Current Students

Samantha Allen

Samantha graduated from Rutgers University with BAs in Women's & Gender Studies and Linguistics. Her areas of study include feminist theory, queer theory, affect theory and psychoanalysis. Samantha's dissertation places practices of sexual fetishism in conversation with Silvan Tomkins' theory of affect as a way to revisit Freudian theories of perversion and fetishism.

Ayisha Al-Sayyad

Ayisha's primary interests lie in queer theories, rural sex politics in the American South, transnational human rightsdiscourses, and sexuality in the Arab world. Ayisha earned her Master's in Women's Studies from the University of Arizona in Tucson where she completed a thesis on representations of queer Arab Muslim women deployed by gay nationalists and queer resistance movements. From this research, which employed ethnographies to read against transnational incitements for universal sexual equality, Ayisha continues to be interested in thinking about how oral history informs theories of subjectivity. She plans to complete field work in Lebanon for her dissertation on (queer) sexual politics, rights-seeking, and ideologies of transgression. In brief interludes between academic terms, as well as the occasional extended hiatus, Ayisha prefers to spend her time on the roof-top of a New Orleans Creole-revival on Royal Street.

Stephanie Alvarado

Stephanie’s research is centered on studying the criminalization and policing of Latinas and immigrant bodies through a reproductive and social justice lens, while examining the impact on the national discourse about these groups in terms of policy formation, social justice movements, and media representation. Stephanie holds a BA’s in Psychology and Latino Studies from NYU.

Moya Bailey

Moya's research is focused on health care disparities in marginalized groups. She is also committed to issues of representation in media. Moya received her undergraduate degree from Spelman College where she majored in Women's Studies with a concentration in Health.

Kelly H. Ball

Kelly is currently a Ph.D. candidate in WGSS. She holds an M.A. in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in Philosophy and Women's Studies from Transylvania University. Her research interests include girlhood, sexual violence, feminist psychologies of girlhood, and queer and feminist theory. She is currently completing her dissertation, "'So Powerful a Form': Using Queer and Feminist Theory to Rethink Girls' Sexuality." Her dissertation uses a queer-feminist theoretical framework to analyze feminist psychological models of girlhood sexuality.

Cyd Cipolla

Cyd received her BA in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Yale University. Her work is centered in body and cultural studies and the connection between criminal, pathological, compulsive or sinful acts and identities. Her focuses at Emory include feminist science studies, theology, disability studies, and gender and sexuality in medical, legal and religious history. Her dissertation project, titled "After These Horrendous Crimes, that Creature Forfeits his Rights": The Violent Sex Offender as Exceptional Criminal, examines the role of religious, psychiatric and popular representation in the creation of "violent sex offender" legislation in the United States, and the feedback of that criminal category into systems of sexual identity.

Chanel Craft

Chanel's research interests include hip-hop feminism, womanism, black feminism, and the prison-industrial complex. She holds a B.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park and an M.A. from the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University.

Alysia Davis

Alysia received her B.S. degree in Economics from Mercer University in 1998, and her M.S. in Public Policy with a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Rochester in 2000. She is currently an ABD member of the Emory Women's Studies graduate community, working on research examining how social movement organizations negotiate the hegemonic marriage ethic in collective action framing processes since the early 1990s. Alysia loves teaching, and currently is adjunct faculty at both James Madison University and Bridgewater College in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area. She loves introducing students to Women's Studies, and hopes that the critical thinking skills they learn in her classes will help them to become better citizens of the world (and hopefully feminists, too!). In her spare time, she loves working on her 1923 house, cooking, enjoying the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley, and changing the world for the better, one step at a time.

Rachel Dudley

Rachel is a third year PhD Student working in the general areas of Black Feminist Studies and Feminist Disability Studies. She plans to explore lines of inquiry pertaining to African-American women, Health, and the body.

Hemangini Gupta

BA University of Mumbai; MA University of London - School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Hemangini's current project examines the anthropology of panic with special focus on the circulation of moral discourses in Bangalore, India between right-wing groups, the feminist and queer movement, the neoliberal state and media. She is interested in the interactions between these groups and forms of consumption and the circulation of bodies and sexualities in public spaces. She was a TV and print journalist for four years before coming to Emory.Current interests: anthropology of the state; feminist anthropology; activist anthropology; colonial/postcolonial studies of gender and nation; media anthropology.

Kristina Gupta

Kristina is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. Her interests are in the areas of feminist theory, feminist studies of science and medicine, sexuality studies, and disability studies. She is working on a dissertation titled "The Material-Semiotic Construction of Want: Asexuality and the Science and Medicine of Sexual Desire." She has a M.A. in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and a B.A. from Georgetown University.

Aimi Hamraie

Aimi is a doctoral candidate working on a dissertation entitled, "What Can Universal Design Know? Scientific Research About Human Bodies in Disability-Accessible Design." The dissertation considers evidence-based approaches to designing for bodily diversities. It contributes to the fields of feminist theory, disability studies, science and technology studies, and the history and philosophy of science. Aimi's broad research interests include feminist theories of embodiment, science, and architecture, disability history, design studies, and historical, social, and political epistemologies.

Jordan Johnson

Jordan's research interests include interrogating the relationship between bodies and environments in the rural U.S. South, exploring how marginalized groups function within agricultural communities and the ways in which rural knowledge contribute to environmental debate and critiques of agribusiness, consumerism, neo-liberalism, and homonormativity.  Jordan holds BAs in Feminist Studies, English, and Spanish from Southwestern University.

Prakiti KC

Prakiti was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. After receiving an MA in Sociology from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, she worked as a researcher and development worker for five years with various non-profit organizations in Nepal. Currently she is working on her PhD in Women's Studies and MPH in Global Health. Her PhD dissertation focuses on development idealism, global/transnational feminisms and constructions of modernity among Nepali transnational community in the U.S. and their families in Nepal. She received an MPH from Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) at Emory in August 2008. Prakiti has received fellowships such as Association of American University Women (AAUW) International fellowship and Center for Health, Culture, and Society (CHCS) fellowship.

Nikki Karalekas

Nikki holds a BA in African-American Studies and Anthropology from Smith College and a MA in Women's Studies from San Francisco State University. Her areas of study are feminist politics and law. She is interested in criticisms of law in contemporary feminist and queer theories. Her dissertation explores these criticisms through a case study of the legal reform of the strip club industry.

Lisa Knisely

Lisa is interested in the relationship of political acts of violence to contemporary struggles over power and recognition. In her work, she draws from feminist, queer, and post-colonial contributions to, and critiques of, larger philosophical conversations in ethics, political theory, and epistemology. In addition, Lisa is interested in the role of both language and visual representation in shaping conceptions of women's violence and violent women, in particular as relates to the intelligibility of women as political and ethical agents.

Lhamotso Lamacao

Lhamotso is interested in pursuing an interdisciplinary research project which will illuminate the unexpected ways that Tibetan women’s lives are impacted by rapid change on the Tibetan plateau. She hopes to develop a theory of environmental feminism which can effectively respond to such challenging changes on a systemic level. Her long-term goal is to deepen her theoretical insights and approaches to gender inequity and generate new feminist approaches to gender and development that will shift current visions of women’s empowerment as practiced on the Tibetan plateau.

Noemi Molitor

Noemi works in Critical Race Studies and Feminist Postcolonial Theory. Her research interests include the intersections of anti-immigration discourses, welfare debates, and notions of assistance as social power. She is specifically interested in liberal multiculturalism's complicity in the upholding of socio-cultural inequalities, especially everyday and structural racisms, as well as liberal notions of homonormativity - these dynamics point to tensions between normative appeals to the state, radically making the state accountable, and visions of alternative forms of community accountability. Noemi is also invested in creating alternative pedagogies and fostering academic activism and activist academia. Noemi holds a Magister (MA) in Gender Studies and European Ethnology from Humboldt University, Berlin.

Abigail Parsons

Aby graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in England in 2004 with a BA (Hons) in American Studies, focusing most of her work on feminism and queerness. She completed her MA by Research, also at UCLan, in 2006, looking at the relationship between gender and the road space in female hobo narratives. Her current research looks at the construction of queer female identity and experience in contemporary southern fiction and film. Her other areas of interest, both academic and personal, include feminist film theory, lesbian history and culture, gender-based subcultures, and feminist and queer activism.

Whitney Peoples

Whitney is a Texas native who received her B.A. in Political Science from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. She earned her M.A. in Women's Studies from the University of Cincinnati as an Albert C. Yates Fellow. She is currently in her second year of coursework in the Women's Studies PhD program at Emory. Whitney's research interests include the relationship between popular culture, social justice resistance and hegemonic systems of power. Her work has explored new directions and formations of Black American feminism as well as the gender dynamics of American hip-hop. She is currently looking at the relationship between advertising and women's reproductive health as well as continuing her interest in hip-hop culture and rap music.

Kristin Petersen

Kristin graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California with degrees in journalism and economics. She next attended New York University's Draper Interdisciplinary program, and received her master's degree in the spring of 2008 with an emphasis in gender politics. Currently, Kristin's research focuses on issues of reproduction, human rights, and cultural narrative.

Allison Pilatsky

 Allison's research is focused on the intersections of queer theory and disability studies, with an emphasis on identity formation through place in contemporary literature.  Her work is derived largely from crip theory and its emphasis on the body/lived experience and rejection of the neo-liberal, capitalist construction of queerness. Allison graduated from Smith College with a double major in Women and Gender Studies (Queer Studies concentration) and English Literature, with an additional concentration in Archival Studies.

Shani Settles

BA, Anthropology/Religious Studies, University of Missouri

Stefanie Speanburg

Stefanie graduated from Union College with a degree in psychology. In 2000, she earned her Master's degree in clinical social work from the Smith College School for Social Work. Before pursuing graduate work in Women's Studies, Stefanie worked in both clinical social work and psychiatric research settings. She will be a First Year Candidate with the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute beginning in Fall 2008. In June 2008, Stefanie was selected to participate in a seminar with Dr. Luce Irigaray for advanced research training in feminist theory. Stefanie's primary interests are contemporary feminist theories, psychoanalytic theories, and women's narratives of mental illness. She plans to bring qualitative research together with critical theory in her dissertation project.

Sarah Stein

B.A., University of Virginia
J.D., Emory University (2013)

Sarah is a concurrent degree student in Law and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is interested in investigating the relationship between gender and the legal, social, and geographical aspects of property ownership. In her legal studies, Sarah has researched the legal formation and survival of Community Land Trusts, a form of homeownership that aims at preserving affordability by geographic location. She plans to integrate this work into her developing doctoral research. Sarah is also actively involved in academic and popular discussions of abortion access in the United States and Mexico.

Mairead Sullivan

Mairead has a BA in Religious Studies and Women's Studies from The College of the Holy Cross and a MSW from Boston University. Mairead spent several years working in LGBT and Women's health prior to coming to Emory in 2010. Mairead's research interests include embodiment, phenomenology and queer theory. Mairead's current work engages trans erotics to rethink sexual difference through relation.

Erin Tunney

BA, Peace & Global Studies, Earlham College
MA, International Peace & Conflict Resolution, American University

Natalie Turrin

Originally from Toronto, Canada, Natalie received a B.Sc. in Genetics and an M.A. in Women's Studies from the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests include feminist science studies, clinical research, public health, and science and technology studies.

Lauran Whitworth

Lauran graduated from The University of Georgia (BA, English and Art History) and The Ohio State University (MA, History of Art). Her Masters qualifying papers were entitled "Externality and Expectations in John Singer Sargent'sThe Daughters of Edward D. Boit" and "Picturing 'Naked Life': At the Margins in the Photography of Parminder Sekhon." Also at Ohio State, Lauran participated in a transnational coalition, The Gender & Emancipation Project. Lauran's intellectual pursuits continue to pertain to corporeality, particularly depictions of bodies and space in film and photography. Lauran envisions a dissertation project on filmic representations of queer desire and habitations of space therein. She is also increasingly interested in performance theory, biopolitics (i.e. vulnerability studies), and bodily protest. Lauran has intermittently taught high school English and Humanities; she remains committed to exploring innovative forms of teaching and learning.

Rachel Weitzenkorn

Rachel received her BA in Neuroscience from Colorado College in 2010. She will be a first year PhD student this year. Her research will combine her science background with psychoanalytic theory and queer theory. She is interested in embodiment and ways to use biological research about psychotherapy to inform feminist psychoanalysis.