Research Areas

Looking for a WGSS faculty mentor or expert? Discover the research specialties of our faculty to find someone who aligns with your area of interest. Our core faculty strengths include the follow areas:

  • Citizenship and migration (Balogun, Cho, Yarris)
  • Decolonial feminisms (Balogun, Cho, Lara, Saavedra, Yarris)
  • Embodiment, medicalization, health & healing (Balogun, Lara, Yarris, Raiskin)
  • Race/ethnicity, racialization (Balogun, Cho, Lara, Millán, Saavedra)
  • Sexuality, queer studies (Lara, Millán, Raiskin, Saavedra)
  • Social movements (Cho, Lara, Saavedra, Yarris)
  • Transnational feminisms (Balogun, Cho, Lara, Millán, Yarris)
  • Queer of color critique (Cho, Lara, Millán, Saavedra)

Oluwakemi “Kemi” Balogun 
Associate professor 
Research interests: Globalization, nationalism, culture, race/ethnicity, immigration, embodiment, Africana studies

Jamie Bufalino 
Senior instructor 
Research interests: Gender in sexuality in US history; history of feminism; US consumer culture; US racial politics

Yu-Fang Cho
Professor 
Research interests: To develop decolonial, relational, and comparative transnational feminist approaches that speak across different fields and reframe established paradigms

Ana-Maurine Lara 
Associate professor 
Research interests: Afro Latino/a Identities, black queer aesthetics, Vudú in the Dominican Republic, and Afro-Dominicanidad and the struggle against xenophobia in the Dominican Republic

Gabriela Martínez 
Professor
Research interests: Media ownership, media culture, media trans-nationalism, and globalization

Isabel Millán 
Assistant professor 
Research interests: Queer, transnational feminist, and critical race theories; Latinx/Chicanx studies; children's literature, television, and film; comics; science fiction and fantasy

Judith Raiskin 
Professor
Research interests: Post-colonial literature and cultural studies, focusing on gender and comparative feminist theory, postcolonial literature and theory, disability studies, LGBTQ studies, and sexuality

Yvette Saavedra 
Associate professor 
Research interests: The intersection of race, power, identity, colonialism, nationalism, gender and sexuality with a focus on Chicanx History and Studies, Chicana feminist theory, US-Mexico borderlands history and studies, gender and sexuality in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries

Carol Stabile 
Acting dean, Clark Honors College 
Research Interests: Gender, race, and class in media; media history; feminism and technology, feminist media studies; media and communication; digital publishing

Kristin Yarris 
Associate professor 
Research interests: Transnational migration, immigrant rights, social movements, mental health, health equity, wellbeing & social care