Faculty

Profile

I am a US gender historian with a focus on the 20th and 21st movements for gendered labor rights. My research regularly focuses on "visual activism," which I define as images produced and disseminated as a form of social and political activism. I currently have two books under contract. The first, "Reproducing Justice: Visual Activism in the Era of Roe v. Wade" (NYU Press), studies the visual strategies utilized by the antiabortion movement and reproductive rights activists between 1973-2022. The second, "Sex Work is Real Work" (Polity Press) responds to the quesiton of why sex workers' rights activists adopted a labor rights paradigm in their quest for decriminalization and destigmatization.

I have been a faculty member for over 30 years and have also held a range of administrative positions. I am currently University Professor of Art, Media, and Cultural History, and I am Director of the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (which encompasses the Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the undergraduate minor in Gender Studies). I currently teach courses on a range of topics related to gender history.

Prior to my current projects, I have published three books, numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, additional articles and book chapters. I have exhibited my art works internationally. My article "The Spectacle of Death in the Fight over Reproductive Rights" has recently been published in the peer-reviewed journal Polity (vol. 58 no 3). Prior to that, I co-edited a special issue of the Radical History Review with Judith R. Walkowitz, titled "Troubling Terms and the Sex Trades" (May 2024 Issue 149).

Degrees Held

PhD, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, 2009

MA, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, 2005

MFA, Art & Critical Writing, California Institute of the Arts, 1995

BFA, Graphic Design, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987

Recent Publications

Troubling Terms and the Sex Trades, special issue of Radical History Review, Volume 2024, Issue 149, co-edited with Judith R. Walkowitz (May 2024).

“The Graphic Satire of Robert Minor and Art Young: text and image in political cartoons,” Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 13, no. 1 (June 1, 2022): 43–76.     

Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, Temple University Press, 2021

Modern Print Activism in the United States, Re-issued monograph in paperback, Routledge, 2016. Original publication: Ashgate Publishing, 2011

“‘Breed!’: The Graphic Satire of the Birth Control Review,” in Art, Politics, and the Pamphleteer, eds. Jane Tormey and Gillian Whiteley, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

“A Women’s War Against War: The Socialist Feminism of Four Lights: An Adventure in Internationalism,” Radical Americas 3, no. 1 (2018): 1-16.

Gender and Activism in a Little Magazine: the Modern Figures of the Masses, Re-issued edited book in paperback, Routledge, 2016. Original publication: Ashgate Publishing, 2013

“Someone You Know is a Sex Worker: A Media Campaign for the St. James Infirmary,” in eds. Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher, and Nicola Smith, Queer Sex Work, Routledge, 2015.