Mallory Szymanski earned her MA in Women’s Studies in 2008 and her PhD in US history from UF in 2017. She taught several Women’s Studies courses between 2012 and 2017. She now teaches at Alfred University (AU) where she was recently tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of History. At Alfred, she co-founded and directs the Africana Studies program and serves on the Executive Committee for the Women and Gender Studies program. Mallory is editor at Clio and the Contemporary.
AU students say that my reputation has two pillars: my classes are challenging but fruitful, and my events always have good food.
Beneath this foundation lay a web of feminist mentors from UF who taught me the twin pedagogical virtues of support and community-building. -Dr. Mallory Szymanski
My MA thesis advisor and teaching mentor, Dr. Trysh Travis, had the most profound impact. She taught me that holding high standards for students is difficult but worthwhile, and that honest and constructive feedback demonstrates respect for students’ work and its potential. Dr. Kendal Broad gave us all the gift of “part of what I hear you saying,” a phrase I offer my students as an on-ramp to new ideas the way Dr. Broad did for me. Dr. Bonnie Moradi championed professional rigor and personal well-being, captured by her advice about clarity and rigor in mentoring that I have taken as a mantra: “transparency is support.”
Ustler Hall continued to be my home while I completed my PhD in history at UF. As anyone who knows her can attest, Donna Tuckey held that whole place together. Her skillful event-planning and warm greeting at the top of the stairs made Women’s Studies a radically welcoming space. I bring Donna Tuckey energy to my campus when I host community-building events for students such as field trips to New York City, networking workshops, and graduation celebrations. Like Donna, I make sure the food is always good and abundant, and any leftovers go home with students.
Outside the classroom, I research and organize with Free the People Roc (FTP), an organization formed in the wake of the murder of Daniel Prude by Rochester Police Officers in 2020. I lobby for Daniel’s Law, a New York State initiative designed to fund mental health professionals as firstresponders. This work draws on graduate seminars I took in classrooms of Ustler Hall about feminist theories of power and coalition-building which always pointed to praxis beyond the ivory tower.
Recently, I shifted my research focus to more directly link my applied work and intellectual interests. I am co-author of two articles and a manuscript-in-progress with Ted Forsyth, a social scientist and public scholar. Our project responds to Black feminists’ calls to #sayhername and focuses on Black women shot by police in Rochester, NY, since 1975. We are conducting oral histories and archival research into traumatic experiences of Black and brown people, so the prescient lessons about embodied research from my feminist methodologies courses with Drs. Peña and Babb inform my work.
My training at UF primed me to be persistent. My feminist mentors taught me that the benefits of truth-telling and community-building outweigh the risks. This lesson, which I hope to bestow on my students, fuels me with an unwavering faith that collective liberation can be—and will be—achieved.