Dr. Elizabeth Groeneveld (left), Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Old Dominion University, and Dr. Tracy Perkins (right), Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University, are the Inclusion Imperative Visiting Faculty Fellows for 2020-2021.

Dr. Groeneveld’s project, “Embodying Lesbianism: How 1980s Lesbian-Made Pornography Reimagined Sex and Power,” will argue that lesbian pornographic media, particularly, Bad Attitude (1984), On Our Backs (1984), Outrageous Women (1984), The Power Exchange (1984), and Sapphic Touch (1981), has shaped our ideas about objectification and the body by developing a discourse of sex-positive feminism.

Dr. Perkins’s project, “Digital Ward Valley and the Fight to Protect Tribal Lands,” seeks to bring more attention to the story of a 1990s campaign to stop construction of a nuclear waste landfill in the Mojave Desert’s Ward Valley, led by five tribes along the Arizona/California border who partnered with a diverse array of environmentalists.

The Visiting Fellows will be in residence at the UMBC Dresher Center for the Humanities, a robust humanities center environment that holds public events and symposia, works-in-progress talks and research workshops, and hosts Dresher Center Residential Research Faculty Fellows and Graduate Student Research Fellows. Dr. Groeneveld and Dr. Perkins are each collaborating with a UMBC faculty member with shared research or teaching interests to broaden and deepen the exchange between fellows and the campus community. Dr. Groeneveld’s UMBC Faculty Collaborator is Dr. Kate Drabinski, Senior Lecturer of Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies and Director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL) Program. Dr. Perkins’s UMBC Faculty Collaborator is Dr. Dillon Madmoudi, Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems.