GWST Faculty Accomplishments

Fri, 18 May 2018 12:24:39 -0400

The Department of Gender and Women’s Studies is proud to celebrate the accomplishments of our faculty over the last academic year –

Dr. Amy Bhatt was incredibly active at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference this year. She presented her paper, “Baltimore to Bangalore: Intersectional Geographies and Place-Based Feminist Teaching and Research,” served as a moderator on a panel titled “Reflections, Curriculum, and Solidarity: From the Combahee River Collective, to Transnational Feminist Theory, to BLM.” She was also a discussant on the “Traveling Feminisms: Intersectionality and Assemblage in an Asian Frame” panel.

Dr. Bhatt also gave papers at the Association of Asian American Studies Conference in March (“From Dreamers to Tech Workers: Building South Asian American Solidarities”) and at the American Studies Association Conference in November (“Anchors Along the Climb: Developing Resources for Asian Americans and Asian American Studies”).

Her book, High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration, came out in May, and she also had a number of news media articles come out over the last year. These include:

“From dependents to deportees: How US immigration policy is impacting Indian families.”The Indian Express, February 12, 2018.

Bhatt, Amy and Dillon Mahmoudi. “White men may be biggest winners when a city snags Amazon’s HQ2.” The Conversation, February 6, 2018.

Bhatt, Amy and Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque. “The Trump Administration’s Visa Rules Are an Attack on Immigrant Women.” Ms. Magazine Blog, December 19, 2017.

“Why Trump’s Plan to Forbid Spouses of H-1B Workers to Work is a Bad Idea.” The Conversation, December 18, 2017.

Dr. Bhatt has also mentored a number of students through some exciting achievements this past year. She mentored three Gender and Women’s Studies students through URCARD – Daniel Willey, Jamie Tingler, and Emily Ruppert – and mentored one student, Susannah Hochmuth-Jones, through the UMBC Review.

Dr. Kathryn Kein has a new article out in Studies in American Humor, vol. 4 no.1 – “Domestic Failure, Comic Pleasure: Phyllis Diller and the Feminist Potential of Failure, 1955-1969.”

Dr. Carole McCann had one article (“Figuring the Population Explosion: Demography in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Feminist Media Histories) and one encyclopedia entry (“Feminist Theories,” The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology) out this year. She also published a review of Michael Helquist’s Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions in Pacific Historical Review.

Dr. McCann served on two panels at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in November. She was a round table panelist on the “From Alternative Facts to Alternative Worlds: The Possibilities and Limits of Feminist Science” panel, and served as moderator for the “Building Solidarity: Parents Form a Racial Justice Parenting Group at a Baltimore City Elementary School” panel.

Dr. McCann was also invited to deliver 2018’s annual Lipitz Lecture – her talk, “Maryland Planned Parenthood: A Vital Community Resource” was delivered at the Albin O. Kuhn Library in May.

Dr. Mejdulene B. Shomali had two articles come out this year – “Political Social Movements: Homosexuality and Queer Movements” was published in Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, and “”Scheherazade and the Limits of Inclusive Politics in Arab American Literature” came out in the February issue of Multi Ethnic Literature of the United States. She also had a book chapter out this year in The Immigrant Experience. Her chapter is titled “We Are Made to Leave, We Are Made to Return: Writing Movement in Contemporary Arab American Literature.”

Dr. Shomali was also awarded a Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Fellowship and will be attending their workshop in Berkeley, CA this summer.