Stavroula Glezakos holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from UCLA. Her areas of teaching and research interest are the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery
Professor & Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Ph.D. University of Connecticut, Political Science, 1997
M.A. University of Connecticut, Economics, 1994
B.A. Brooklyn College, Economics, 1992
Office: Tribble A114
jordanzj@wfu.edu
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: 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.

Dr. Wanda Balzano
Associate Professor
Ph.D. University College Dublin (National University of Ireland)
M.A. University College Dublin (National University of Ireland)
B.A. Istituto Universitario Orientale (University of Naples, Italy)
Office: Tribble A113
336.758.3758
balzanow@wfu.edu

Dr. Tivia Collins
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of the West Indies, Interdisciplinary Gender Studies
M.Sc. University of the West Indies, Gender and Development
B.Sc. University of Guyana, International Relations
collint@wfu.edu
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.

Dr. Kristina Gupta
Associate Professor
Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University
M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University
B.A. in History and Women’s Studies, Georgetown University
Office: A115
336.758.5621
guptaka@wfu.edu
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
Dean of the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Ph.D. University of Southern California, Sociology
Master’s, University of Southern California, Sociology
Undergraduate, Lehigh University, Social Relations
Reynolda Hall
336.758.5311
deanofthecollege@wfu.edu
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.

Dr. Jeffrey Solomon
Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Southern California, English Literature, with Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, 2008
M.A. University of Southern California, English Literature, 2002
M.F.A. University of California-Irvine, English (Fiction), 1993
B.A. University of Pennsylvania, cum laude in English, with distinction, 1989
Office: Tribble A117
336.758.2027
solomojm@wfu.edu
Jeff Solomon teaches gender and sexuality studies, twentieth-century U.S. fiction and film, and graphic novels. He is particularly interested in twentieth-century queer cultural production, as well as the specificities of same-sex desire and its historical contexts. His first book, So Famous and So Gay: The Fabulous Potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) was selected for the American Library Association’s list of the year’s best LGBTQ Books, and asks how Stein and Capote became mass-market celebrities while other queer authors were either closeted or censored—and how this celebrity served a gay and proto-gay public. His articles have appeared in Journal of Lesbian Studies, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Twentieth-Century Literature, which awarded him the Andrew J. Kappel Prize. He also writes fiction, and is interested in cats and indigenous plants. He comes to Wake Forest from Los Angeles.
Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Shanna Greene Benjamin
Professor, Program in African American Studies
Ph.D. English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002
M.A. Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996
B.A. English, Johnson C. Smith University, 1994 Valedictorian
Office: Tribble Hall A120
336.758.3758
benjams@wfu.edu

Dr. Rian Bowie
Associate Teaching Professor, WFU Department of English
Ph.D., Emory University
M.A., Temple University
Office: Tribble Hall C114
336.758.3369
bowiere@wfu.edu
Dr. Rian Bowie is an Associate Teaching Professor with Wake Forest University’s Department of English. Her academic areas of interest include 19th and 20th Century African-American Literature, 19th Century American Women’s Social Movements, 19th/Early 20th Century African-American and American Periodicals and American Political Satire.

Dr. Michaelle Browers
Professor and Department Chair
Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Minnesota, 2001
M.A. in Government, University of Virginia, 1994
B.A. in Politics, Whitman College, 1990
Office: Kirby 317
758.3535
browerm@wfu.edu
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.

Dr. Stavroula Glezakos
Associate Professor and Chair
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles.
Office: B307 Tribble Hall
glezaksn@wfu.edu

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry
Presidential Endowed Professor
Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University
B.A. in English from Wake Forest University
Office: Kirby Hall 102
harrismv@wfu.edu
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.

Dr. Stephanie Koscak
Associate Professor
Ph.D. Indiana University Bloomington, 2013
M.A. University of Connecticut, 2006
B.A. University of Connecticut, 2003
Office: Tribble B7
336.758.5627
koscakse@wfu.edu
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.

Dr. David Phillips
Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities
Ph.D. City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 1996
M.A. in City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Master of Architecture, University of Washington, 1986
B.A. in Asian Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics, Cornell University, 1980
Office: Z. Smith Reynolds Library 301
336.758.4951
phillidp@wfu.edu

Dr. Mir Yarfitz
Associate Professor
Ph.D. 2012 Department of History University of California, Los Angeles
M.A. 2007 Department of History University of California, Los Angeles
B.A. 2000 International and Comparative Policy Studies, Reed College
Office: Tribble B-114
336.758.2580
yarfitmh@wfu.edu
Mir Yarfitz has lived in each of the four corners of the US as well as South and Central America. His enthusiasm for Latin America grew from his college study abroad experience in Nicaragua, a Fulbright in Argentina, and work with migrant farmworker labor unions in Washington, Oregon, and Georgia. His teaching and research interests include Latin American cultural production, social movements, dictatorships and resistance, racial hierarchies, migration, gender, sexuality, masculinity, and transgender studies. His current research explores what might fruitfully be framed as trans lives in Argentina from 1900 to 1945, as part of the larger development of archivally-based trans studies. His 2019 Rutgers University Press book Impure Migrations: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina, historicizes immigrant Ashkenazi Jews in organized prostitution in Buenos Aires between the 1890s and 1930s and in broader transnational flows of sex workers and moral opposition. In addition to publishing in the fields of Latin American trans studies, sex work history, and Jewish studies, he has written collaboratively with a team of Wake Forest Librarians about their experiences in cooperative pedagogy and ungrading, including creating a zine together about the books (and zines) their students have written. He is a 2023 Kulynych Family Omicron Delta Kappa Award winner, selected by students for bridging “the gap between the classroom and student life.”