Academic Work
Education
Ph.D. in English, Boston University, University Fellow
M.F.A. in Writing, Vermont College, Montpelier, VT, merit scholarship (Fiction)
M.A. with Distinction, Boston College (English), Awarded Full Fellowship
B.A., Smith College (Anthropology); Junior Year Abroad, Paris and Geneva
Gender and Women’s Studies Publications
“The Politics of Data: Gender Bias and Border Mentality in the EEOC Job Category Compliance Chart and How Transnational Gender Mainstreaming Can Offer Best Practices for Change,” Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, Fall 2011
“DES and Diflucan: Pharmaceutical Marketing Choices—Why Women Should Take Heed,” in (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience, Cambridge Scholar Press, 2009
“Acupuncture and Menopause: Where Has All the Yin Gone?” Sojourner, March 1995
“Medical Abortions: The Wave of the Future?” Sojourner, January 1995
“Helping Kids Decipher the Basics: Health Educators Discuss Their Role in the Wake of Jocelyn Elders’ Firing,” Belmont Citizen Herald, January 1995
“June Barrett: ‘Somebody’s Got to Stand,’” Sojourner, December 1994
Gender and Women’s Studies Presentations
“Equality and Equity: Why talking about gender matters.” Invited workshop leader and panelist “Future is Feminist Day,” Lincoln School, Providence RI, May 2021
“Plutonium: The toxic silences and illusions behind patriarchal notions of safety and remediation, as exposed in Sharma Shields’ 2019 novel, The Cassandra.” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Boston, March 2020
“Ecology, Gender, and Nuclear Waste: The Perils of Not Knowing About Hanford, the Largest Nuclear Waste Site in the U.S.” Dana Shugar Colloquium, URI, February 2020.
“Current Issues in Race and Feminism,” Invited Guest Speaker for PINK Annual Unsung Heroes Banquet, April 2016
“Support vs. Solidarity: Why Support Isn’t Enough,” Women’s Leadership Conference, URI, March 2016
“Integrative Learning: What is it and how can we teach it?” Invited guest speaker for the first Advancement of Teaching and Learning Conversation Series, URI, Oct. 8, 2015
“Growing Your Program—Successes and Challenges,” Invited speaker, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Regional Meeting, Cambridge, MA Feb. 2015
“The University as Nation-State: Transnational Remedies,” National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), Puerto Rico, November 2014
“Teaching to Disrupt Gender: Challenging the Myth of Disposable Women,” Susan Currier Lecture, Cal Poly, Feb. 12, 2014; and (with altered content) March 26, 2014, Claremont Colleges, sponsored by Intercollegiate Women’s Studies and the Center for Writing and Public Discourse
“Feminist Co-Mentoring as a Model for Changing Institutional Behavior,” New England Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Boston, March 2013
“Disposable Women, Border Mentalities, and Militarization in Academia: The Deep Structures in Exploitative Institutional Patterns,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference (NWSA), Oakland, November 2012.
“From Hickeys to House-Burning, or Breaking the Patterns of the Master Narrative: Honing Nonfiction Craft,” 75-minute solo workshop, NWSA, Atlanta, Nov. 2011
“Writing Down the Body: Honing Fiction Craft, Making the Invisible Visible, the Silent Spoken,”
“Writing Down the Body: Making the Invisible Visible, the Silent Spoken,” SUNY Cortland Women’s History Month, Invited Guest Lecturer, March 2010;
“The Politics of Data: Concealed gender bias in the EEOC Job Category Compliance Chart and how transnational gender mainstreaming can offer best practices for change,” Succeeding as Women in Higher Education Conference, SUNY/Cortland, Oct.23-25, 2009
“DES and Diflucan: Pharmaceutical Marketing Choices—Why Women Should Take Heed,” Southern Connecticut State University’s Women’s Studies Conference, “Women’s Health: Colonized, Resisted, Reclaimed,” Oct. 2006
“Feminized Forms in Male Frames: Navigating the Other Side of The Shipping News,” Boston Great Decisions Reading Group, March 1995
“Featuring the Virgin Mary: Problematic Cloaking in Death Comes for the Archbishop,” Willa Cather Santa Fe Conference, August 1988
Ph.D. Dissertation
“Violence and the Lost Maternal: Problems of Sacrifice, Biblical Authority, and Feminine Desire in Narrative.” Works addressed: The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper, The Book of Thel by William Blake, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
This dissertation examines how narrative reinforces notions of the Maternal that work against the validation of feminine presence and desire. It sees feminine desire as countering notions of desire derived from phallocentric conceptions of the mother and her body as forbidden, repressed, and absented. Noting the similar tendency of biblical, narrative, and phallocentric traditions to revere but absent the actual mother, the thesis examines how both The Prairie and “The Book of Thel” reveal metonymic and metaphoric sacrificial orders and consequent violence against women, though Blake achieves critical distance from that violence. The thesis then examines Wuthering Heights and Death Comes For the Archbishop to explore the possibility of narrative strategies that counter the sacrificial order of traditional narrative. It finally ponders whether the association of desire and violence is so embedded in the Western imagination and narrative tradition that nonviolent conceptions, representations, and fulfillments of feminine desire in narrative are not rarely expressed but rarely understood.