Carrie N. Baker ( Summer 2001)
Dissertation: Sex, Power, and Politics: The Origins of Sexual Harassment Policy in the United States
Director, Mary E. Odem

Carrie is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. Currently on leave from Berry College, in Mt. Berry, Georgia, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and was Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of Women’s Studies. Carrie holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and a J.D. and Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. 

While in law school, Carrie was Editor in Chief of the Emory Law Journal and later served as a law clerk to United States District Court Judge Marvin Shoob in Atlanta, Georgia.  Her primary areas of research are women’s legal history, gender and public policy, and women’s social movements.  She has published on sexual harassment, domestic violence, and media representations of women. Her work has been published in Feminist Studies, Women in Politics, The Journal of Women’s History, NWSA Journal, The Journal of Law and Inequality, Emory Law Journal, and the online journal Women and Social Movements in the United States. Carrie’s book The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment in the United States was published by Cambridge University Press in December of 2007.

Liliane Kshensky Baxter (Spring 2002)
Dissertation: To Heal and Recreate Ourselves: Shame, the Holocaust, and Nonviolence
Director, James W. Fowler

Maria R. Bevacqua (Spring 1997)
Dissertation: Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminist Consciousness and the Politics of Sexual Assault
Director, Karen O'Connor

Virginia Bonner (Spring 2003)
Dissertation: Cinematic Caesuras: Experimental Documentary and the Politics of Form in Left Bank Films by Resnais, Marker, Varda
Director, Elissa Marder

Corinn Columpar (Fall 2002)
Dissertation: Hybridity as Spectacle: Borders and Their Transgression in Contemporary Cinema
Director, Matthew Bernstein

Prior to pursuing her doctoral work, Corinn earned her BA in Economics from Yale University. She is currently Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies (2003-present) at the University of Toronto.

Forthcoming in 2009 from Wayne State University Press is (Un)Making the Cut: Feminism, Filmmaking, Fluidity, anthology co-edited with Sophie Mayer and dedicated to the flows (between different media, venues, geographies, production processes, etc.) associated with feminist cultural production.  Corinn is currently finishing work on Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film, a single-author book on contemporary cinematic representations of aboriginality in four Anglophone settler societies: the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Becca Cragin (Fall 2002)
Dissertation: Speaking the Self: Lesbian and Gay Viewers of Television Talk Shows
Director, Julie Abraham

Laura Kay Crawley (Spring 2003)
Dissertation: Roots of Continuity or Casualties of Change? Mothers in Twentieth Century Southern Women's Fiction
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Laura is a marketing consultant and business developer for Crane MetaMarketing (www.cranebrandwork.com), a firm that works with non-profits across the country.

More than 15 years' experience working in various academic and administrative settings has contributed to Laura’s broad understanding of the trends and issues prevalent in the ever-changing non-profit and education markets. Laura has taught college humanities courses and was a founding editor of The Journal of The Historical Society.

Susan Grace Cumings (Summer 2001)
Dissertation: Performing Selves: Contemporary Women's Autobioexpression
Directors, Rebecca S. Chopp and Cristine M. Levenduski

Alicia C. Decker (Summer 2007)
Dissertation: Beyond the Barrel: Women, Gender and Military Rule in Idi Amin's Uganda, 1971-1979
Directors, Pamela Scully and Julie Shayne

Alicia received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in Gender Studies from Makerere University (Gender Studies) and an MA in Women’s Studies.  She is currently Assistant Professor of African History and Women's Studies, Purdue University.

Alicia is currently working on the manuscript for Beyond the Barrel: Gender, Power, and Militarism in Idi Amin’s Uganda, 1971-1979. Other publications inlcude; “Femininity, Morality and Resistance: Ugandan Women’s Experiences under Idi Amin’s Dictatorship,” in Interdisciplinary Transnational Feminist Collection, edited by Priya Jha and Nandini Bhattacharya (forthcoming) and “Gender, Feminism, and African Liberation in the Twentieth Century” in Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution in World History, edited by Immanuel Ness and Geoffroy de Laforcade (Blackwell Publishers, forthcoming).

Lisa Diedrich (Summer 2001)
Dissertation: Treatments: Negotiating Bodies, Language, and Death in Illness Narratives
Director, Cindy Patton

Lisa is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at Stony Brook University. She is the author of Treatments: Language, Politics, and the Culture of Illness (Minnesota, 2007) and co-editor (with Victoria Hesford) of Feminist Time Against Nation Time (Lexington, 2008). She is currently working on a book called A Prehistory of AIDS: Doing Health and Illness, 1960-1985.

Patricia L. Duncan (Spring 2000)
Dissertation: A History of Un/Saying: Silences, Memory, and Historiography in Asian American Women's Narratives
Director, Julie Abraham

Patti is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Oregon State University, where she specializes in transnational feminist theories and movements, women of color in the U.S., and Asian and Asian Pacific American women’s writings and experiences. She received her B.A. from Vassar College in 1992, and her Ph.D. from the Institute for Women’s Studies at Emory University in 2000.

Patti is the author of Tell This Silence: Asian American Women Writers and the Politics of Speech (University of Iowa Press, 2004), and numerous articles about women of color, feminist pedagogy, and transnational feminisms. Her current research focuses on the long terms effects of militarism and war on women and gender in Asia, and gendered forms of violence in transnational contexts. In Fall 2004, Patti was a Visiting Researcher at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea. In 2007, she taught a seminar in Cuernavaca, Mexico on the topic of Gender, Migration, and Globalization. And in Fall 2008, she was a faculty member on Semester at Sea, traveling and teaching in twelve countries. Patti is a former recipient of grants/fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, and the National Women’s Studies Association.

Elizabeth Engelhardt (Spring 1999)
Dissertation: Southern Appalachian Ecological Literature and Feminism: Women Authors Address the Land, 1890 1910
Director, Frances Smith Foster

Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin,  Elizabeth’s scholarly interests include feminist theories, food studies, ecological literature and culture, and intersections of race, class, and gender in American literature and society. Her newest research looks at food and foodways in the US South.

Elizabeth is the author of The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature, which explores late nineteenth and early twentieth century activism and writing in an American region. She is the editor of the republished edition of Grace MacGowan Cooke’s The Power and the Glory, a 1910 novel about cotton mill culture, automobiles, and women’s communities. Her book Beyond Hill and Hollow is the first anthology of scholarship on Appalachian Women’s Studies. Forthcoming in 2009 from the University of Texas Press is a collaborative book she has written with eleven of her graduate students on Central Texas barbecue culture—possibly the most feminist project she has done, on what seems like the least feminist topic. Photographs, excerpts, and audio clips from that project can be found under the Texas link at the website www.southernbbqtrail.com.

Michelle Golden (Summer 2000)
Dissertation: Inequity From Within? A Study of Social Movement Organizations
Director, Irene Browne

Yar Gonway-Gono (Spring 2001)
Dissertation: Looking In and Coming Out: A Critical Inquiry into the Life Histories and Moral Dilemmas of Liberian Women in Atlanta
Directors, Edna Bay and John Snarey

Namita Goswami (Summer 2003)
Dissertation: Who Was Roop Kanwar?: The Subject in Question in Contemporary Feminist Theory
Director, Deepika Bahri

Nicola Graves (Spring 2003)
Dissertation: "In a World of Her Own": Interpretations of the Female Individual
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Sheila Hassell Hughes (Spring 1997)
Dissertation: Bridging Bodies of Work: The Poetic and the Prophetic in Women's Literature and Feminist Theology
Director, Rebecca S. Chopp

Sheila served as Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Dayton from 2004-2008.  Under her leadership, the program transitioned from a 27-year old minor to a major.  As of July 2008, she will begin tenure as Chair of the Department of English, University of Dayton.

Her current scholarly projects include:  “Double Vision: Gender and Religion in the Works of Louise Erdrich” (book-in-progress); “Voices of Girls in Urban Schools”:  collaborative project with Dr. Carolyn Ridenour (Dept. of Educational Leadership) and a team of student researchers, involving qualitative feminist research with girls in public schools in the City of Dayton.  The project is supported by an NEH funded UD Humanities Fellowship, and “Kinswomen”: a collection of poems-in-progress about the women in her family. The project has been supported by a UD Vocational Exploration Grant funded through the Lilly Endowment.

Sheila’s most recent publication is “Making Service Learning in Women’s Studies from Scratch: Notes from the Test Kitchen of a New Major.” Handbook on Service Learning in Women's Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Disciplines. Ed., Karen Dugger. Towson, MD: The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, 2007.

Other recent adventures have included a study tour of women’s issues in Morocco for women’s studies faculty and administrators interested in developing short-term study abroad programs, leading a summer study abroad program on race, gender, and the arts in Paris (2008), and helping her 7-year old daughter learn to read, tell time, and ride a big bike without training wheels

Jennifer Higgins (Summer 2005)
Dissertation: Sex, Power, and Politics: The Origins of Sexual Harassment Policy in the United States
Director, Mary E. Odem

While pursuing her PhD, Jenny received an MPH in Global Health from Emory University in 2005. Her areas of interest are sexuality and sexual pleasure-seeking, particularly how they influence contraceptive use, unintended pregnancy, and HIV risk.  She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Office of Population Research & Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.  Beginning in summer 2009 she will assume a position as Assistant Professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University.

Recent publications include:  The Pleasure Deficit: Revisiting the "Sexuality Connection" in Reproductive Health (with Jennifer Hirsch). International Family Planning Perspectives 33(3): 133-139 (2007), and Sexy Feminisms & Sexual Health: Theorizing Heterosex, Pleasure and Constraint in Public Health Research. Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal/Revue d'etudes Sur Les Femmes 31(2): 72-81 (2007).

Janell Hobson (Fall 2001)
Dissertation: Beauty, Difference, and the Hottentot Venus: Black Feminist Revisions in Performance and Aesthetics, 1810 to the Present
Director, Frances Smith Foster

Janell will soon be promoted to Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. There she is also serving as Graduate Director of the Women's Studies Department. Janell recently published
two articles:

"Everybody's Protest Song: Music as Social Protest in the Performances of Marian Anderson and Billie Holiday," in Signs, and "Digital Whiteness, Primitive Blackness: Racializing the 'Digital Divide' in Film and New Media," in Feminist Media Studies.

Janell also co-edited with R. Dianne Bartlow a special issue for Meridians on Representin': Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music.

Karon Jolna (Spring 2003)
Dissertation: Beyond Race and Gender? The New Managing Diversity for Women: A Dual Approach
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Following the awarding of her Ph.D. in Women's Studies in 2003, Karon pursued her dream - and passion - of bridging Women's Studies and Business both inside and outside of the academy.  In 2004, Karon joined the UCLA Center for the Study of Women
as a Research Scholar.  She also developed and taught a course at UCLA Extension, "How Does She Do It? Top Women Executives Reveal Their Keys to Life and Work Success (Summer 2006. Winter 2007, Spring 2007).  The course presented the stories of challenges and success from Los Angeles-based business leaders. With the continuing affiliation and support of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Karon is writing a book based on her interviews with top women executives.

Most recently, Karon developed a course on "Women and Leadership" for UCLA's Department of Women's Studies, which she will be teaching this Winter 2009. Karon also serves Chair of The Huntington Library Women's Studies Programs, which has been bringing thought provoking women's studies research to the community for 25 years.  The Fall 2008 program is "The Promise of
Women Leaders in Politics".  Karon is the moderator, and will be joined by prominant women politicians and scholars.
Forthcoming Spring 2009, Dr. Jolna will participate on the faculty team of UCLA Anderson School of Management's "Women's Leadership Institute" and present her research on "A Workable Life".

Karon lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Stacy Jolna, and her six year old son.

Ime Kerlee (Summer 2005)
Dissertation: Transnational Dreaming: (E)Raced Bodies & Engendered Mobility in Dominicanidad
Director, Martine Brownley

Allison B. Kimmich (Spring 1997)
Dissertation: Borders, Bodies, and Secrets: Discovering the Subject in Contemporary American Autobiographies
Director, Martine Brownley

Allison Kimmich heads the National Women's Studies Association.  Under her leadership, NWSA has grown into an international network of nearly 2,500 members with professional development, research, and advocacy initiatives to support women’s studies and women’s center professionals.  She holds a B.A. in English and French from Muskingum College in addition to her Ph.D. in women’s studies from Emory.

Allison previously served as the director of pre-college programs at Barnard College, where she developed a Young Women’s Leadership Institute and taught feminist theory in the undergraduate women’s studies program.  She has also worked as the assistant director of the Women Involved in Living and Learning (WILL), an academic and co-curricular program at the University of Richmond.  Her publications include essays on feminist pedagogy and women’s studies, and she has co-edited a collection on women’s autobiography. 

Lauraine Leblanc (Spring 1997)
Dissertation: The Flowers in Your Dustbin: Girls in the North American Punk Subcultures of the 1990s
Director, Irene Browne

Vivian May( Summer 1997)
Dissertation: Dividing Lines and Binding Words: Border Subjectivity in Contemporary Canadian and American Literature
Director, Rebecca S. Chopp

Dana McGraw (Spring 2007)
Dissertation: The Living of Dying: A Epistolary Grief Memoir
Director, Angelika Bammer

Kristi McKim (Spring 2005)
Dissertation: The Astounded Soul: Cinematic Time and Photogenic Love (Wim Wenders, Agnes Varda, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Director, Angelika Bammer

Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose (Spring 2007)
Dissertation: That I Will Find My Best Life: The Role of Marriage in the Quest for the Dedicated Life in the Works of Gail Godwin
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Sheila is an independent scholar whose interests include women writers, feminist theory, and the role of Catholicism in contemporary culture. Her dissertation engages all of these interests by focusing on the writings of Gail Godwin, an award-winning contemporary writer whose collected works explore the meaning of the modern woman’s sense of self. O’Connor-Ambrose’s dissertation--“That I Will Find My Best Life”: The Role of Marriage in the Quest for the Dedicated Life in the Works of Gail Godwin—was directed by the late historian and founding director of women's studies, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. A recipient of an H.B. Earhart Fellowship Grant, an Andrew J. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in Southern Studies, and an Emory University Dean's Teaching Fellowship, O'Connor-Ambrose earned a bachelor's degree in humanities from Thomas More College and a master's degree in English from University of Dallas.

O'Connor-Ambrose edited and wrote the introduction for Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die (ISI, May 15, 2008), which includes a series of notable lectures on the historical, cultural, and moral foundations of marriage that Fox-Genovese delivered at Princeton University in 2003. In addition, O'Connor-Ambrose fielded around thirty radio interviews in June and July 2008, in both regional and national markets, upon the book's publication. O'Connor-Ambrose is co-editing a volume of Fox-Genovese's religious writings, with an anticipated publication date of late 2009. O'Connor-Ambrose and her husband, Douglas Ambrose, Professor of History at Hamilton College, collaborated on "Modeling the Dedicated Life: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese as Teacher, Mentor, Pilgrim, and Friend" for a forthcoming special issue in America's 19th-Century History in honor of the scholarship of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. O'Connor-Ambrose also plans to submit for publication her study on Gail Godwin.

In August, 2007, O'Connor-Ambrose was appointed by Syracuse Bishop James Moynihan to serve a three-year term on the Diocesan Commission on Women in Church and in Society. O'Connor-Ambrose is a fellow at The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, in Clinton, NY, where she co-directs (with Douglas Ambrose) The Christopher Dawson Society for the Study of Faith and Reason. She is an elected member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

The Ambrose family includes three young children, Antonia, Augusta, and Dominic More, and two dogs, Patience and Prudence.

Sara Puotinen (Spring 2006)
Dissertation: Female Ethics and the Project of Democracy
Director Cynthia Willett

Kirsten Rambo (Spring 2003)
Dissertation: "Trivial Complaints": The Role of Privacy in Domestic Violence Law and Activism in the U.S.
Directors, Mary Odem and Beth Reingold

Jennifer Shaw (Fall 2004)
Dissertation: Exchange & Excess: The Production and Effects of the Female Nude in Modern Visual Culture
Directors, Elissa Marder & Dalia Judovitz

Kimberly Springer (Summer 1999)
Dissertation: "Our Politics Was Black Women": Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980
Directors, Regina Werum and Mary Odem

Jennifer Steadman (Spring 2000)
Dissertation: Travel Writing and Resistance: A Feminist Reading of Travel Narratives by African American and Euro-American Women, 1820-1860
Director, Frances Smith Foster

Victoria Sturtevant (Summer 2002)
Dissertation: (Summer 2002) Domestic Disorder: Women in American Film Comedy, 1930-1940
Director, Matthew Bernstein

Vicki is currently an Associate Professor of Film and Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma.  Her book, "A Great Big Girl Like Me:  The Films of Marie Dressler" is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press in Spring 2009.

Jennifer R. Thomas (Fall 2007)
Dissertation: Literary Landscapes of Disturbed Minds: Madness, Narrative, and Healing in Bessie Head's " A Question of Power" and Erna Brodner's "Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home"
Director, Frances Smith Foster

Christina Trent (Fall 2006)
Dissertation: Forgetting Rape: Sexual Violence and Social Justice in America
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Paula Greenfield Washington (Spring 1995)
Dissertation: Charismatic Leadership, Gender and Corporate Culture: A Study of Chief Executive Officers and Their Senior Management Teams
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Lauren Watel (Summer 2003)
Dissertation: In the Family Way: Pregnancy in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
Director, Gaylyn Studlar

Isa D. Williams (Spring 1995)
Dissertation: (Spring 1995) Father/Daughter Relationship: An Investigation of the Socioeconomic Impact on Career Choice
Director, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Isa is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and founding director of The Atlanta Semester Program in Women, Leadership and Social Change and director of the Office of Experiential Learning at Agnes Scott College.  She received her BA degree in History from Spelman College and her masters degree in Organization Behavior from Georgia State University.  Isa completed the Ph.D. at Emory University in Women’s Studies/Sociology.  Her areas of teaching include women and leadership; women and behavior in organizations; the social-psychology of women and work and  research methods and contemporary feminist theory.    Isa’s research has focused on factors affecting the lives of refugee women and girls in the urban south, women’s leadership, as well as the behavior of women in organizations, and the sociological aspects of women and work.  Her most recent publication is “Southern Community Women Teach a New Generation Lessons of Leadership for Social Change”, Journal of Transformative Education (Summer 2006). 

Isa currently serves as a member of the Carnegie Cluster exploring the relationship between the cognitive and affective in the scholarship of teaching and learning.  In addition, she was selected as a faculty delegate to travel in China and Korea for the purpose of examining women’s lives and the structure of women’s studies programs.  In the spring of 1998, she lead a student study group to the Middle East for the purpose of studying women’s leadership in an international context.   Isa was a delegate and presenter at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa (August, 2001).  She co-lead a student service-learning trip to Tanzania from May 15 – June 5, 2006.  In the summer of 2007, she was selected to complete the CIEE faculty development program in South Africa and returned to Tanzania to further examine women’s leadership for social change in a global context.  In 2007, Isa received the Alumnae Unsung Heroine award from Emory University Center for Women.