Inderpal Grewal is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is also Professor in the Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies Program, and the South Asian Studies Council, and affiliate faculty in the American Studies Program. Her research interests include transnational feminist theory; gender and globalization; NGO’s and theories of civil society; theories of travel and mobility; South Asian cultural studies, and postcolonial feminism. She is the author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel (Duke University Press, 1996) and Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms(Duke University Press, 2005). With Caren Kaplan, she has written and edited Gender in a Transnational World: Introduction to Women’s Studies (Mc-Graw Hill 2001, 2005) and Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational: Feminist Practices (University of Minnesota Press, 1994). With Victoria Bernal, she has edited Theorizing NGO’s: States, Feminism and Neoliberalism (Duke University Press, 2014). She has forthcoming a book on the relation between security, gender, race and American neoliberalism, entitled “Exceptional Citizens? Advanced Neoliberalism, Surveillance and Security in Contemporary USA” (Duke University Press, 2016). Her ongoing projects include essays on the relation between transnational media, corruption and sexual violence, and a book project on masculinity and power in the memoirs of elite bureaucrats in postcolonial India.
Katherine Baldwin is an assistant professor of political science and a faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Her current research projects examine how community-level institutions interact with the national state to affect development, democracy and conflict, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She has published articles in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Politics. Her article “Why Vote with the Chief? Political Connections and Public Goods Provision in Zambia” won the 2014 award for the best article published in the previous volume of the American Journal of Political Science.
Kathryn Lofton is a historian of religion with a particular focus on the cultural and intellectual history of the United States. Her archival expertise is in the post-Civil War era, but her research draws upon the histories and anthropology of religions in the U.S. from pre-contact to the present in order to elucidate the meanings of and relationships between religion, modernity, and the secular. This research focuses scholarly attention on the public affects, intimate desires and corporate entities that have influenced—and are in turn influenced by—religious activity. Her book, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (2011) used the example of Oprah Winfrey’s multimedia productions to analyze the nature of religion in contemporary America. She is currently researching several subjects, including the sexual and theological culture of early Protestant fundamentalism; the culture concept of the Goldman Sachs Group; and the religious contexts of Bob Dylan. For her work at Yale she has won the 2010 Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching, the 2013 Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College, and the 2013 Graduate Mentor Award in the Humanities.
Jess Newman is a doctoral candidate at the Yale University Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation fieldwork (2013-2015) focuses on abortion and single mother NGOs in Morocco. Her research includes working with local activists, NGOs, physicians, and scholars to understand the articulation and mobilization of sexual politics and human rights as they relate to abortion. She also works closely with groups providing assistance to single mothers to elucidate women’s decision-making and care-seeking processes when faced with unplanned pregnancies. Her doctoral dissertation research is supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, and the Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She first began engaging with issues related to abortion and sexuality in Morocco while on a Fulbright IIE Fellowship in 2008. After beginning her doctoral studies in 2010, she received Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) and American Institute for Maghrib Studies Short-Term Research fellowships. Her research interests include anthropology of the body and reproduction, feminist theories of state and non-state, biopolitics, the post/colony, and gender and sexuality studies.
Dianne Lake is a senior in Yale College originally from Freetown, Sierra Leone double majoring in Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is currently completely her thesis on the transformative effects of women’s political participation in Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone and the development paradoxes that hinder gender equality on the continent. Her research is supported by the Shana Alexander Research Fellowship in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, the John E. Linck & Alanne Headland Linck Summer Fellowship and the Gary Stein Fellowship. On campus Dianne has been involved with the Yale Undergraduate Association for African Peace and Development (YAAPD), the Black Solidarity Conference, the Communication and Consent Educators Program, and the a cappella group Shades. Dianne is also an assistant to the Gruber Program for Women’s Rights and Global Justice at Yale Law School as well as a student manager for the Political Science Department at Yale. Dianne has a strong interest in international development, social justice, and women’s rights, and is interested in pursuing a career in foreign policy and international law.
Sponsored by the MacMillan Center, the Council on African Studies, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and the Political Science Department at Yale.