Faculty

Julia S. Jordan-Zachery is professor and chair of the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Wake Forest University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on African American women and public policy. She is also the author of the award winning books Black Women, Cultural Images and Social Policy (2009 Routledge) and Shadow Bodies: Black Women, Ideology, Representation, and Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2017) as well as a number of articles and edited volumes including Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag: Twenty-First-Century Acts of Self-Definition (University of Arizona Press, 2019). Jordan-Zachery was awarded the Accinno Teaching Award, Providence College (2015-2016). Jordan-Zachery serves as the President of the Association for Ethnic Studies.

Tivia Collins holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of the West Indies. Her research and teaching centres black transnational and diasporic feminisms, postcolonial feminist studies, citizenship studies and Caribbean feminist praxis. Her current research focuses on migrant women’s lived experiences of borders, citizenship and non/belonging. Tivia’s peer reviewed articles have appeared in Migration and Development, and Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. She is currently a member of The MenEngage Alliance Youth Reference Group, a global network working to transform patriarchal masculinities, and serves on the advisory board for FeminiTT, a Caribbean-feminist collective geared towards advancing Gender Justice in the Caribbean.

J. Joy Davis, MBA is a multidisciplinary academician whose scholarship intersects women’s studies, urban education, and business. Davis, a distinguished Holmes Scholar, is obtaining a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Urban Education) with a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research centers on high-achieving Black Female Collegians and their academic experiences from an equity lens and critical race feminism pedagogy. Davis’ two most recent research contributions were published in Films as Rhetorical Texts: Cultivating discussion about race, racism, and race relations” by Lexington Books (2020) and an upcoming anthology, Mamas, Martyrs and Jezebels published by Black Lawrence Press (2024).

Kristina Gupta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of sexuality studies, feminist theory, feminist studies of science and medicine, and disability studies. She teaches courses such as “Sexual Politics in the U.S.,” “Gender and the Politics of Health,” and “Men, Masculinity, and Power.” She is currently working on a book project about asexuality, compulsory sexuality, and science. Her first book, Medical Entanglements: Rethinking Feminist Debates about Healthcare (Rutgers University Press, 2019), uses intersectional feminist, queer, and crip theory to move beyond “for or against” approaches to medical intervention . She is also a co-editor of Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (The University of Washington Press, 2017). Her articles have been published in Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, the Journal of Medical Humanities, the American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Feminism & Psychology, among others.

Dr. Jackie Krasas is the Dean of the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University since July 1, 2023.

Dean Krasas received her undergraduate degree with honors in Social Relations from Lehigh University, and both her master’s degree and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Southern California with concentrations in Gender Studies, Organizations, and Work. At Penn State University, she was a faculty member for 10 years in the Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, where she played a key role in the development of graduate education. In 2005, Dr. Krasas returned to her alma mater, Lehigh University, where she served as the Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for almost a decade. She then served for six years as the inaugural Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Programs and International Initiatives, working with directors of more than 20 interdisciplinary programs to improve interdisciplinary structures, collaborations, and education at the university. In 2020, Dr. Krasas was promoted to Deputy Provost for Faculty Affairs, where among her many accomplishments, she guided faculty-related COVID policies, implemented new term faculty ranks, and revised the triennial review process in addition to leading and implementing a university-wide faculty salary equity review and subsequent salary adjustments.

Throughout these appointments, Dr. Krasas has shown extensive academic administrative experience in operations and leadership including curricular development, faculty development, strategic planning, budget and resource management, fundraising and alumni relations, and faculty hiring, retention, promotion, and tenure.

Dr. Krasas’ scholarship on social inequalities includes contingent and temporary work; sexual harassment; women in STEM; work and family; and motherhood. In addition to her peer-reviewed articles appearing in top journals, such as Gender & Society and Work and Occupations, she published two books. Her first book, Temps: The Many Faces of the Changing Workplace (Cornell/ILR Press, 2000) was one of the first to analyze both the structure of power and the meaning of temporary employment across different occupational contexts. Her most recent book, Still a Mother: Noncustodial Mothers, Gendered Institutions, and Social Change (Cornell University Press, 2021), sheds light on the challenges of contemporary motherhood through the lens of noncustodial mothers’ experiences as they navigate a set of gendered social institutions including employment, education, health care, and the legal system. Dr. Krasas was also the co-PI of Lehigh University’s five-year, $2.6 million NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Grant, “Building Community Beyond Academic Departments,” and co-led their membership in the Aspire IChange Network of the NSF Aspire Alliance.

In addition to her work as Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Krasas also holds a faculty appointment as Professor with the Department of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In this role, she continues her more than two decades of experience teaching classes in sociology and gender studies, from introductory courses to graduate-level instruction on social and feminist theory, workplace inequalities, and research methods.

Khaliah Reed is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Southern California. Her scholarship and teaching coalesce around fan studies with an emphasis on fanfiction, contemporary African American women’s digital praxis, and marginalized Black literary audiences and culture—all engaged through the lens of Black feminist and queer theory. Her current research focuses on the intersections of Black women, shame, respectability, and fanfiction. Her work has been published in The Journal of Creative Writing Studies.

Wenqi Yang holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Wake Forest, she was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at Grinnell College. Her research and teaching focus on transnational feminism(s), gender-based violence, and reproductive justice. Her current book project, When Law Says Little: China’s Morality-based Police Mediation in Domestic Violence Incidents, is under contract with Oxford University Press. Her other academic work has appeared in Qualitative Research, Feminist Criminology, and China Information. Beyond her role as a feminist scholar-educator, she also supports and advocates for Chinese and Chinese American victims/survivors of gender-based violence.