People

2023

2023

Aziz, Amir Mohamed

  • Research Interests: Critical carceral studies; Disability studies; Gender and Islam; Critical race/ethnic studies; Immigration; Algeria, northern Africa, France; Poetry and resistance.
  • Education: M.A. French Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Bio

Amir Mohamed Aziz is a writer and scholar of critical race/ethnicity and disability studies, gender studies, critical carceral studies, and immigration. Amir’s research focuses on U.S., northern African, Algerian, French, and Muslim contexts at the intersections of gender, ability, race/ethnicity, religion, and migration.

One of Amir’s projects examines how so-called ‘counterterrorism’ and ‘War on Terror’ policies of detention, incarceration, surveillance, and policing have impacted the lives of (im)migrant women, Muslims, and gender non-normative communities of color in the United States.

Amir is also a member of the Middle East Studies Graduate Forum and the Center for African Studies, and teaches courses such as Prison Abolition and Gender, Culture, Representation.

Selected Publications

“On Islamophobia, Anti-Terrorism Securitization, and Secularism in France.” Jadaliyya. March 15, 2021, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/42484/On-Islamophobia,-Anti-Terrorism-Securitization,-and-Secularism-in-France.

“The South of Algeria has something to say.” Africa Is a Country. July 30, 2019. https://africasacountry.com/2019/07/the-south-has-something-to-say.

“Protesting Politics in Algeria.” Middle East Report Online. March 26, 2019. https://merip.org/2019/03/protesting-politics-in-algeria/.

“Rewriting Algeria: Transcultural Kinship and Anticolonial Revolution in Kateb Yacine’s L’homme aux sandales de caoutchouc.” In Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the Diaspora, ed. Abimbola Adelakun and Toyin Falola. 2018. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fellowships/Grants/Awards

  • Center for African Studies Graduate Student Enhancement Grant, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, 2019
  • Summer Fieldwork Grant for Research on Human Rights and Economic Inequality, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2016-2017

Valentin, Al

  • Research Interests: feminist media; media literacy; animated cartoons and video games; gender identity, sexual orientation, race, class, size and ability in popular culture.
  • Education: B.A., Women's and Gender Studies, Political Science, LGBTQ Studies, 2013

Bio

Alessa Valentin is a recent Brooklyn College graduate who majored in Women’s and Gender Studies and double minored in Political Science and LGBTQ Studies. Their senior project focused on the popular Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time, and how its non-normative depictions of various gender expressions and identities can help to socialize children into healthier, less oppressive concepts of gender that move past the model of binary biological sex and towards a more inclusive model of socialized gender identity. Their research interests include how pop culture helps simultaneously reflect and shape the way that we talk about and experience gender identity, sexual orientation, race, class, size and ability with a specific emphasis on animated cartoons and video games. As an independent scholar, Alessa has given talks at various institutions on feminism and media. Alessa hopes to become a professor and possibly start their own media literacy non-profit that will engage with people outside of academia with the hopes of affecting larger change.

Gray, Katherine

  • Research Interests: Film studies, queer theory, transnational theory.
  • Education: M.A., Film Studies, Columbia University B.A., Film Studies, Smith College

Bio

After graduating from Smith College, Katy Gray worked for Orchard Films, a non-fiction production company in New York doing research for historical documentaries. She later joined the staff of NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival, where she was the Festival Assistant and Outreach Coordinator. After completing her master’s degree, Katy worked as a research assistant and project manager for Columbia University's Women Film Pioneers Project, a global initiative historicizing the lives of women working in silent era film industries. Katy's master’s work in film studies focused on American rape-revenge narratives. Her thesis proposed three types of rape-revenge narratives situated within a discussion of the relationship between virtual technologies and the production of physical evidence. More broadly, Katy is interested in the articulation of identity in cinema, notions of reality, feminist pedagogy, and the history of stuntwomen.

Tam, Louise

  • Research Interests: Critical race and ethnic studies; political economy of disability; history of psychiatry; social organization of mental health services; institutional ethnography; mental health evidence in Canadian immigration law; Canadian settler colonialism, multiculturalism, and public health.
  • Education: B.A., Women's and Gender Studies, University of Toronto, 2010 M.A., Sociology in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto (OISE/UT), 2012

Bio

Louise Tam is a PhD candidate in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her research interests include the social organization of mental health services, the institutionalization of anti-oppressive practice, and the political economy of disability/disablement in settler colonial contexts. Her dissertation, “Palliative States,” maps racialized migrants' navigation of the Canadian mental health, immigration, and criminal justice systems. In particular, she interrogates the uses of psychiatric evidence in immigration proceedings for securing legal status and safety.

Louise has published journal articles and book chapters in the fields of Ethnic Studies, Disability Studies, and American Studies on Asian American counseling psychology, mental patients’ rights movements, and psychiatry behind bars. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and the Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis. Most recently, she taught a seminar on intersectionality, disability, and health in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University.

Méndez Velázquez, Anel

  • Research Interests: "Third World" feminist and queer theories and movements, cultural theory, critical theory, Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies.

Bio

Anel Méndez Velázquez was born in Puerto Rico, and grew up San Sebastián, a town in the western-central region of the island. She considers herself to live simultaneously in Puerto Rico and the United States. She holds a B.S. in biology from the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras, where she worked in enzymatic research to develop bioremediation methods for removing toxic compounds from industrial waste. During her time at the UPR, she also did independent studies in art and gender, which introduced her to feminist theory and cultural studies. In 2002, she moved to the U.S., working in Chicago for a year to then move to New York to work on an interdisciplinary Master’s in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University’s Draper Program. Her thesis, “Cultural Nationalism and the Policing of Gender and Sexuality in Puerto Rico, 1930s -1970s,” discussed ways in which official cultural-nationalist discourses on puertorriqueñidad in the mid 20th century invested in heteronormative gender and sexuality constructs and implicated them in the construction of Puerto Rican identity and the Puerto Rican nation. Her interests include: ‘third world’ feminist and queer theories and movements, cultural, and critical theory, Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies, trans-cultural/trans-national gender and sexuality studies, race/ethnicity/nationality discourses in relation to gender and sexuality politics, and gender and sexuality in visual representation and arts, and performance culture.