Research

Current Faculty Research

The Gender and Sexuality Studies program benefits from the participation of some 35 faculty members who teach and work in the fields of gender and sexuality studies.

Here is a sampling of the current research of some of our faculty:

Alison Bory (Dance) is completing an article on the queer representational strategies of dance artist Miguel Gutierrez’s trio of works, Age & Beauty. She is beginning a new project on “difficult dance,” which examines contemporary performances that, in some way, create or utilize discomfort, disarray, or confusion in order to respond to and comment upon the world in which we live.

Suzanne Churchill (English) is working on a project on avant-garde poet/playwright/artist Mina Loy's migration from Italian Futurism to New York Dada, an investigation that involves thinking about the role of gender in the early 20th century avant-garde.

Jessica Good (Psychology) is studying the impact of STEM instructors adopting colorblind vs. multicultural ideologies in the classroom, as well as motivations for confronting sexism and additional forms of bias.

Gayle Kaufman (Sociology) is working on several projects, including a cross-national comparison of work-family conflict and job turnover intentions, parental leave policies and workplace penalties, and marriage attitudes and experiences in the LGBTQ community post-marriage equality. 

Amanda Martinez (Communication Studies and Sociology) is co-editing a collection of essays tentatively titled Challenging Social Norms and Gender Marginalization in a Transitional Era.

Maggie McCarthy (German, Film Studies) is researching contemporary German feminism. She has recently published an article in the journal Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature called "Feminism and Generational Conflicts in Alexa Hennig von Lange's Relax, Elke Naters' Lügen, and Charlotte Roche's Feuchtgebiete," and served as the co-editor of the Women in German Yearbook, which features scholarship on gender, from 2006-2009. She is expanding the project into a monograph, tentatively titled Mad Mädchen: Popfeminism and Generational Conflicts in Recent German Literature and Film.

Sally McMillen (History) is completing a biography of suffragist Lucy Stone and is co-editing two volumes of essays on prominent North Carolina women (the first volume will appear in February 2014).

Saeyoung Park (History) has argued in a recent paper for a reconfiguration of East Asian genealogies of gender through a close reading of fictional biographies of cross-dressing martial women in early modern Korea.

Susan Roberts (Political Science) is working on "The Politics of Reproduction" in which she considers themes of morality policy and framing. She examines contraception, access to abortion, the politics of sex education, surrogacy, eugenic sterilization, and the politics of assisted reproduction.

Patricia Tilburg (History) has recently published her new book Working Girls: Sex, Taste, and Reform in the Parisian Garment Trades, 1880-1919 (Oxford, 2019). She is currently researching the life and work of French labor activist Monette Thomas. Thomas was a Parisian garment worker and labor reformer, member of the Ligue des droits d’homme, member of feminist group L’Action des femmes, housing rights activist, and a frequent contributor to the socialist newspaper Le Populaire.

Student Research

2013 McMillen Prize in Gender and Sexuality Studies Nominees

Caitlin Klein '13 - Recipient 2013 McMillen Prize: "Mothering in Contradiction: Localized Mothering Practices Amongst Contemporary Sex Workers in Johannesburg, South Africa"

Garrett Sauey '13 - "Incongruous Strands: Transness and Transcendency in Virginia Woolf's Orlando"

Sara Freeeman '13 - "Ideals of Marriage and Modernity in American Prescriptive Literature of the 1920s"

Wes Reynolds '13 - "'Mental Deficients' to Family Planning Clinics: The Human Betterment League's Representations of Eugenic Initiatives in North Carolina, 1947-1972"

Erin Trahey '12 - "Lots of Love, Va: Virginia Foster Durr and the Civil Rights Movement, 1938-1965"

Elizabeth Shin '14 - "Measuring the Effect of Positive Distinctiveness on Sexist Humor"

Rachel Loucks '14 - "Standing Up to Sexism: An Exploration of When, Why, and How We Confront"

Emily Romeyn '13 - "A Critical Examination of Gender Constructions in Abstract Ekphrasis"