Shahla Talebi
Fellow, Sociocultural Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Shahla Talebi is a scholar of religions, 2006 Newcombe Fellow, and Associate Professor at Arizona State University. A native of Iran, she lived in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.
Shahla Talebi
Associate Professor, Arizona State University
Shahla Talebi is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in sociocultural anthropology and her master’s and doctoral degrees also in anthropology from Columbia University. Currently, she is on the faculty of religious studies and the anthropology of religion of the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her book,Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran (2011, Stanford University Press), won the 2011 Outstanding Academic Title Award given by Choice Magazine, and was the co-winner (Gold Medal) of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards, among other awards.. Dr. Talebi’s work has also appeared in various academic journals, including Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and edited books. Her article on revolutions in recent Iranian history was published in the Oxford Handbook series in July 2018. She was the 2017-2018 Anthony E. Kaye fellow at National Humanities Center fellow where she worked on her book about contested memories of martyrdom in post-revolutionary Iran
Working Group Affiliation
Amina Tawasil
Fellow, Anthropology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Amina Tawasil's current research focus is on the intersection of women and Islamic education. With the support of the International and Transcultural Studies program at Teachers College, Columbia University, in the summer of 2008 she traveled to Tehran, Iran to conduct a two-month pilot study on the education of seminarian women in Iran, which became the main focus of her dissertation research.
Amina Tawasil
Lecturer of Anthropology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Amina Tawasil's current research focus is on the intersection of women and Islamic education. With the support of the International and Transcultural Studies program at Teachers College, Columbia University, in the summer of 2008 she traveled to Tehran, Iran to conduct a two-month pilot study on the education of seminarian women in Iran, which became the main focus of her dissertation research. From September 2010 to December 2011, with the support of the Earth Institute Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4), and the Middle East Institute, Columbia University, she conducted ethnographic research on seminarian women (zanan-e howzeh) in Tehran. And finally, from the generous support of the American Association of University Women she has completed her dissertation entitled, "The Howzevi (seminarian) Women of Iran: Constituting and Reconstituting Paths". She has degrees in anthropology and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and was the 2013 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, Middle East North African Studies program.
Working Group Affiliation
Alexei "Lex" Taylor
Alexei “Lex” Taylor (Independent) is an award-winning chef, cookbook author, TV personality, and explorer. Through BBQ, bushcraft, leather craft, knife making, and foraging, Lex explores traditional knowledge, skills, and how the understanding of these principles forges a strong bond and appreciation for the natural world. As a chef, he hosts private, forest-table tasting menus in alternative spaces such as in the forest, barns, and even abandoned castles. He is the author of Grill Fire (Sterling Epicure 2016) and The Unofficial Bridgerton Cookbook (Simon & Shuster, 2021). He has made several appearances on Food Network, Esquire, and Sponsored Media Tours. As an explorer, Lex has travelled extensively throughout the world, learning and working with cultures who still rely on ancestral knowledge for survival. From the Sahara and Atacama deserts, to the jungles of Central America, West Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and as far north as Inuit hunting villages on Baffin Island, his quest is not just to learn but to share that knowledge back home through field guides, workshops, and lectures with the outdoor company, Fjällräven (Field guide and spokesman since 2016).
Diana Taylor
Fellow, Performance and Politics, New York University
Diana Taylor is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at NYU. She is the author of Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (1991), which won the Best Book Award given by New England Council on Latin American Studies and Honorable Mention in the Joe E. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama; of Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, Duke U.P., 1997; and The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke U.P., 2003), which won the ATHE Research Award in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy and the Modern Language Association Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for the best book in Latin American and Spanish Literatures and Culture (2004).
Diana Taylor
University Professor, Performance Studies and Spanish and Founding Director, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU
Diana Taylor is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at NYU. She is the author of Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (1991), which won the Best Book Award given by New England Council on Latin American Studies and Honorable Mention in the Joe E. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama; of Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, Duke U.P., 1997; and The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke U.P., 2003), which won the ATHE Research Award in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy and the Modern Language Association Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for the best book in Latin American and Spanish Literatures and Culture (2004). The Archive and the Repertoire has been translated into Portuguese by Eliana Lourenço de Lima Reis (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012) and Spanish by Anabelle Contreras (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2015.) Her Acciones de memoria: Performance, historia, y trauma, was published in Peru by Fondo Editorial de la Asamblea Nacional de Rectores (2012). Performance, first published in Spanish in Buenos Aires (Asuntos Impresos, 2012), was revised and published in English with Duke U.P. 2016, and in Polish (Performans, Universitas, 2018). ‘PerformancePerformance’ and ‘퍼포먼스퍼포먼스’. Soeul: Rasun Press, is forthcoming, 2021. Performance, politica e memoria culturale, edited by Fabrizio Deriu (Rome: Editoriale Artemide) came out in 2019. ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence, Duke University Press 2020, ¡Presente! La política de la presencia! translated into Spanish by Ana Stevenson, Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Chile), 2021,¡Presente!, A Política da Presença, translated into Portuguese by Adelaine La Guardia, Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, forthcoming 2022.
She is co-editor of Estudios avanzados de Performance (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011), Stages of Conflict: A Reader in Latin American Theatre and Performance (Michigan U.P., 2008), Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (Duke U.P.,2004), Defiant Acts/Actos Desafiantes: Four Plays by Diana Raznovich (Bucknell U. P., 2002), (Duke U.P., 1994), and The Politics of Motherhood: Activists from Left to Right, (University Press of New England, 1997). She has edited five volumes of critical essays on Latin American, Latino, and Spanish playwrights, and several digital books such as What is Performance Studies (co-edited with Marcos Steuernagle) and Dancing with the Zapatistas (Duke U.P. 2016) Her articles on Latin American and Latino performance have appeared in journals such as PMLA, Profession, Critical Inquiry, TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, e-misférica, Performing Arts Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, Estreno, Gestos, Signs, MLQ and other scholarly journals. She has also been invited to participate in discussions on the role of new technologies in the arts and humanities in important conferences and commissions in the Americas (i.e. ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure).
Taylor was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2013-14, and a Research Fellowship at the Institut d’Etudes Avancée de Paris, 2016-2017. She was President of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in 2017. Diana Taylor is Founder and Past Director, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, funded by the Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers and Henry Luce Foundations. In 2018, Diana Taylor was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. . In 2021 she was awarded the Edwin Booth Award for “outstanding contribution to the NYC theatre community, and to promote integration of professional and academic theatre.”
Working Group Affiliation
Women Mobilizing Memory, Project Director
Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project, Project Director
Aylin Tekiner
Fellow, Sculpture Studies, Hacettepe University Fine Arts
Aylin Tekiner (b. 1978, Nevsehir, Turkey) is a New York/Istanbul based artist and activist. She undertook her B.A. and M.A. at Hacettepe University Fine Arts, Sculpture Department in Ankara, Turkey. In 2008 she received her PhD at Ankara University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Cultural Fundamentals of Education Department. Her book "Ataturk Statues: Cult, Esthetics, and Politics" evolved from her PhD thesis and was published by Iletisim Yayinlari (Turkey) in 2010. Aylin has had solo shows and participated in the group exhibitions in Turkey and New York.
Aylin Tekiner
Artist
Aylin Tekiner (b. 1978, Nevsehir, Turkey) is a New York/Istanbul based artist and activist. She undertook her B.A. and M.A. at Hacettepe University Fine Arts, Sculpture Department in Ankara, Turkey. In 2008 she received her PhD at Ankara University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Cultural Fundamentals of Education Department. Her book "Ataturk Statues: Cult, Esthetics, and Politics" evolved from her PhD thesis and was published by Iletisim Yayinlari (Turkey) in 2010. Aylin has had solo shows and participated in the group exhibitions in Turkey and New York. She taught New Media, Art, and Activism at Long Island University, New York. She is a member of Collective Memory Platform, which was formed by the families of 28 victims of the political murders in modern Turkey.
Working Group Affiliation
Tess Skadegård Thorsen
Tess Skadegård Thorsen
Tess Skadegård Thorsen, PhD (she/her/hers), is a keynote speaker, researcher, educator, and consultant, specialized in representation in tech, media, and film practices. A former founding editor of the Danish decolonial journal, Marronage, and former managing editor of the Danish journal for gender research, Tess was awarded the 2022 Kraka Award for Danish gender research. Her research has been published internationally including in 'Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice & Power' and 'Black Film British Cinema II'.
Miriam Ticktin
Professor, Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Miriam Ticktin is Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research in the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity: she has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process.
Miriam Ticktin
Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center.
Miriam Ticktin is Associate Professor of Anthropology in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She publishes widely on topics such as immigration, humanitarianism, and racial and gendered inequalities. Most notably, she is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France, and co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. She is currently finishing a book on, and against, racial innocence.
Her research in the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity: she has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process.
Working Group Affiliations
Zeynep Türkyılmaz
Fellow, History, Dartmouth College
Zeynep Türkyılmaz received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009. Her dissertation, "Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire," is based on intensive research conducted in Ottoman, British, and several American missionary archives. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral at UNC-Chapel Hill between 2009-2010 and Europe in the Middle East/ The Middle East in Europe Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin between 2010-2011.
Zeynep Türkyılmaz
Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Zeynep Türkyılmaz received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009. Her dissertation, "Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire," is based on intensive research conducted in Ottoman, British, and several American missionary archives. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral at UNC-Chapel Hill between 2009-2010 and Europe in the Middle East/ The Middle East in Europe Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin between 2010-2011. She joined the Darmouth College as an assistant professor of history in 2011.
Her research and teaching interests include state-formation, gender, nationalism, religion with a focus on heterodoxy and missionary work in the Middle East from 1800 to the present.
Working Group Affiliation
Dennis Tyler
Fellow, English, Fordham University
Dennis Tyler is Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University. He has published work on African American literature, disability studies, and popular culture. He is the recipient of the 2015-16 Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. His current book project, Disability of Color, examines how disablement as experience and as discourse has shaped the racial subjecthood of African Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Dennis Tyler
English, Fordham University
Dennis Tyler is Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University. He has published work on African American literature, disability studies, and popular culture. He is the recipient of the 2015-16 Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. His current book project, Disability of Color, examines how disablement as experience and as discourse has shaped the racial subjecthood of African Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Professor Tyler's research and teaching Interests include: African American literature; Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century American literature; disability studies; critical race theory; cultural studies.
He is a graduate of Stanford University (BA) and University of California, Los Angeles (PhD).
Working Group Affiliation
Elena Tzelepis
Fellow, Philosophy, New School for Social Research
Elena Tzelepis has completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. She works on social and political philosophy. She has taught at Columbia University and held visiting positions at the American University in Cairo and the University of Aegean, Greece.
Elena Tzelepis
Center for Advanced Study, Sophia
Elena Tzelepis has completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. She works on social and political philosophy. She has taught at Columbia University and held visiting positions at the American University in Cairo and the University of Aegean, Greece.
Elena Tzelepis has completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. She works on social and political philosophy. She has taught at Columbia University and held visiting positions at the American University in Cairo and the University of Aegean, Greece.
Luiz Fernando Vianna
Fellow, Web Radio, Instituto Moreira Salles
Luiz Fernando Vianna is a journalist. He has written for O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo and other venues. He is the author of books on popular music, and coordinates the Batuta Radio since 2013.
Luiz Fernando Vianna
Luiz Fernando Vianna is a journalist. He has written for O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo and other venues. He is the author of books on popular music, and coordinates the Batuta Radio since 2013.
Rádio Batuta is the web radio of Instituto Moreira Salles. It was created in 2010 to promote the IMS recordings collection and to perform special series, such as those dedicated to Noel Rosa and João Gilberto. Today it has a 24-hour program of Brazilian music, documentaries, interviews in their studios and regular attractions that include classical music and jazz.
The Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), founded in 1992 with its own resources from the Moreira Salles family, currently has three headquarters: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Poços de Caldas (MG). The IMS houses and lends collections of photography, music, literature and iconography. In music, the IMS owns the largest collection of 78 rpm records in Brazil, with over 50,000 records. Among several other activities, it develops Social Action projects and has a web radio, Radio Batuta.
Working Group Affiliation
Darshan Vigneswaran
Fellow, Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam
Darshan Vigneswaran is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Centre for Urban Studies , University of Amsterdam. He is also a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, WITS University. In 2008, he was a British Academy Fellow at the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford where he continues to serve as the reviews editor on the working paper series.
Darshan Vigneswaran
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam
Darshan Vigneswaran is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Centre for Urban Studies , University of Amsterdam. He is also a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, WITS University. In 2008, he was a British Academy Fellow at the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford where he continues to serve as the reviews editor on the working paper series. From 2010-12 he was a Research Fellow at Max Planck where he co-coordinates an international working group on Public Space and Diversity.
His research aims to understand and explain deep changes in the structure of international politics. His work is primarily interested in how the state's claim to territory has been reconfigured in response to changing patterns of human mobility. Since completing his doctoral studies at Monash in 2006, he has authored Territory, Migration and the Evolution of the International System (2013), co-edited Slavery, Migration and Contemporary Bondage in Africa (2013) and Mobility Makes States (forthcoming 2014), and published peer-reviewed articles in journals including Political Geography, Environment & Planning, Review of International Studies, and Policing & Society. Darshan has also provided expert consultation for INTERPOL, the EU and the South African Police Service and comment for Reuters, the BBC, and the New York Times. His profile and publications can be found at academia.edu and google scholar
Paromita Vohra
Fellow, Filmmaker, British Council-Saregama India Screenwriting Workshop 2008
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, writer and curator whose work has focuses on urban life, popular culture, gender, politics and art. Her films have been widely screened in festivals, galleries and popular screening spaces, besides being included in university syllabi around the world.
Paromita Vohra
Filmmaker
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, writer and curator whose work has focuses on urban life, popular culture, gender, politics and art. Her films have been widely screened in festivals, galleries and popular screening spaces, besides being included in university syllabi around the world.
Her films as director are Partners in Crime (2011), a documentary on culture, markets and the arts Morality TV and the Loving Jehad: A Thrilling Tale (2007), a documentary on tabloid TV news and moral policing (Best Short Documentary, Int.Video Fest, Trivandrum), Q2P,(2006) a film on toilets and the city (Best Documentary IFFLA and Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart); Where’s Sandra?(2005), a playful exploration of stereotypes of Catholic girls from a Bombay suburb; Work In Progress (2004) an impressionistic portrait of the World Social Forum held in Mumbai; Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City,(2004), a short film which explores Bombay’s cosmopolitan self image through land and food politics, which won an award for mixing fiction and non-fiction at the Digital Film Festival, Un-limited Girls (2002), a personal take on engagements with feminism in urban India (Feminist News Award, Women’s Film Festival in Seoul; Best Film Award, Aaina Film Festival, India); A Short Film About Time (2000), a fiction short about the funny-sad relationship between a young woman with a broken heart, her psychotherapist and his watch;A Woman’s Place,(1999) an hour-length documentary for PBS looking at how women in India, South Africa and the USA negotiate the space between law and custom; andAnnapurna (1995), about a women food worker’s cooperative in Bombay’s textile mill area.
Retrospectives of her work have been held at the Lille 3000 (2006) festival and Persistence/Resistance (2007), a festival of political documentary in India. Her films have also been screened at the Tate Modern and will feature in an upcoming exhibition at the Wellcome Art Gallery in London.
Her films as writer are the internationally released feature Khamosh Pani/Silent Waters directed by Sabiha Sumar(Golden Leopard, Locarno Film Festival, 2003, Best Screenplay, Kara Film Festival, 2003), the documentaries A Few Things I Know About Her (Silver Conch, Mumbai International Film Festival 2002), If You Pause: In a Museum of Craft, The Stuntmen of Bollywood and the faux-documentary Skin Deep (dir: Reena Mohan).
Her writings, fiction and non-fiction have been included in various anthologies, among them Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai, Electric Feather: the Tranquebar Book of Erotica, Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays, Dreaming Different: New Feminist Writings from Around the World, Signs (Spring 209) and First Proof: Penguin New Writing from India. She contributes to several publications including Outlook, India Today, Tehelka, Time Out,Mumbai and currently writes a popular column in Sunday Mid-day a Mumbai newspaper.
She was principal mentor of the British Council-Saregama India Screenwriting Workshop 2008 and teaches writing for film as visiting faculty in numerous universities in India and abroad.
As part of A Woman’s Place project – a collective of women using media for social change- she has worked extensively with young people through workshops focusing on creativity, politics and media, especially the Girls Media Group, a media exchange project between teen girls in New York and Mumbai. As part of the artist’s collective @Culture she has been engaged with making culture an important political part of the World Social Forum process.
In the past few years she has been curating documentary and alternative film programs from time to time, among them a program on films about the city for the National Gallery of Modern Art (2002) and a program of films from Films Division, the government documentary producer, at the International Video Festival of Trivandrum (2010) as well as a program on the history of the Indian Music video for the Film South Asia festival in Kathmandu (2007).
Leti Volpp
Fellow, Law in Access to Justice, University of California, Berkeley Law
Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, University of California, Berkeley Law
Leti Volpp
Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, University of California, Berkeley Law
Leti Volpp is Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Center for Race and Gender at University of California Berkeley Boalt School of Law. Volpp, is scholar of both law and the humanities, writes about citizenship, migration, culture and identity. Her most recent publications include “Immigrants Outside the Law: President Obama, Discretionary Executive Power, and Regime Change” in Critical Analysis of Law(2016), “The Indigenous As Alien” in the UC Irvine Law Review (2015), “Saving Muslim Women” in Public Books (2015), “Civility and the Undocumented Alien” in Civility, Legality, and Justice in America (Austin Sarat, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2014), “The Boston Bombers” in Fordham Law Review (2014), “Imaginings of Space in Immigration Law” in Law, Culture and the Humanities (2012), the edited symposium issue “Denaturalizing Citizenship: A Symposium on Linda Bosniak’s The Citizen and the Alien and Ayelet Shachar’s The Birthright Lottery” in Issues in Legal Scholarship (2011), and “Framing Cultural Difference: Immigrant Women and Discourses of Tradition” in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (2011). She is the editor of Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders (with Mary Dudziak) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). She is also the author of “The Culture of Citizenship” in Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2007), “The Citizen and the Terrorist” in UCLA Law Review (2002),“Feminism versus Multiculturalism” in the Columbia Law Review(2001), and many other articles.
Working Group Affiliation
David Wasserman
Fellow, Ethics, Yeshiva University
David Wasserman is Director of Research at the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University. He oversees the research and scholarly activities of the Center with an emphasis on the philosophical aspects of bioethics, health care ethics, and disability studies. His current projects focus on prenatal selection and parental role-morality. He publishes widely on these and other topics. At Yeshiva University, Mr. Wasserman presents his research at faculty seminars and a variety of student events. He also presents his work at a wide range of national and international conferences.
David Wasserman
Director of Research, Center for Ethics, Yeshiva University
David Wasserman is Director of Research at the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University. He oversees the research and scholarly activities of the Center with an emphasis on the philosophical aspects of bioethics, health care ethics, and disability studies. His current projects focus on prenatal selection and parental role-morality. He publishes widely on these and other topics. At Yeshiva University, Mr. Wasserman presents his research at faculty seminars and a variety of student events. He also presents his work at a wide range of national and international conferences. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Wasserman was a Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He has a J.D. from the University of Michigan (Magna Cum Laude), an M.A. in psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in philosophy from Yale University.
Laura Wexler
Fellow, Women’s and Gender Studies, Yale University
Laura Wexler is co-Principal Investigator of the Women, Religion and Globalization project. She is the author of Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U. S. Imperialism (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and Pregnant Pictures (Routledge, 2000), co-authored with Sandra Matthews. Tender Violence was awarded the 2001 annual Joan Kelley Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in women’s history and/or feminist theory.
Laura Wexler
Professor of American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, Yale University
Laura Wexler is co-Principal Investigator of the Women, Religion and Globalization project. She is the author of Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U. S. Imperialism (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and Pregnant Pictures (Routledge, 2000), co-authored with Sandra Matthews. Tender Violence was awarded the 2001 annual Joan Kelley Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in women’s history and/or feminist theory. She also co-edited, along with Laura Frost, Amy Hungerford and John MacKay, the volume Interpretation and the Holocaust, a special issue of the Yale Journal of Criticism. Professor Wexler’s many other publications include a recent essay entitled “’Laughing Ben’” on ‘The Old Plantation’,” in Photography and Race Forum, edited by Elizabeth Abel and Leigh Raiford, in English Language Notes 44.2 (Fall/Winter 2006); and a recent chapter entitled “The Fair Ensemble: Kate Chopin in St. Louis in 1904,” in Haunted by Empire; Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, edited by Ann Laura Stoler (Duke University Press, 2006). Her current research centers on visual representations of the gendered politics of race in the United States and includes forthcoming studies of the writer Kate Chopin and the photographers Diane Arbus and Roman Vishniac. She co-founded, and for the past eight years has directed, the Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale. She has served on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, Genders, and the Yale Journal of Criticism. She is a member of the Steering Committee and of the Advisory Council of the Women Faculty Forum, and serves on the American Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, International Affairs, and Judaic Studies Councils.
Working Group Affiliations
Engendering the Archive, Project Director
Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project, Project Director
Sarah Wilcox
Fellow, Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Wilcox is Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College. She specializes in medical sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge, gender and sexuality, and the mass media. Her current research focuses on embodiment and biological knowledge, particularly how lay and expert knowledge intersect and when and how biological ideas become salient in embodied experience, personal identities, and popular culture.
Sarah Wilcox
Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Wilcox is Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College. She specializes in medical sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge, gender and sexuality, and the mass media. Her current research focuses on embodiment and biological knowledge, particularly how lay and expert knowledge intersect and when and how biological ideas become salient in embodied experience, personal identities, and popular culture. She teaches courses on embodiment, medical technologies, health policy and health activism, gender and mass media, and she is developing a new course in disability studies.
Working Group Affiliation
Deborah Willis
Fellow, Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Deb Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture.
Deborah Willis
University Professor and Chair of Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Deb Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture. Exhibitions of her work include: A Sense of Place, Frick, University of Pittsburgh, 2005; Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin, 2003; Embracing Eatonville, Light Works, Syracuse, NY, 2003-4; HairStories, Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ 2003-4; The Comforts of Home, Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1999; Re/Righting History: Counternarratives by Contemporary African-American Artists, Katonah Museum of Art, 1999; Memorable Histories and Historic Memories, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1998; Cultural Baggage, Rice University, Houston, TX, 1995. Her curated Exhibitions include: Engulfed by Katrina: Photographs before and After the Storm, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Imagining Families—Images and Voices and Reflections in Black. Other notable projects include The Black Female Body A Photographic History with Carla Williams (Temple University Press, Philadephia, 2002); A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. DuBois and the Photographs from the Paris Exposition (Amistad Press, 2003); Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers - 1840 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton); Visual Journal: Photography in Harlem and DC in the Thirties and Forties (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1996); Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (The New Press, New York, NY, 1994); and VANDERZEE: The Portraits of James VanDerZee (Harry Abrams Publishing, New York, NY, 1993). She was a MacArthur, Guggenheim, Richard D.Cohen, Hutchins Center and Harvard University Fellow. She is the author of Posing Beauty in African American Culture, among many other books.
Penny Wolfson
Fellow, Narrative Medicine Program, Columbia University
Penny Wolfson won a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing in 2001 for an essay in The Atlantic Monthly called “Moonrise,” which has since been anthologized in several collections, including Best American Essays. Her memoir, Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity and Muscular Dystrophy, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003.
Penny Wolfson
Sarah Lawrence College; Narrative Medicine Program, Columbia University
Penny Wolfson won a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing in 2001 for an essay in The Atlantic Monthly called “Moonrise,” which has since been anthologized in several collections, including Best American Essays. Her memoir, Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity and Muscular Dystrophy, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003. Her writing on disability has also appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Exceptional Parent, and other publications, and is included in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies. She has a BA and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she taught nonfiction writing from 2001 to 2010. She has also taught in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia, and is now working on a paper on the history of wheelchairs.
Autumn Womack
Fellow, English, University of Pittsburgh
Autumn Womack received her PhD from Columbia University where her research focused on 19th and early twentieth century African American literary culture. At Columbia she developed a rich interest in archival practices, visual studies, black print culture, and social science.
Autumn Womack
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh
Autumn Womack received her PhD from Columbia University where her research focused on 19th and early twentieth century African American literary culture. At Columbia she developed a rich interest in archival practices, visual studies, black print culture, and social science. As an Assistant Professor in The University of Pittsburgh's English Department, Autumn continues to explore these topics in her current book project, Social Document Fictions, which uncovers a small genre of literature published between 1890 and 1928, looking in particular at writers deployed formally experimental and generically hybrid texts to advance social scientific epistemologies that uncover archives and social bodies that remain opaque to normative visual techniques. Autumn has taught classes in 19th and 20th century African American literature, Post-bellum "experimental" fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, visual culture, as well as single author seminars on Toni Morrison (Spring 2014). She looks forward to developing courses in Black visual culture, African American Literary Theory, Social Science and Literature, antebellum performance culture, and African American periodicals.
