Our faculty come to Women's Studies by various paths and with diverse interests. These women care deeply about what they teach, and inspire and empower students every day.
"I remain convinced today, as I was the day I arrived at Minnesota State Mankato, that this is a great place to do women's studies. The institutional support, the vibrant student culture, and the collegial atmosphere make this a wonderful place for feminists to work, study, and create social change."
- Chair of women's studies
- Associate professor
- Current research: "Manfood," exploring the depiction of masculinity on the Food Network
- Activist: issues include rape crisis advocacy and LGBT rights work
- Non-profit: co-chair of South Central Minnesota Pride, Inc., which promotes visibility and pride for the LGBTA communities of greater Mankato (http://www.scmnpride.com)
- National board member: chair of Ethics, Equity, and Diversity for the National Women's Studies Association; board member of Committee Against Domestic Abuse (CADA)
- Author: Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault (Northeastern University Press, 2000)
- Author: numerous articles and book chapters on gender-based violence and LGBT politics
- Ph.D.: Women's Studies, Emory University
"It is exciting to be a part of a women's studies department and community that values intellectual work as well as activism. I enjoy being part of a long tradition of feminist teaching, learning, and collaborating at Minnesota State Mankato."
- Associate professor
- Ph.D.: Ohio State University; Post-Doctoral Fellowship: Florida International University
- Fulbright recipient: participated in a study abroad program on Women in Contemporary India in 2005
- Managing Editor: Journal of Women's History (1999-2001)
- Primary interests: gender, sexuality, and history
- Author: Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s (University of Illinois Press, 2008)
- Cool project: worked with students to produce the Coming of Age in the Twentieth Century multimedia website (http://www.mnsu.edu/mngirls), featuring stories of growing up female in the past 100 years
- Current research: gay and lesbian studies courses in the 1970s and 1980s
- Assistant professor
- Global student: Los Angeles, Scotland, Michigan, San Francisco.
- Innovator: created an educational outreach program about women's lives internationally for underserved communities as a Fellow the International Museum of Women in San Francisco
- Researcher: intertwining of the familial and the imperial in the British Caribbean from the nineteenth-century to the present and feminist mothering
- Teacher: graduate and undergraduate courses on Global Feminism and international issues
- Specialty: global feminist theory and analysis
- Essayist: topics include contemporary Caribbean culture and mothering
- Co-editor: Before Windrush: Recovering an Asian and Black Literary Heritage Within Britain (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008); Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse (SUNY Press, 2009)
- Ph.D.: English and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
- Pre-doctoral fellow
- Trailblazer: our first Women's Studies department Pre-Doctoral Fellow.
- Humble: helen chooses not to capitalize her name because she says she is "a work in progress"
- Hails from: Jackson, Mississippi
- Ph.D. candidate: Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota
- Teacher: Introduction to Women's Studies, Coming of Age: Gender & Culture
- Plans to teach: intertextual conversations between literary texts and women's personal and maternal narratives
- Interests: black feminist and diaspora theories
- Other interests: women of color fiction, place, migration, maternal, and quest narratives; the feminist and theoretical implications of identity in women's speculative and detective fiction
- Research topics: diasporic narrative structures and the significance of identity, gender, and home in black women's fictions
Maria Bevacqua
Susan Freeman
Jocelyn Fenton Stitt
helen crump