2017

• Education: Graduated from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and received her BA in Psychology/Bio from Stony Brook University SUNY.
• Committee: Jasbir Puar, Julie Rajan, Carlos Decena, and Sylvia Chan-Malik
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Jasleen is currently pursuing a doctorate in American Culture at the University of Michigan, where she plans to expand upon this research.
• Thesis/Practicum: Thesis entitled, “Sikh Queer Community Navigates Invisibility as the ‘Terrorist-Monster.’”
• Dissertation: Her thesis explores certain dynamics that complicate the understanding of how Sikh queer groups relate to feminist and queer spaces within mainstream North American and the South Asian diaspora. Due to their racial, ethnic, and sexual differences from those groups, Sikh queer groups tend to be marginalized within mainstream and South Asian queer spaces. Jasleen’s research looks at the multiple aspects of this marginalization, including how the religious identity of queer Sikhs has complicated even further their agencies, especially in light of negative projections of the Sikh mainstream community as the “terrorist-monster” Other in the post-9/11 era.

• Research Interests: Relationship between religion and gender; women's leadership; among others.
• Committee: Andrea Hetling, Julie Rajan, Judith Gershon, and Abena Busia
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum Report entitled, “Building Long-term Supportive Housing for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.”

Holds an undergraduate degree in Religion from Capital University. Emily completed her Practicum at Dina’s Dwellings, a long-term residence facility established in New Brunswick to assist women survivors of domestic violence. Emily completed her Practicum during the first year when Dina’s Dwellings became operational. Her Practicum work allowed Emily to focus on the perspectives of female survivors residing in Dina’s Dwellings, particularly how women survivors of DV expressed what the space of Dina’s Dwellings meant to them as they moved through their journeys of healing.

• Research Interests: Transnational activist at the intersection of gender, social justice, and advocacy
• Committee: Radhika Balakrishnan, Mary Hawkesworth, Julie Rajan
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum, Manira focused on CWGL’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based-Violence Campaign to explore the importance that language plays in the process of uniting movements to meet common goals through the use of slogans that capture the mood of the moment and set it within a context.

With a media background spanning over 25 years and spread across all genres of communication, Manira Alva Pinto’s most recent work was scripting the award-winning documentary “Silent Screams- India’s Activism against Rape” which won a New York FIim Award. She produced and scripted several developmental films documenting best practices for UNDP-sponsored initiatives, the rebuilding of earthquake-devastated Gujarat, following women Sarpanch’s and assessing the efficacy of India’s famed self-help-group movement, She has been part of the content guideline team for shows that include the USAID-funded- “Sesame Street India” and the UNICEF-sponsored fictional series like “Jeena Isi ka Naam Hain” which targeted issues related to the girl -child.

• Research Interests: Intersection of environmental, economical and political issues impacting female sexuality within society. Kelle is also interested in examining transgender/gender non-conforming issues in relation to their revolutionary role in undermining sexism by dismantling traditional gender roles/norms.
• Committee: Co-Chairs Julie Rajan, Melinda Mangin, Sarah Tobias, Nikol Alexander-Floyd
• Thesis/Practicum: Thesis “Access Denied: The Case for Inclusive Sex Education for Special Education Students”

A graduate of William Paterson University in 2013, with a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology and a minor in Health Studies. In their year off, she continued to pursue activism by volunteering as a domestic violence victim advocate and also interned with a NYC non-profit organization called Re-Gender (formerly known as The National Council for Research on Women). In their spare time Kelle enjoys practicing martial arts, cooking, and riding her bicycle. Kelle is elated to be returning to academia, where they ultimately hope to remain, as they aspire to be a college professor.

• Research Interests: Postcolonial feminist theory, oral histories, hybrid identities, transnational work, and feminisms of the Global South.
• Committee: Mary Hawkesworth, Julie Rajan, Brittney Cooper
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum “Redefining Home through a Practicum Internship at Karamah Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights”

A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where she majored in English and Journalism and minored in Religion. She fell deeply in love with the work of bell hooks and deeply out of love with her job as a research analyst during her first year after graduation, so she started a post-baccalaureate program in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and hasn't looked back since. Hiba's looking forward to figuring out for herself why everyone rolls their eyes when she tells them she's moving to Jersey.

• Education: BA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Majoring in Gender Studies and English.
• Committee: Nicole Fleetwood, Julie Rajan, Nikol Alexander-Floyd
• Thesis/Practicum: Co-Pilot: A Study of Disability, Criminality, & the “Post”-Human.Advisor: Dr. Nikol-Alexander Floyd

• Education: BA from Cornell University
• Job Placement: Laura currently works at iTV Studios, providing video production services at Rutgers University and designing workforce readiness opportunities for undergraduate media students. She also continues to develop and support independent film and digital media productions. Laura is currently teaching an undergraduate course, Capstone in Gender & Media at Women’s & Gender Studies.
• Committee: Mary Hawkesworth, Harriet Davidson, and Ethel Brooks
• Thesis/Practicum: “Inclusion as Innovation and Innovating Towards Inclusion: Lessons from the Making of a Short, Feminist Documentary Film.”
• Dissertation: For her Practicum, Laura worked on the set of the short documentary film project entitled, ‘From the Boardinghouse to the Boardroom: 250 Years of Women at Rutgers,’ which was directed by documentary filmmaker June Cross. The film was produced by the Institute for Women’s Leadership as part of Rutgers University’s 250th anniversary celebrations to acknowledge the legacy of women in shaping the institution’s history and the revolutionary struggles these groups fought. While working on the film, Laura pondered unique challenges and adverse conditions of feminist filmmaking and (feminist) film education that had not previously been clear to her. Her inquiries about these adverse conditions led her to think about how they are worth articulating as they may resonate with common threads across feminist and women-centric media. Examining these phenomena, she concluded, would allow feminists to strategize around and/or through them, for example.

• Education: Graduated from Barnard College with a major in English.
• Committee: Mary Hawkesworth, Nikol Alexander-Floyd, Julie Rajan
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Karuna is currently completing law school at Georgetown University.
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum Site: Intersectionality in Action: How Cognizance of Multiple Identities Shapes the Work of Sakhi for South Asian Women"

• Research Interests: Race, space, prison abolition, plants, birth and the body; logics of captivity and containment, surveillance and the sensorium, and the roles of midwives and healers of color in abolitionist and decolonial struggles. Anne is a community based doula, herbalist, Reiki practitioner, and vegan caterer passionate about reproductive freedom, healing justice, and plant knowledges.
• Education: Received a B.A. in Communication and Studio Art from the University of Tampa and an M.A. in Communication, with a Certificate in Mediation and Negotiation, from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
• Committee: Brittney Cooper, Mary Hawkesworth, and Kyla Schuller
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Anne is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In Fall 2017 she embarked on the next part of her academic journey as a doctoral student in UCSC’s Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies programs.
• Thesis/Practicum: Thinking Local, Thinking Global: Race, Policy, & Reproductive Freedom; Practicum Sites: Milwaukee, WI, Brooklyn, NY, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Ramallah, Palestine

• Committee: Julie Rajan, Judith Gerson, Abena Busia
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum Site: Horror @ Home: Affordable & Permanent Housing for Women Survivors of Domestic Violence at Dina’s Dwellings
• Dissertation: N’Bsrat Debessai is a graduate of the University of Asmara, (Eritrea) majoring in History. She worked as a graduate assistant at the Eritrean Institute of Technology in the Department of History for four years. She was a tutor and a stand-alone-lecturer for World History and African History classes.