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GSWS Faculty News

Dr. Olivia Adams joined the department in August 2023 and accomplished several teaching and research milestones during her first year at UF. Dr. Adams designed and taught a new course, “History of Women’s Medicine,” which explores Western mainstream medicine and doctoring throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also developed a new syllabus for Introduction to Health Disparities, which she will continue to teach during the 2024-25 academic year. Dr. Adams also coauthored several articles, including an exploration of medical mistrust and healthcare seeking experiences among women of color with chronic vulvovaginal pain in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Adams also presented research at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and delivered an invited talk at the Kinsey Institute. In Spring 2024, Dr. Adams jumpstarted her social science research lab with four undergraduate students who contributed to two ongoing projects focused on chronic vulvovaginal pain. One of these projects was funded by the departmental Mellon Foundation grant. Lastly, Dr. Adams supported multiple students this semester, including undergraduate honor’s thesis student Grace Sutton and first year MA student Alexandria Gibson.

Dr. Kendal Broad has been on sabbatical during 2023-2024, feverishly writing. Her recent article: “Stories of Anti-Racist Gay/Lesbian Gender Alliance: Articulating Intersectional Solidarity in the 1980s” was published in Gender & Society [38 (1): 89-113] in February of 2024. Dr. Broad greatly appreciates the support of the Department and many in it who helped her develop this piece.

Our colleague, Dr. Hilary Coulson, is moving on to other opportunities outside UF. Over the past few years, Dr. Coulson contributed to our department by developing several new courses, teaching through the challenges of the pandemic and hyflex/zoom (with a newborn!), and she has sparked an interest in many of our students to add the major or minor. We hope that Dr. Coulson’s transition is a positive one and wish her much success moving forward.

Dr. Maddy Coy’s book Violence Against Women in the US was published by Routledge in April. She is very grateful to students who helped choose a beautiful cover! In February she was honored to receive the 2023-2024 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award. Dr. Coy continues to work on research about responses to sexual battery with the Alachua County Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center and Dr. Alyssa Zucker. She has recently begun a project exploring the practice-based evidence of specialist sexual and domestic violence organizations in Florida, thanks to a team of brilliant undergraduate students and the department Mellon Foundation grant to promote student research.

Dr. Jillian Hernandez published an essay for the anthology The Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture, and Identity and a review of Yvette Mayorga’s first solo museum exhibition for Intervenxions, the publication of The Latinx Project at NYU. She gave two keynote addresses, one for the Center on Race and Ethnicity in Society annual symposium at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the other for the “Too Extra: Black, Latinx, and Afro Latinx Adornment, Performance, and Identity” symposium at Cal State Fullerton. Dr. Hernandez delivered additional invited presentations at Yale, NYU, the Neuberger Museum of Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and other institutions. She presented research at the Pop Conference at USC and the annual conference of the American Studies Association. Dr. Hernandez organized two book talks on campus featuring Sesali Bowen and Juana María Rodríguez. She also devoted time to building community with the Department’s graduate students.

Dr. Bonnie Moradi collaborated with Department faculty to garner an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant focusing on research, experiential learning, and professional pathways in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. She coauthored an article reporting the results of a citation network analysis of minority stress scholarship (Moradi et al., 2024). She was invited to present at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology and was a panel member for the UF Preparing Future Faculty Program.

Dr. OG Murrell is working on several projects, including editing a volume, Loopholes of Retreat, to be published by Virginia Tech in 2025. They presented part of their girlhood research at the Girlhood Studies Collective’s second annual symposium in April. They will be continuing their research on AfroCaribbean girlhood in Sint Maarten during the summer and working on several writing projects. They are a recipient of the Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund Award 2024 and will serve as the faculty mentor for one of our women’s studies students who is a recipient of a CLAS Scholars Program award. Dr. OG looks forward to continuing their research and teaching WST 3015 in the fall.

Dr. Hina Shaikh has been working on her book project this year on Muslim women in Big Data, AI, and surveillance. She has also been leading undergraduate and graduate students in the Data Justice Lab in collecting and analyzing massive datasets on Florida K9 unit policing practices.

Dr. Trysh Travis presented an invited paper titled “Keyword: Recovery” at the Making Habits/ Breaking Habits—Keywords in the History and Politics of Addiction conference sponsored by the History of Science Department at Princeton University this winter. She continues to serve as an Associate Dean in the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Cinnamon Williams won the NWSA/University of Illinois Press First Book Prize to develop her book: Slave of a Slave No More. She also received a UF Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund Award for the 2024 cycle. Since arriving at UF in 2023, Dr. Williams has been teaching the class Practicum in Health Disparities, building connections between our students and community organizations in Alachua County and beyond. Additionally, she offered the graduate seminar Foundations/Future of Black Feminism.

Dr. Alyssa Zucker collaborated with former M.A. student Alexandra Weis to publish “Blood and guts: Objectification predicts menstrual suppression” in the journal Women’s Reproductive Health. With graduate certificate student Hannah Brown and two colleagues from outside UF she co-authored “Prohibited by pity: Perceptions of the warmth, competence, and sexual rights of women labeled with intellectual disability” in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy. She also contributed an invited chapter “Understanding and Addressing LGBTQ Health Disparities: A Power and Gender Perspective” to the Palgrave Handbook of Psychology, Power, and Gender. Together with Dr. Jillian Hernandez and Dr. Aimée Bourassa she offered the course Professional Pathways in Women’s Studies and delighted in assisting students to translate their Women’s Studies skills and knowledge into career opportunities.