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Student Profiles
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Ph.D. Students
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Thursday, 06 October 2005 |
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Meredith Davis holds a BA, Sociology, St. Mary’s College and an MA, Africana Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore. Meredith developed her leadership skills as an undergraduate at St. Mary’s College, where she served on search committees for Dean of Students and Director of Minority Affairs, student representative to the Faculty Senate, and Vice President on the Student Government Association Executive Board. After earning her M.A., Meredith went on to a career in education administration, beginning with the Office of Humanities in the Baltimore Board of Education, directing several programs in multicultural education and enhancing opportunities in institutions of higher education, to her current position as Associate Director, Office of Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities at Rutgers University. Her research interests focus on literatures of the African diaspora, and particularly Caribbean women poets, and she has served as instructor or teaching assistant for courses on African American literature, Black political thought, and the Caribbean. Meredith is also a feminist poet who has performed her work in numerous venues. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 August 2007 )
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Ph.D. Students
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Thursday, 06 October 2005 |
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Ashley Falzetti recently earned an MA in Philosophy and a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Her thesis analyzes 'race' and 'gender' as social kinds and explores the usefulness of importing accounts of performativity into philosophical discourses on justice. Her broader academic interests include, but certainly are not limited to, cultural and geographic identity, feminist critiques of knowledge production, and political legitimacy. Previously she earned BA's in Sociology, Philosophy, and Religion at Carson-Newman College. While living in Tennessee she fought racism and poverty through her work with the Highlander Research and Education Center, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Citizen's for Justice, Equality, and Fairness, and the Tennessee Outreach Project. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 August 2007 )
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2006 Susana Matallana Pelaez |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Susana Matallana Pelaez earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from Los Andes University in Colombia. She also holds an M.A. in English from the University of Tennessee, which she earned thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon her return to Colombia in 1991, she began teaching English and American literature at Los Andes and Valle University, concentrating mostly on women authors. Susana also worked as an editor for Norma-Carvajal, the country's leading publishing company. In the last four years she has been working at the Gender Studies Center at Valle University, conducting research on young women's identity and organizing workshops on gender awareness. She is presently interested in doing research into women's psychological and spiritual jouneys. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
Annie Nicolosi holds a PhD, History, Rutgers (Newark) and a BA, History, Trenton State College. Annie is currently Associate Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at The College of New Jersey (Ewing). Her book, Beauty, Body, and Politics: Comparisons of Female Imagery in the First and Second Waves (U of Ohio, forthcoming) explores the ways in which women constructed imagery and spectacle as political tools and the relationships between public imagery, ideologies about the body, propaganda and their political implications. In addition to her teaching and scholarship, Ann Marie is also an activist, serving as faculty advisor for her college’s LGBTI organization and executive board member for Women in Learning and Leadership program. She is proud to have recently participated in a same-sex “marriage ceremony” protest and been arrested at the White House alongside Cindy Sheehan for demonstrating against the Iraq War. She seeks a PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies as an opportunity for intellectual and professional enrichment.
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2006 Anel Méndez Velázquez |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Anel Méndez Velázquez was born in Puerto Rico, and grew up San Sebastián, a town in the western-central region of the island. She considers herself to live simultaneously in Puerto Rico and the United States. She holds a B.S. in biology from the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras, where she worked in enzymatic research to develop bioremediation methods for removing toxic compounds from industrial waste. During her time at the UPR, she also did independent studies in art and gender, which introduced her to feminist theory and cultural studies. In 2002, she moved to the U.S., working in Chicago for a year to then move to New York to work on an interdisciplinary Master’s in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University’s Draper Program. Her thesis, “Cultural Nationalism and the Policing of Gender and Sexuality in Puerto Rico, 1930s -1970s,” discussed ways in which official cultural-nationalist discourses on puertorriqueñidad in the mid 20th century invested in heteronormative gender and sexuality constructs and implicated them in the construction of Puerto Rican identity and the Puerto Rican nation. Her interests include: ‘third world’ feminist and queer theories and movements, cultural, and critical theory, Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies, trans-cultural/trans-national gender and sexuality studies, race/ethnicity/nationality discourses in relation to gender and sexuality politics, and gender and sexuality in visual representation and arts, and performance culture. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Anahi Russo Garrido is a Mexican-Quebecois-Canadian who holds an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Concordia University, Canada, where she researched on gender and sexuality in Latin America. She has worked as a research assistant on feminist organizational strengthening and movement building with the Association for Women's Rights and Development (AWID). Prior to that she formed part of the Women's Institute of the Mexico City local government in a program focused on gender equality and youth. She also actively took part in the organizing committee of the 6th Lesbian Feminist Encounter of Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place in 2004 and is now participating in preparations for the 11th Feminist Encounter of Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming publication Building Feminist Movements and Organizations: Global Perspectives to be published in spring 2007 with Zed books. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Stephanie Clare begins her PhD at Rutgers after having studied at McGill University, Oxford University, and the University of Victoria. She has an MSt in Women’s Studies, for which she wrote on contemporary feminist theory and an MA in Social, Cultural and Political Theory, for which she studied the self in Foucault’s later writings. She is interested in autobiography, political theory, and diasporic literature and studies how metaphors of visuality affect the politics of recognition. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Bahia M. Munem was born on the cross-roads of two cultural worlds, Palestine and Brazil. She received her MS in Communication from NJIT and her BA in Women’s Studies and Political Science from Rutgers-Newark. She currently teaches at Union County College and Passaic County College. Her Master’s thesis work focused on the impact of cross-cultural communication on immigrant women’s reproductive healthcare. Bahia is devoted to creative endeavors that address social issues that are frequently marginalized in communities of color. She directed Blood Trinity, a play based on the true story of Tina Isa, a victim of honor killing, written by Suheir Hammad, at the Third Annual Hip Hop Theater Festival in NYC. In addition, she is interested in research around sexuality within the context of amalgamated cultural and religious identities and the impact of occupation on violence against women. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Agatha Beins recently earned an MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University, where she also worked with youth at a local alternative school and LGBTQ drop-in center through a Writers in the Community Program, and interned with Eastern Washington University Press. Previously, she lived in Tucson and received an MA in Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. For her thesis, she explored the production and consumption of zines as texts that are enabled by and intervene in a capitalist culture/economy. This project relates to her continued interest in forms of creative activism, politics of labor, affect, and the various ways that identities and communities are made intelligible within the contexts of neoliberalism and globalization. She is also the fortunate co-editor with Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy of Women’s Studies For the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, an anthology that interrogates the institutionalization of women’s studies as an interdisciplinary field within the disciplinary framework of academia. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
 Sonja Thomas was born and raised in Eastern Montana. She attended the University of Minnesota where she majored in English Literature and minored in German, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. She received her MA from New York University’s Draper Interdisciplinary Master's program in 2003. Her master’s thesis examined gendered identities in the context of communal violence in South Asia. At Rutgers, she has continued her work with gendered violence in South Asia. Through a fellowship with the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, her research has also included examinations of cross-cultural and historical patterns of sexual violence as genocide. She is co-coordinator for the Second Annual South Asia conference (November 2006), and the graduate representative to the South Asian Studies Program Executive Committee. In addition, she is president of the Women's and Gender Studies Graduate Association and chair of the steering committee for the First National Conference in Women's and Gender Studies, "New Directions in Feminist Scholarship." The conference, organized and run by graduate students in Women's Studies departments throughout the nation, is scheduled for April, 2006. Sonja's other love is tap dancing. An avid tap dancer, she teaches the Rutgers non-credit tap courses.
Conference Participation:
CUNY Graduate Center's Women, Gender, Pedagogy conference. Friday, February 24th, 2006
Fellowships:
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 2005-2006 Graduate Fellow
Professional/Leadership Development:
South Asian Executive Committee, Graduate Representative
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 August 2007 )
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Laura Lovin completed her undergraduate studies in Special Education (1997) and Sociology (2000) at the University of Bucharest- Romania, where she also completed my M.A. in Cultural Studies in 2000. Her main fields of professional activity include teaching to ‘minority’ and financially disadvantaged youth as well as working with non-profit organizations that provide social services. In June 2003 Laura graduated from the Central European University- Budapest, Hungary with an M.A. in Gender Studies. Her latest project has been the setting up an NGO which will promote a gender-sensitive approach to the development of social, economic, education and environmental projects. For the past year she has also been involved with the Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses, assessing the NGOs’ awareness of gender issues and delivering training that aimed to facilitate the adoption of a gender perspective. At Rutgers, Laura is interested in exploring the interface of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationalism within the framework of contemporary social movements, as well as in analyzing the dynamics of inclusionary/exclusionary relations mediated by contemporary re-conceptualizations of gender, sexuality, family and nation. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Jeanne Baptiste migrated to the United States from Trinidad, West Indies in 1988. She has a BA and MA in English Literature from Rutgers, the State University, Newark Campus. In her ten years of teaching, she has been an FA at Rutgers, Newark; an instructor at Bloomfield College and Essex County College; and an Associate Professor for past seven years at DeVry University, North Brunswick. She left teaching to pursue a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies. Nearing the end of her first year in the program, her interests are still fluid; but her concerns seem to condense around social, economic, and healthcare issues of women in the English-speaking Caribbean; and the representation of women and female characters in Caribbean fiction, especially folklore (her literary leaning). She has been married for fifteen years and has a ten-year old daughter. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
EunSung Lee. After receiving a B.A. in English Literature from Dongguk University, South Korea, EunSung earned an M.A. in English Literature at the University of Northern Iowa and became interested in women’s studies. To explore her interest in feminist issues, she pursed a second M.A. in women’s studies at San Diego State University. Her thesis, entitled “Confucianism, Nationalism, and Feminism in the Development of Women’s Studies in South Korea,” examined how cultural and sociopolitical contexts in South Korea have influenced the development of women’s studies scholarship and programs where feminist theories and activism have been produced and encouraged. EunSung’s specific feminist interests are feminist methodology, third world feminisms, and pedagogy. At Rutgers she plans to further explore the interplay between Korean nationalist and feminist movements in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on how nationalist rhetoric has influenced public discourses on the representations of Korean women’s bodies and experiences relating to U.S. military power in South Korea.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 August 2007 )
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Danielle Phillips, a twenty three year old native of Detroit, Michigan attended elementary and high school in Atlanta, Georgia where she moved when she was four years old. She graduated from Spelman in May with a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies. She has a genuine curiosity in cultures outside the United States. Because of this curiosity, she studied for a summer at the University of Oaxaca, Mexico and traveled to West Africa to study voodoo ceremonies in Benin. She is interested in researching globalization and the history of English, Irish, African American, and Latin American domestic workers. Her hobbies include bowling, watching television (Law and Order is her favorite program), and playing with her pets Minnie, Pookie, Ray Ray, and Mr. Man. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Ariella Rotramel graduated with a Bachelor's of Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago in December of 2003. Her independent plan of study focused on the intersections of racial, sexual, and gender identities. During her final year of study, she researched the history of the relationship between Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor, and the gay and lesbian community. As an undergraduate, she was also part of an on-campus organization, Feminists United, and an intern for Homofrecuencia, a queer Latina/o youth radio program. Prior to coming to Rutgers, Ariella worked as an administrative assistant for the International Human Rights Law Institute's Raising the Bar: Legal Education Reform in Iraq project. Her research interests include sexual rights discourses, histories of race, sexuality, and gender, and 20th century and contemporary US asylum policy, and reproductive justice. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 09 August 2007 )
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
Kelly Coogan. In 2002 Kelly graduated from Duke University with a BA in Women’s Studies and a Certificate in Sexuality Studies. She completed an undergraduate thesis that pushed poststructuralist feminist theory into a more sustained and legitimizing conversation with the biological sciences. Her thesis work led to one of her current research interests in transsexuality and transsexual subjectivity and their ambivalent theoretical and empirical relationship to feminist theory and scholarship. More in line with the postcolonial turn in Women's Studies, she is also concerned with how transsexuality reveals notions of gender transition and transitivity in the West is structured implicitly by Euro-American frameworks of travel and conquest. Her dissertation work will focus on authoring different genealogies of Women's Studies, as it is being institutionalized in the contemporary academy and as a (post)identitarian interdisciplinary knowledge formation, as well as feminist scholarship in the U.S. and transnationally.
Conference Participation:
Women, Gender, Pedagogy: A Conference on Feminist Pedagogy, The Graduate Center, CUNY, February 24th, 2006 |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Christopher Rivera earned his BA in Spanish Education from the University of Delaware, McNair Scholar MA in Hispanic Literature from Indiana University—Bloomington. Currently in his last semester of course work here at RU, he is a slightly special case in that he is working towards an Interdisciplinary Graduate Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies. All of his education has been extremely influential in how and what he engages with academically as well as personally. Being trilingual (English, Spanish, Portuguese) and having traveled and studied extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean, his prospective dissertation topic deals with the disparities and intersects of how queerness functions specifically in Mexico and Puerto Rico with relation to the U.S. approved coming out meta-narrative that globally shapes / influences / restricts and prescribes queer communities around the world. His political activism takes shape and force through his pedagogy. He sees himself fundamentally as a teacher and his acts of resistances and pushes for change play out in the various classes he has had the chance to teach: Men and Masculinities, Women, Culture and Society, Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies, Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition, Introduction to Hispanic Literature, among other basic language courses at previous institutions. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Catherine Sameh completed her undergraduate work in women’s history and gender studies at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. After graduating in 1987, she became immersed in feminist activism as a women’s health worker, a writer and, most recently, the director of In Other Words, a non-profit feminist bookstore and activist resource center. Catherine is interested in feminism, Islam, and political reform in contemporary Iran. Her dissertation will explore the central role of religiosity in the constitution of new women's and feminist subjectivities in the contemporary Iranian reform movement. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
 | | Ariella Rotramel and Andrew Mazzaschi |
Andrew Mazzaschi received a B.A. in Women’s Studies and in Literary and Cultural Studies from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in the spring of 2003. His particular self-designed “track” within the LCST program was entitled “The History of Sexuality.” At William and Mary, Andy traveled to Dublin, Oxford, London, and Paris as part of a project on Oscar Wilde. Since coming to Rutgers, Andy has continued to pursue his interest in feminist and queer theory. Andy has also worked with Jasbir Puar on the preliminary stages of a reader devoted to the emerging field of queer and postcolonial theorizing. Recently, he has become interested in thinking about cosmetic surgical practices and discourses, especially in their broader cultural representations. He hopes to be able to queer the feminist discourse on cosmetic surgery, while exploring the impact of cosmetic surgery on how we think of women’s and men’s bodies. Andy has also found great pleasures and challenges teaching “Women, Culture, and Society.” |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
Valsala Kumari is a feminist activist and a civil servant working for the Government of Kerala, India. She served as the Director of the Social Welfare Department in charge of Women and Children in Kerala state for 3 years and was subsequently appointed as Secretary of the Statutory Women's Commission of Kerala for 2 years. In 1999 she was the recipient of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship awarded by the US Government for mid-career professionals with proven track record of leadership. Under the auspices of the Humphrey Fellowship, she completed a Masters in Planning and Urban Development at the Bloustein School of Rutgers University. She has also completed an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
Funding:
Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Rama Lohani Chase. Born and raised in Nepal, Rama pursued English Literature as her major during her B.A. and English and Cultural Studies during her M.A. (1996) studies in Nepal. Before coming to Rutgers, she obtained an MA in Women’s Studies from Drew University. Her thesis, Interventions: Reconfiguring Representations in Mira Nair’s Films, explored questions of race, gender, identity, subjectivity, and nationality under the conditions of diaspora and displacement by utilizing feminist film theories and cultural and post-colonial perspectives. At Rutgers, under the guidance of Prof. Elizabeth Grosz, she continues to further her interdisciplinary research on women and gender. As a PhD candidate, she has been conducting dissertation research on the conditions of diaspora and displacement related to the political conflict and insurgency in Nepal. However, her interests are varied and interdisciplinary. They include global eco-justice and environmental movements, post-colonial literature, transnational feminisms, diaspora and globalization studies, feminist epistemology and pedagogy. Her past work experiences include volunteering for different non-governmental organizations that were active in promoting adult literacy for women, human rights, and social justice movements in Nepal. She also worked as a free-lance translator, rendering Nepali short stories into English for the Royal Nepal Academy and translating plays for Sarwanam, an alternative theatre group in Nepal that was actively involved in the democracy movement in Nepal in the 80s. Her teaching experience includes ESL classes at Drew University; “Expository Writing” for the English Department at Rutgers, “Women, Culture and Society,” and “The Dynamics of Class, Race and Gender” for the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers University. She has published various short essays, including a review in Women’s Studies Quarterly (2002) of the Feminist Press. Currently, she is a seminar fellow in “Diasporas and Migrations” at the Institute of Research on Women (IRW) at Rutgers University. Please visit these sites to learn about the state of Nepal and help bring peace and democracy to it: www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=nepal |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Magdalena Grabowska. Born in 1976 in Warsaw, Poland, Magda Grabowska graduated from the Department of Sociology at Warsaw University, where she also completed an M.A. Her M.A. thesis explored minimalist and maximalist approaches in feminist political philosophy. She has been working in feminist non-governmental organizations in Poland addressing issues pertaining to politics and European Union accession. She is the co-author of EU – Manual for Women and EU, an Analysis of Women’s Attitudes toward European Integration. Her most recent work focuses on feminist reconstructions of private/public spheres in relation to men’s and women’s place in a democratic order. She is also concerned with issues pertaining to minority languages in public and private. She is a member of informal young women’s feminist group, “Sisterhood Street,” which organizes women’s holiday camps. |
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Ph.D. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
Hailing Wang completed her undergraduate studies at Guizhow University in China in 1996. As an undergraduate student, she participated in a nationally funded research project, "A Study of Sustainable Population and Economic Development in County Bordering Areas." Her subsequent Internet-based study of prostitution, focusing on male clients of legal prostitution in Nevada, was part of her effort to understand the relations between people’s cognition, behavior and culture. Her research interests also include transnational feminism: theory and methodology; cultural adaptation, gender identity, sexuality, and STD/AIDS prevention. She is particularly interested in how to apply a successful feminist theory and practice in a different socio-cultural context. Thus she hopes to study feminist approaches to economic development, urbanization, migration, and cultural transformation in order to investigate the impact of these on-going practices on Chinese people in general, and Chinese women in particular.
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2006 Saundra Addison-Britto |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Saundra Adisson-Britto received her BA in Theology from the College of St. Elizabeth. Her area of research that she is most interested in is the historical and social development of family systems and religious systems with a focus on the interdependence of these two systems and their impact on the lives of women. She is currently co-director of Women to Women Ministries and coordinator of Curriculum Development at Living Skills Bible Study in New Jersey. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Morgan McLoughlin studied Feminist Theory at UC Santa Cruz. During her time there, she volunteered at the Santa Cruz AIDS Project and Planned Parenthood. She researched the internal structure of this particular facility and interrogated whether or not a non profit program could theoretically call itself a "feminist institution." Such researched launched an interest in the power of language. Since she has delved into the theories of Derrida, Butler, and Spivak and hopes to weave postmodern theory into contemporary political dialogues. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Kayo Denda is the women’s studies librarian at Rutgers University Libraries. Her major responsibilities include collection development of resources on women and gender and the liaison work with the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the institutes and centers at Rutgers dedicated to examine the women’s issues locally and globally. For the last couple of years, Kayo has been interested in ways to improve access to information in the interdisciplinary fields in general and in women’s studies in particular. She would like to immerse herself in the disciplinary knowledge and culture through the M.A. program and experience the actual information needs of the women’s studies community, as well as to reinvigorate the library services more closely with the needs of its users. Also, as someone who was born in Japan, brought up in Brazil, and a resident of the U.S. since 1979, Kayo has great interest in immigration experiences, movements of people, and subjectivities. Prior to coming to Rutgers Libraries in 2000, she worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Historical Studies - Social Science Library in Princeton, New Jersey. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Kathryn Blake graduated in January 2006 from Rutgers University with a B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies and Spanish. During her undergraduate studies, Kathryn was a scholar with the Institute for Women's Leadership and her social action project was a pet therapy program entitled PAWS: Preventing Abuse Within Survivors, for children who have witnessed and/or experienced domestic violence. She is currently a full time caseworker at Women Aware, the domestic violence agency of Middlesex County where she intitiated her project. She hopes to use the M.A. to examine feminist concerns and social structures through a Freudian lens. Her other research interest is hybridity, particularly with regards to mixed race identities. Beyond academics, Kathryn is an avid fan of independent films, reading and walking her dog. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
Katarina Loncarevic is from Belgrade, Serbia. She received her degree in Philosophy from the University of Belgrade in January 2005. During her undergraduate days she also finished a one-year undergraduate program in Belgrade Women’s Studies and Gender Research Center. She earned a specialization graduate degree in Culture and Gender, the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. Currently, Katarina is a graduate student at two faculties: at the Faculty of Philosophy with a major in Logic and Methodology of Science, and at the Faculty of Political Sciences with a major in Gender and Politics. Her areas of interest are philosophy of language, philosophy of cognitive science, epistemology, political philosophy, feminist political philosophy and feminist epistemology.
Conference Participation:
Feminist Critical Analysis: Differences, Sexualities, Con/Texts. Inter-University Centre of Post-Graduate Studies, Dubrovnik, Croatia. 22-26 May 2006.
Publications:
(2005) “Is Language Innate?” The Philosophical Year-Book, 18. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen is from Vietnam, born in the South, yet pursued undergraduate study and work in Hanoi, the capital in the North. Her background is International Relations, specialized in International Politics and Vietnam's Diplomacy. After graduation, Hoa started working for the Institute for Family and Gender Studies (IFGS) affiliated with Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences (VASS). She is now a researcher of the Division for Children Study. She has been involved in some research projects concerning trafficking in women and girls, prostitution, rural families in Vietnam and domestic violence. Hoa has also taken the charge of translating and editing the English version of her Institute's Journal "Family and Women Studies." |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Born and reared in Indiana, Colleen Reilly received her Bachelor’s degree in gender studies with a minor in sociology from Indiana University- Bloomington in the spring of 2005. Upon graduating, Colleen worked as a fund developer/events coordinator at a local domestic violence shelter and transitional housing unit for women and their children, where she remained a member of the events committee. Most recently she worked as grant writer/research assistant at the Office for Women’s Affairs at Indiana University. She has joint custody of two overweight cats, gets her hair cut obsessively, and studies best when listening to music. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 August 2007 )
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Cindy Serrato was born in Mexico and raised in the United States southwest. She served two AmeriCorps terms under the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) in Washington, DC. Thereafter she returned to Las Vegas where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. As an undergraduate she was highly involved in Residence Life as a Resident Assistant and then in the capacity of a Multicultural Assistant. She also had the privilege of participating in National Education for Women (NEW) Leadership Nevada which furthered her feminist involvement on campus and in the community. Furthermore, she has just completed a study abroad semester in Chengdu, China. Cindy’s interests include women’s leadership, the changing role of women in China, advocating for women’s issues and cultures. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Melodie Hunter was born and raised in a little town just outside of Paris, France. Of both French and American descent, she has experienced multiculturalism first hand through her many travels between both countries, and through her education at l'Ermitage, the International School of France. Thanks to her parents she has also been able to travel to many different parts of the world, including developing countries such as Kenya and Thailand where she first became aware of the vast and destructive inequalities that exist between races and sexes. She graduated from Duke University May 2005 with a B.A in English and a minor in Theatre Studies. She spent a lot of time working with the school's Community Service Center and with Duke's Women's Center where she helped plan Sexual Assault Prevention Week and the march for Take Back the Night. She also got very involved with Duke's Center for Race Relations where she became an active participant of Dialogs On Race Relations, a student-led group that invites students of different social groups on campus to discuss issues of race, gender and religion in a safe, stuctured and mediated environment. Melodie was also a crew-leader at BUILD (Building Undergraduate Involvement and Leadership at Duke), a service-based pre-orientation program for incoming freshmen that focuses on creating a community that is devoted to service as well as cultivating strong relationships between Duke students and the city of Durham. Melodie also spent a lot of her time at Duke acting, dancing, singing opera and volunteering with her sorority at the local Ronald McDonald House. She was also able to spend a summer living in Germany and a semester living in NYC and studying at NYU. Melodie is an ardent feminist and is incredibly impatient to begin her studies at Rutgers this fall. She is interested in the face of feminism today, the role of women in the different world religions and the effects of gender discrimination on children's education in primary school. Melodie also loves to write fiction and poetry and hopes she can combine this with her passion for feminism and activism to spark positive change in her community. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Kristina Gupta is originally from Los Angeles, California. She earned her B.A. in Women’s Studies and History at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. While at Georgetown, Kristina was active in the reproductive rights movement, serving on the board of her campus pro-choice group and interning for a year at the March for Women’s Lives Office. She has also interned at the Feminist Majority Foundation, and has worked as a hotline operator at the National Abortion Federation. Her research interests include feminist theory, gender and science, and masculinity studies. She hopes to eventually earn her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and teach at the university level. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Randy Cota holds a B.A. in Political Science. Randy has interned as a legislative assistant in Sacramento with the California National Organization for Women (CANOW). At CANOW he tracked, analyzed and lobbied state legislators on proposed health care and employment legislation. Additionally, Randy has served in AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA as an elementary school literacy intervention tutor and a Public Relations Coordinator for the San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity, respectively. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Mary Durkee received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She worked for many years as an illustrator and graphic designer in New York City. She enrolled in the graduate Department of Women’s and Gender Studies to write about women artists and the portrayal of women in the arts and media. She lives in Princeton Junction with her husband and fourteen year old daughter. |
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2004 Mariana Cruz Gonzalez |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
 | Mariana Cruz Gonzalez is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Amherst, MA. She has a B.A. degree from the University of Puerto Rico and an M.A. in Government with a minor in Women's Studies from Texas Woman's University. As an undergraduate student, Mariana worked with the federal TRIO programs. She also worked as a research assistant at the Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development in Boston. During this time, she was actively involved in community activism in Puerto Rico as well as for Puerto Rican communities in U.S. As a graduate student in Texas, Mariana worked as a T.A. for U.S. History courses and volunteered as a mentor to younger Latina students. At Rutgers she worked as a Residence Director, taught courses, and served as an LGBT staff liasion. She completed her summer practicum with the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration office in Washinton D.C. (PRFAA) where she worked on education and women's leadership projects. She is now pursuing a PhD in Education at Cornell University. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Elaine Zundl received a B.A. in Religion and English Literature in 2003. In her undergraduate studies, Elaine studied the religious paradigms that shape contemporary spiritual movements. Her project on Hamas elaborated on the relationship of classical Islamic jurisprudence with the organization's current activity in the Middle East. She hopes to use the M.A. to examine how women fit into the religious/political movements in Palestine. Her other research interests include feminist pedagogy and how postmodernist theory can be used to articulate concepts of religiosity. |
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M.A. Students
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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Anique Halliday graduated from the University of North Texas with a B.A. in English literature and Sociology and a minor in Women’s Studies. As an undergraduate, Anique supplemented her local activism with numerous trips to central Mexico to assist with community development projects and work intimately with a women’s work cooperative. Despite her diverse intellectual interests, she is currently interested in the ways that global restructuring is shaping indigenous subjectivities and communities and complicating the already ambiguous nature of acquiescence and/or resistance. Anique is the editorial assistant at the Institute for Research on Women and works at the Douglass/Cook writing center as a tutor. She is also an avid yogi who enjoys photography, international politics, traveling, and good films. |
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Student Profiles 
