual Anthropology (in-press), Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and History and Anthropology. She serves on the College of Liberal Arts Scholarship Committee and is a columnist for the American Anthropological Association's monthly publication, Anthropology News Online. Her teaching roster include undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropological theory, South Asia and Visual Anthropology. She is a current member of the Women’s & Gender Studies Advisory Board.

 

Ashley Miller (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor of English. A specialist in Romantic and Victorian literature and culture, she has published essays in Studies in Romanticism, Literature Compass, and Nineteenth Century Gender Studies. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on media, science, and the body in nineteenth-century Britain. Questions of gender are central to teaching (at the undergraduate as well as the graduate level), ranging from the gendering of insanity to the relationship of gender and genre.

Jerry Rodnitzky (Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) is a Professor in the Department of History. He was a member of the first Women's Studies Committee at UTA in the 1970s, the first Director of Teaching of Women's Studies, and taught the first "History of American Women" course at UTA. He is the author of Feminist Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of a Feminist Counterculture (1999) and a number of articles on feminist issues, including an article titled "Janis Joplin: The Hippie Blues Singer as Feminist Heroine." His major area of teaching and research is 20th-Century American Popular Culture, particularly political activism since 1960.

Alicia Rita Rueda-Acedo (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and Translation. She is a journalist and translator, and received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Her areas of specialty are Contemporary Spanish and Mexican Literatures, particularly women’s authors, as well as the relations between Literature and Journalism and Literature and History. She has published in journals such as Romance Notes and Hispania, and is the author of El periodismo literario de Elena Poniatowska y Rosa Montero (Purdue University Press, forthcoming). She was a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies Advisory Board from 2009 to 2012 and has taught WOMS 4327: Women in Hispanic Literature, and other graduate and undergraduate courses on Spanish women authors.

 

Beth Anne Shelton (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Professor of Sociology. Her primary areas of research include gender, work and family. Her published work has focused primarily on the relationship between work and family, with emphasis on the household division of labor between women and men and the implications of this division of labor for women’s employment and earnings. In a current project, she has been exploring women’s participation in community organizations and how social scientists can best understand this unpaid community work. Most recently, she has focused her work on the unpaid work done by women in schools and how this impacts them, their children and the larger community. Dr. Shelton served as the Director of the UTA Women’s Studies Program from 1997 to 2010.

 

Antoinette Sol (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles) is Associate Professor of French and Acting Chair of the Department of Modern Languages. Her research interests are 18th century women writers, both English and French, in the long 18th century, translation studies, and intertextuality. She is the author of Textual Promiscuities: Critical Rewriting in the Eighteenth Century (Bucknell, 2003) on Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Frances Burney and Choderlos de Laclos, as well as editor of Le Mulatre. Autrement memes (Harmattan, 2009) and (with Sarah Davies Cordova) Le Negre. Autrement mêmes (Harmattan, 2011). She has served on the Women’s Studies Advisory Board and teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on French and Caribbean women writers.

Amy Speier (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Her research focuses on different types of tourism in the Czech Republic. Over the last few years, she has been conducting ethnographic research on the cross-border reproductive care sought out by North Americans in the Czech Republic. Her attention is focused on the ways in which patient travelers are making decisions to travel abroad for care, the networks that are established between North American patient travelers, and their experiences in Czech clinics. Speier teaches Global Cultures and Medical Anthropology, both of which spend a portion of time considering the relationship between culture, gender, and health, as well as the course "Sex, Gender, and Culture."

Sonja Stephenson Watson (Ph.D., University of Tennessee-Knoxville) is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature in 2005 and completed a Postdoctoral fellowship in African and African American Studies at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her areas of specialty are contemporary Latin American literature, Hispanic Caribbean literature, and the Afro Hispanic historical novel. Dr. Watson has published articles in the Afro-Hispanic Review, Cincinnati Romance Review, the College Language Association Journal and the Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies Journal on Afro Hispanic Identity.

 

(Updated Jan. 2013)