Core Faculty






			Dr. Suzanna Danuta Walters, Chair walterss@indiana.edu Professor of Gender Studies Adjunct Professor in Sociology and Communication & Culture Suzanna Danuta Walters is Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University, where she also holds appointments in the departments of Sociology and Communications and Culture. Previously, she was a Professor of Sociology and Director of Women's Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Her work is centered on questions of gender, sexuality, family, and popular culture and she is a frequent commentator on these issues for the media. Her most recent work - All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (University of Chicago Press, 2001) - examined the explosion of gay visibility in culture and politics over the past 15 years and raised pressing questions concerning the politics of visibility around sexual identity. The book was a finalist for numerous literary awards (including the Lambda Literary Award) and was the subject of radio and television interviews and discussions, culminating in a 15 city book tour in the Fall of 2001 and Spring 2002. Her other works include books on feminist cultural theory (Material Girls: making sense of feminist cultural theory), mothers and daughters in popular culture (Lives Together/Worlds Apart: mothers and daughters in popular culture) and numerous articles and book chapters on feminist theory, queer theory and LGBT studies, and popular culture. She is currently engaged with several research projects, including an extension of the analysis of gay visibility that asks about the construction of sexual communities and identities in a "post-visibility" age. In addition, she continues to investigate questions of family formation and is specifically researching how different modalities of "choice" figure into the decision-making of single mothers. Dr. Judith A. Allen juallen@indiana.edu Professor of Gender Studies and History Professor Allen's areas of research specialization include: the comparative histories of feminism, sex research, feminist theory and politics; feminist critiques of disciplinary knowledge and the emergence of interdisciplinary women's/gender studies; women's social and cultural history in Australia and the Pacific Rim; and gender issues in crime and criminal justice. Before joining IU in 1993, Professor Allen held Australia's first Chair of Women's Studies. Her present research involves a study of conflicting strands in changing interwar and postwar understandings of sexuality, with a focus on sex research, marriage counseling, birth control technology, and sex education movements. She has been the recipient of Australian Research Council Large Grants, and has been a nominee for prestigious Australian book prizes. Dr. Marlon M. Bailey baileymm@indiana.edu Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and African American & African Diaspora Studies Professor Bailey's research interests include: African Diaspora studies, queer diasporas, race, gender, and sexuality, queer theory, Black queer studies, theatre/performance studies, ethnography, and HIV/AIDS (cultural politics, research, and prevention of HIV/AIDS in Black communities). Dr. Bailey earned his PhD in African Diaspora Studies with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. His dissertation, "The Labor of Diaspora: Ballroom Culture and the Making of a Black Queer Community," is an ethnographic study of Ballroom culture in Detroit MI, a Black and Latina/o queer culture in the U.S. Dr. Bailey has published on Black queer performance as well as the same-sex marriage debates. Currently, he is working on a manuscript that expands his ethnographic study of Ballroom culture. Dr. Bailey is also an accomplished professional actor, director, and performance artist. His most recent performance was in "The Hard Evidence of Existence," at the Thick House in San Francisco, California. During the 2006-07 academic year, Dr. Bailey is finishing a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley and will begin teaching in the fall of 2007 at IU Bloomington. Dr. Laurel L. Cornell cornell@indiana.edu Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Sociology Professor Cornell's principal area of expertise is demographic transformation in Japan and in cross-cultural perspective, with a focus on gender issues in marriage, divorce, reproduction, households, aging and mortality from the eighteenth century until the present. Professor Cornell has been a faculty member at IU since 1987. Her current topical research interests include gender, space, architecture, and urban design. Professor Cornell has secured grant and fellowship support from the National Science Foundation and the Japan Foundation. Dr. Lessie Jo Frazier frazierl@indiana.edu Assistant Professor of Gender Studies Professor Lessie Jo Frazier's work focuses on political culture in the Americas. She is particularly interested in the intersection of cultural studies theories of power, subjectivity, and ideology with questions of political economy. She has published on gender, nation-state formation, human rights, mental health policies, memory, poetics, activism, and feminist ethnography. She is currently writing a book on gender, sexuality, and political culture in Chile; a co-edited volume on gender and sexuality in a global 1968; as well as articles on Cold War POWs and masculinity (using film and oral history), and amnesia as a paradoxical form of agency (using queer theory). Professor Frazier's teaching includes courses on transnational feminisms; gender, race and the erotics of imperialism; gender and sexuality in Latin America; theories of gender and sexuality; feminist perspectives on warfare and militarism; methodology; and gender and human rights. Dr. Sara L. Friedman slfriedm@indiana.edu Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology Professor Friedman's research focuses on the relationship between political processes and intimate life in China and Taiwan. Her first project looked at how China's socialist regime sought to produce new socialist citizens through transforming intimate practices associated with marriage, labor, bodily adornment, and same-sex networks. More recently, she has begun a multi-sited project that examines how our conceptions of citizenship are changing as people and capital flow across national borders. By working with people who are moving between Taiwan and China, Professor Friedman explores changes in the discourses and practices of citizenship in the region and their relationship to gender and kinship identities. In Gender Studies she teaches courses on The Politics of Marriage, Cross-Cultural Gender Formations, and Gender and Citizenship, as well as Anthropology courses on culture and power and contemporary Chinese societies. Dr. Helen C. Gremillion hgremill@indiana.edu Associate Professor of Gender Studies and the Peg Zeglin Brand Chair in Gender Studies Helen Gremillion is the first holder of the Peg Zeglin Brand Chair in the Department. Her research and teaching interests include gender and science, constructionist theories of the body and of sexualities, medical anthropology, consumer culture, and feminist ethnographies. Her book "Feeding Anorexia: Gender and Power at a Treatment Center" (Duke University Press, 2003) shows that therapies for anorexia participate unwittingly in cultural ideals of gender, physical fitness, individualism, and family life that contribute to anorexia's conditions of possibility. Her current research analyzes therapeutic modalities that apply theories of gender and power elaborated in poststructuralist accounts of identity formation. Dr. Colin R. Johnson crj2@indiana.edu Assistant Professor of Gender Studies Adjunct Assistant Professor in American Studies and History Colin Johnson holds a BA with honors in Law, Letters and Society from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in non-metropolitan America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is especially interested in the history of homosexuality in rural America and is currently completing a book manuscript on that subject. Other areas of interest include 19^th and 20^th century US literature, the history of agriculture and the environment, queer theory, psychoanalytic theory, and film and media studies. Dr. Jennifer E. Maher jemaher@indiana.edu Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies Dr. Maher has completed a Ph.D. in English and Modern Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has worked previously as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin where she taught courses in Popular Culture, American Women's Literature, Third Wave Feminism, and Gender and the Body. Her most recent essay was published in the NYU Press anthology Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2004) and her most recent work of fiction was published in Seal Press' Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth about Women's Friendships (2005). She is a frequent contributor to Bitch: A Feminist Response to Popular Culture. At Indiana University, Dr. Maher's area of expertise covers popular culture; American women's literature; third wave feminism; gender and the body; and contemporary women's writing. She is currently at work on a larger project focused on representations of teachers in popular culture. Dr. Fedwa Malti-Douglas gender@indiana.edu The Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities, Professor of The College of Arts & Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Law Professor Malti-Douglas began her career in Middle Eastern studies, producing nine books in this area (two chosen for singular distinction) and over 80 articles. She has served on many boards (including editorial boards) and received numerous fellowships and endowed lectureships, as well as the 1997 Kuwait Prize for Arts and Letters and the 1998 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Dean for Women's Affairs at IU. Professor Malti-Douglas has recently broadened her intellectual interests. Hisland (SUNY Press, 1998) is a satirical novel of the academy. Her most recent book, The Starr Report Disrobed (Columbia University Press, 2000), links the interdisciplinary area of gender, sexuality, and the body with that of American legal and political narratives. Her current research includes work in Europe and Latin America as well as the United States, as it continues her interest in visual and verbal narratives. Professor Malti-Douglas was recently selected for membership in the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the country. She is only the fourth IU faculty member to receive this award. In the fall of 2004 she was inducted into the society with professor and author Noam Chomsky, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer. The American Philosophical Society was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743. For more details... Currently, Dr. Malti-Douglas is serving as the Editor-in-Chief of a new four-volume Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender for MacMillian. Dr. K. Anne Pyburn apyburn@indiana.edu Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology Professor Pyburn's research centers on the ancient Maya, with secondary foci in archaeology and gender, archaeological ethics, and public archaeology. She joined the faculty at IU in 1996. Professor Pyburn is director of the Chau Hiix Project, funded by the National Science Foundation and Indiana University. She holds a government of Belize permit to excavate the remains of Chau Hiix, an ancient Mayan city, and directs an archaeological field school at the site. She also directs the MATRIX project, Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the 21st Century. This National Science Foundation project brings together 30 archaeologists to design a new set of teaching materials for undergraduate education in archaeology. Professor Pyburn is an elected member of the American Archaeological Association's Ethics Committee and the book review editor for Latin American Antiquity. Dr. Stephanie A. Sanders sanders@indiana.edu Professor of Gender Studies and Associate Director of the Kinsey Institute Professor Sanders' research, conducted in the United States and Scandinavia, addresses: sexual behavior; sexuality, sexual identity, and gender relations; sex differentiation; gender difference in psychological and physical development; effects of prenatal hormones and drugs on human development; women's health and well-being, menstruation, menopause, and the life cycle; and biopsychological perspectives on debates in feminist theory. Instructing Gender Studies courses since 1995, her current research analyzes gendered dimensions of scientific research methodologies; the effects of oral contraceptives on sexuality and well-being in women; sexual behavior and risk for sexually transmitted diseases; and the long-term behavioral effects of prenatal exposure to drugs and hormones. Professor Sanders recently served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and has been a co-principal investigator on research grants from such agencies as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Sanders recently won a prestigious award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Read More ... Dr. Brenda Weber breweber@indiana.edu Assistant Professor of Gender Studies Adjunct Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, American Studies and English Professor Weber's areas of interest include nineteenth and twentieth century British and United States literatures and media, cultural history and social theory, the politics of representation, reception and the construction of celebrity, cultural studies of the body and its representation, masculinity theory, popular culture, and feminist geographies. Recent essays include "The Text as Child: Gender/Sex and Metaphors of Maternity at the Fin de Siecle," published in Feminist Studes; "What Makes the Man? Television Makeovers, Made-Over Masculinity, and Male Body Image," published in The International Journal of Men's Health; and "Beauty, Desire, and Anxiety: The Economy of Sameness in ABC's Extreme Makeover," published in Genders (available at http://www.genders.org ). Her present book projects are Into the Makeover Maze: Before and After Bodies and the (Ill)Logics of Makeover TV and Figuring Fame: Women, Gender, and the Body in the Transatlantic Production of Literary Celebrity. A recent article can be seen at: http://www.genders.org/g41/g41_weber.html Dr. Richard R. Wilk wilkr@indiana.edu Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology Professor Wilk has conducted research with Mayan people in the rain forest of Belize, in West African markets, and in suburban California. Professor Wilk has published on topics as diverse as beauty pageants, household organization, power and decision-making, economic anthropology, and the effects of television on culture. Most of his recent research concerns the global environmental impact of mass consumer culture, gender and consumer culture, and the history of the global food system. His current book project addresses gender and the origin of consumer culture. His most recent publication is The Anthropology of Media, co-edited with Kelly Askew (Blackwell). Professor Wilk is on the senior Cultural Anthropology review panel at the National Science Foundation and is president of the Society for Economic Anthropology. He has recently been working on the way masculinity was defined in the working cultures of male work groups in the extractive economy of the nineteenth century. Professor Wilk's goals include a better understanding of the role that gender plays in driving the constant spiral of increasing wants and needs in modern consumer culture.


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