Faculty

Julia S. Jordan-Zachery is professor and chair of the Women’s Gender and Sexualtiy 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” (Arizona University 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.

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.

Jieun Lee teaches courses on feminist theater and performance, transnational Asian and Asian American feminism, and gender and sexuality in contemporary Korea. Her research examines adoption intersected with art and activism in and out of South Korea and the United States through feminist perspectives. She is currently working on her first book project tentatively entitled Performing Transnational Adoption: Unsettling Scripts. In this book, she analyzes Korean adoptees’ birth search and reunion represented in contemporary theater and performance art works from Korea, the US, the UK, Belgium, and Denmark that disrupt postwar humanitarian, colorblind multicultural, and ethnonationalist narratives surrounding transnational adoption from Korea. Her peer-reviewed articles and reviews have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Annual, Ecumenica, New England Theatre Journal, Puppetry International, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, International Journal of Korean Studies, Korea Journal, and Women’s Studies. Since 2014, she has served as a volunteer translator for the South Korean Feminist Journal ILDA.

Jayati Lal is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University. Her scholarly interests include transnational feminism, postcolonial studies, neoliberalism and capitalism in the Global South, and feminist labor studies. She has previously taught in gender studies and sociology at Cornell University, Boston College, New York University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, American University, Syracuse University, Ambedkar University Delhi, and Seoul National University. She was an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellow at John’s Hopkins University and has been a fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for Advanced Study in Delhi. Her research has been published in Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Feminist Studies, Critical Sociology, and The Sociological Review, among other venues. She was a co-director and co-principal investigator for the feminist digital archival project on Global Feminisms at the University of Michigan, which produced an audiovisual record of interviews with feminists, women’s studies scholars and movement activists from Poland, USA, China, and India (https://globalfeminisms.umich.edu/about).

Carla Wilson is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Wake Forest University. She is a recent graduate of the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies Ph.D. program at Texas Woman’s University. Her research and contemplative and embodied pedagogy, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s pedagogical implementation of spiritual tools and creative acts, include an exploration of contemplative practices in social justice and anti-oppression classrooms where the ability to be both uncomfortable and engaged is vital. Carla is currently teaching a course she created, “The Politics of Care In Our Work Toward Justice,” where students learn about Transformative Justice, Reproductive Justice, Disability Justice, Environmental Justice, Food Justice, and Animal Justice through a mutual aid framework based on an ethic of care. Her essay, “Unsettling Women’s and Gender Studies’ “Settler” Logics Through Gloria Anzaldúa’s Essay “Now Let Us Shift” is included in the anthology Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Pedagogy and Practice for Our Classrooms and Communities published by University of Arizona Press. Her chapter, “Listening for Change: Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Use of Ensouling as a Way to Listen to One’s Self and to the World,” is forthcoming in the anthology Gloria E. Anzaldúa: “I Change Myself, I Change the World” through Texas A&M Press. Her current research explores  students’ perceptions as well as practice and experience with mutual aid during COVID. One of her dreams is to turn her dissertation on contemplative practice as a resource for navigating uncomfortable feelings and difficult conversations in social justice and anti-oppression classrooms into a book accessible to learning communities outside academia.

Michaelle Browers is professor of Politics and International Affairs and directs the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program and the Arabic Program at Wake Forest University. She is author of Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse University Press, 2006), and has edited (with Charles Kurzman) a book, entitled An Islamic Reformation? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). Her articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Journal of Political Ideologies, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, Theory and Event, and Third World Quarterly. She is currently completing a book length history of Arab political thought since World War II.

Melissa Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University in the Department of Politics and International Affairs, the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the Program in Environment and Sustainability. Melissa is founder and president of the Anna Julia Cooper Center, an independent organization advancing justice through intersectional scholarship and action. Along with Dorian Warren, Melissa co-created and co-hosts System Check. She is currently serving as interim host of The Takeaway from WNYC public radio. Melissa is an award-winning author, sought after public speaker, and accomplished media professional.

I am a cultural historian of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and the British Atlantic world, and I’m especially interested in material and visual culture, print and ephemera, politics, and gender in the early modern period. I received my PhD from Indiana University in 2013, and I was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of the Material Text in the History Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.