Tag Archive for "The Academic Feminist"

Posts Tagged The Academic Feminist

The Academic Feminist: On the loss of academic feminism’s godmother, Mariam K. Chamberlain

Welcome back, Academic Feminists. In a diversion from our usual format, instead of featuring an interview, this edition of the Academic Feminist pays tribute to one of the less widely known, but hugely influential figures in feminist academia and beyond, Dr. Mariam K. Chamberlain. Mariam, who I was fortunate enough to count as a close friend and mentor, died on April 2, 2013, a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday.

Part of the gift of coming to feminism from academia, like many of us from younger generations do, is that we get to learn about extraordinary women who have been sidelined in mainstream accounts of history. But rarely do we learn about the women who made it possible for ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Megan McRobert and Isabel Porras on “Bringing the Smize to Higher Ed”

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! For this issue of the Academic Feminist I am thrilled to present Megan McRobert and Isabel Porras, the masterminds behind the tumblr AcademicTyra. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet (after all, it is fairly new), AcademicTyra drops academic feminist knowledge in GIF-sized Tyra-esque bits, tackling everything from students’ classroom antics, to relationships with supervisors, to the recent Forbes article that named “university professor” one of the “least stressful jobs” in America. Their posts are funny, smart, and true-to-academic-feminist life – in other words, they are seriously “bringing the smize” to academic feminism. I came across AcademicTyra via a good friend at UC Davis (shout out to Jo ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Feminist Fashion and Scholar-Activism: A Conversation with Tanisha C. Ford

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! This edition of the
Academic Feminist features Tanisha C. Ford, Assistant Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Tanisha’s work on fashion and social movements is at the intersection of race, sexuality, gender, and body politics, producing what she describes as “Haute Couture Intellectualism.” Tanisha joins the Academic Feminist to discuss how these themes shape her book project, what she learned teaching a course on Feminisms & Fashion, and the centrality of scholar-activism in her on– and off–line work.

1) You are at work on a manuscript for a book titled Liberated Threads: Black Women and the Politics of Adornment. Without giving too much away, tell us ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Putting an Economic Value on Life – A Conversation with Elizabeth Johnson

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! I am excited to kick off the new year with a fantastic interview as well as announce some great news about the Academic Feminist: Samhita & I were interviewed as part of the American Quarterly journal’s special issue on Academia and Activism, edited by Naomi Greyser and Margot Weiss. Check out the interview – and the whole issue, which is amazing!

This month’s edition of the Academic Feminist features Dr. Elizabeth R. Johnson. Elizabeth is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she works in the area of biomimicry. Elizabeth discusses how feminism influenced her work, and shows how biomimicry helps us think through new ways of understanding ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Report back from Feminism Unbound

Welcome back, Academic Feminists. This edition of the Academic Feminist features a special report of the National Women’s Studies Association’s (NWSA) 2012 Conference, “Feminism Unbound: Imaging a Feminist Future,” contributed by Dr. Stephanie Troutman. Stephanie is the daughter of interracial, working class parents. A Black feminist scholar and first-generation college student, Stephanie received a Dual-PhD in Education and Women’s Studies from The Pennsylvania State University in 2011. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies and African-American Studies at Berea College in Kentucky. An interdisciplinary scholar, Stephanie’s research interests include issues of race, gender, and sexuality in relation to both popular culture and educational policies- including curriculum and pedagogy, media and ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Election Forum

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! Inspired
(okay, incredibly annoyed) by the lack of academic feminist commentary in mainstream election coverage, I reached out to some amazing academic feminist folks and asked for their thoughts on the election. The people I asked to contribute are all over the disciplinary – and geographical – map. I asked these feminist sociologists, historians, literary scholars, political scientists, and geographers what they thought was missing in current discussions about the election, and what they would draw our attention to instead. Their answers ranged from discussions about the now (in)famous “binders full of women” comment, to the inclusion of “women’s Issues” in the debates, to the effects that this election could have on women’s rights ...

By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Virginia Eubanks on Feminism, Technology, and Activism

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! This month’s interview features
Virginia Eubanks, who teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. Virginia is the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age, and the cofounder of two grassroots community organizations focused on making technology serve social and economic justice: Our Knowledge, Our Power: Surviving Welfare (OKOP) and the Popular Technology Workshops.

Virginia shared some of the inspiration for her interest in feminism and technology, how participatory action research led her to better understand women’s technology issues, and some of the projects she’s currently working on. ...

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! This month’s interview features
Virginia Eubanks, who teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. Virginia is the author of

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By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Lesbians in Space

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! Our back-to-school edition features an interview with two scholars, Maria Rodó-de-Zárate and Jen Gieseking, whose work explores the production of lesbian space and identify, though from opposite sides of the pond. Maria is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Geography of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, where her work examines the uses and experiences of young people in public space from an intersectional approach. Jen is a Ph.D. Candidate in the environmental psychology program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), and you can read more about her research at her website. I got the two of them together – first over email and then for a live ...

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! Our back-to-school edition features an interview with two scholars, Maria Rodó-de-Zárate and Jen Gieseking, whose work explores the production of lesbian space and identify, though from opposite sides of the pond. ...

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