Nicola Beisel (nbeisel@northwestern.edu), Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, studies the relationship between moral politics and the reproduction of children. Her first book, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton, 1997), examined the career of Anthony Comstock and his wealthy supporters in the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock authored the nineteenth-century laws banning the distribution of "obscene" materials, including information about birth control and abortion. Beisel is currently working on a book entitled Aborting Race: Color Blindness in the American Abortion Debate. Her paper "Abortion, Race and Gender in Nineteenth Century America," which was co-authored with former Gender Studies major Tamara Kay, appeared in the American Sociological Review in 2004. The paper was awarded "Best Recent Article" prizes by the Political Sociology section and the Race, Class and Gender section of the American Sociological Association. Prof. Beisel has been the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Humanities Center, and was named Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in 2000.
Nick Davis (nicholas-davis@northwestern.edu) is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and English. He received a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, with a specialization in Film & Video Studies. Davis's teaching and research encompass narrative cinema in several eras and traditions, with particular emphasis on queer cinema and queer theory; feminist film theory and visual depictions of women in popular cinema; and twentieth-century American literature. He has published a book chapter on Todd Haynes' film Velvet Goldmine and an article on James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie. He is now at work on his first book project, entitled The Desiring-Image, a new theorization of contemporary queer cinema through the lens of Deleuzian film theory. He is also the author of the film reviews at www.NicksFlickPicks.com.
Mary G. Dietz (m-dietz@northwestern.edu), (Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley [1982]), is Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies. Her areas of academic specialization are political theory and the interpretation of texts, with concentrations in feminist theory and politics; democratic theory and citizenship; the history of Western political thought (ancient, early modern, late modern), and contemporary (late twentieth century) political and social theory. Dietz is the author of Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil (Rowman and Littlefield) and Turning Operations: Feminism, Arendt, and Politics (Routledge); and editor of Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory (University of Kansas). One of her most recent articles is “Current Controversies in Feminist Theory” (Annual Review of Political Science). Since 2005, in her previous appointment as a member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota, Dietz has served as editor of the journal Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy, a position she will continue to hold at Northwestern until 2011. Her current research interests include a study of the gendering of the commonwealth in Hobbes’ Leviathan, an article on the politics of religion in Machiavelli’s Discourses, and a book manuscript provisionally titled “Between Polis and Empire: Aristotle’s Politics.”
Jillana Enteen (j-enteen@northwestern.edu) is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies and serves on the Asian American Studies, the Comparative Literary Studies and Asian Studies Faculty. She was the Gender Studies Program Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2004-2007. Enteen teaches and writes about gender and queer theory, new media theory, postcolonial and asian diaspora literature and theory, and cultural studies; her fields of interest include Asian articulations of sexuality and gender, internet communication, and cultural and diaspora studies. A former Fulbright Fellow to Thailand, she specializes in Thai culture and literature in English as well as non-Thai depictions of Thailand. Enteen has published essays concerning online depictions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation in English by overlooked internet populations and the use of English language terms for sexualities and genders in the urban cultures of Thailand. Her book, Virtual English: Queer Internets and Digital Creolization is forthcoming in 2009 from Routledge Press.
Tessie P. Liu (t-liu@northwestern.edu) is Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies. She served as Director of the Gender Studies Program between 2002 and 2004. A social and cultural historian by training, Liu teaches courses on gender and transnationalism, race and sexuality, as well as courses in comparative women's and gender history. She is currently completing a monograph entitled "The Failure of Enlightenment, Not of Darkness": Race, Freedom and Citizenship Between the French and Haitian Revolutions (anticipated for 2006). Her other publications include The Weaver's Knot: The Contradictions of Family Solidarity and Class Conflict in Western France (1750 to 1914), several edited volumes: Gendered Colonialisms in African History (with Nancy R. Hunt and Jean H.Quataert), two special issue of Feminist Studies on "Second Wave Feminism in the United States" (with Nancy Hewitt) and "Women in the South Asian Diaspora (with Judith Gardiner), and other articles. Liu also served as the conference director for the second Edith Kreeger Wolf Conference held in April 2003, "The Ends of Sexuality: Pleasure and Danger in the New Millennium."
Jeffrey Masten (j-masten@northwestern.edu)
holds a joint appointment in Gender Studies and English. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Masten's work on gender and sexuality includes articles on early women writers in English, as well as scholarship on the history of sexuality in Renaissance Europe. He is the author of Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge, 1997); his essays on gender and sexuality have appeared in The Body in Parts, Early Women Writers 1600-1720, "Feminism in Time" (Modern Language Quarterly) , GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Queering the Renaissance. His Gender Studies courses include "The Drama of Homosexuality" and "Early Modern Sexualities." In 2006, Masten was named Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. Prof. Masten's work in gender studies began as an undergraduate at Denison University, where he received the Women's Studies Thesis Prize in 1986. He is currently writing a book entitled Spelling Shakespeare, and Other Essays in Queer Philology.
Ann Orloff (a-orloff@northwestern.edu) (Director and Director of Graduate Studies)
is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Northwestern University, where she is also affiliated with the Center for International and Comparative Studies, the Gender Studies Program and the Institute for Policy Research. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985, and her B.A. from Harvard University in 1970. Orloff's areas of interest include political sociology, historical and comparative sociology, sociology of gender, and social (including feminist) theory. Her research has focused on politics, states and gender, particularly in the social policies of the developed world. Orloff is, most recently, the author of States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States (with Julia O'Connor and Sheila Shaver; Cambridge, 1999) and co-editor of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology (with Julia Adams and Elisabeth Clemens; Duke, 2005). She is at work on a manuscript, Farewell to Maternalism?, that examines shifts in the gendered logics of welfare and employment policies in the U.S. and other advanced democracies. Orloff continues to co-edit the journal she helped to found, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society. She is the director of the new Center for Comparative and Historical Analysis, located in CICS, and is the President of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee 19, on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy. Orloff has held visiting positions at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and the Australian National University, and has been the recipient of a German Marshall Fellowship.
Alexandra Owen (a-owen@northwestern.edu), is Professor of History and Gender Studies and served as the first Director of the Gender Studies Program, overseeing the transition from Women's Studies in 2000. A social and cultural historian of Britain specializing in gender and culture in the Victorian and early twentieth-century periods, her research interests are interdisciplinary and include the history of medicine, medical psychology, sexuality, and heterodox spiritualities. New work focuses increasingly on issues of subjectivity and cultural modernity. She is the author of The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England, and her second book, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004. The recipient of Fulbright, Rockefeller, and NEH fellowships, she has been a fellow at Harvard University and the National Humanities Center. She regularly teaches a large undergraduate class on the history of feminist thought, smaller undergraduate classes on gender and sexuality, the Gender Studies senior research seminar, and a graduate seminar on theoretical and methodological issues in women's and gender history. She was appointed the Board of Lady Managers Professor of Gender Studies from 2004-6.
Frances Freeman Paden (fpaden@northwestern.edu) (Ph.D. Northwestern University) holds a joint appointment in Gender Studies and the Writing Program. She was named the 1998 Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished University Lecturer and in 1999-2000 served as the Interim Director of Women’s Studies, leading the program through its transformation into Gender Studies. For the next four years, she served as the program’s Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies. In the fall of 2000, she organized Gender Studies’ inaugural Edith Kreeger Wolf Conference on Gender, Race, and Reproduction: Bodies, Ideas, Cultures, establishing a conversation among eight distinguished visiting scholars and over three hundred participants from across the U.S. and abroad. In addition to working with the Gender Studies Student Board and LGBT Support Network, she has taught the senior research seminar and directed senior theses. She regularly teaches courses in auto/biography and gender, as well as a freshman seminar. Fran Paden’s research interests center on subjectivity and include studies of poetry, autobiography, and theatre. Forthcoming in 2007 are Troubadour Poems from the South of France, with William. D. Paden (Suffolk, UK: Boydell and Brewer) and “Emblematic Sculptures: Autobiography and the Artwork of Felix Gonzalez-Torres” in Teaching Life Writing Texts (New York: Modern Language Association). She is currently writing a book entitled Imagining Adelene Moffat: Scenes from a Life.
Amy Partridge (a-partridge@northwestern.edu) (Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Gender Studies, where she also serves as Honors Coordinator. She received a Ph.D. in Performance Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from Northwestern University. Partridge's teaching and research interests include topics in the history of medicine, sexuality studies, feminist science studies, gender and labor history, and cultural studies. A former Research Associate at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, her research focuses on popular public health education campaigns, past and present. She is currently working on two book-length projects: Performing the Sanitary Idea in Victorian Britain, which examines the use of popular performance forms in public health campaigns targeted at working-class audiences in Victorian Britain, and a documentary history of the 1970s Women's Health Movement in the United States.
Jane Winston (j-winston@northwestern.edu) (Ph.D. Duke University, 1993) is Chair of the Department of French and Italian, Associate Professor of French and Gender Studies, and former director of the Program in Gender Studies. Her main interests are 20th century literature and theory, with special emphasis on the Marxist critical tradition, Marguerite Duras, Guy Debord, the International Situationists, orientalism, and utopian narrative and practice, as defined by Marin and developed by Marxist critics including Jameson. Her publications include Postcolonial Duras: Cultural Memory in Postwar France (Palgrave 2001) and Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogue (Palgrave 2001), co-edited with Leakthina Chau-Peck Ollier. She has published numerous articles on Duras, Linda Lê, gender, sexuality and the modern French novel, and the social function of French colonial signifiers in postwar American culture. Her article on Duras, Marxism, and Feminism received the Gerald Kahan Award for the best essay in theatre studies. She is currently completing a book on Debord in the aim of contributing to our understanding of his thought and practice, of the social and political function of culture, and of the possibilities of resistance in our current social and historical juncture.
