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Women’s and Gender Studies Faculty


  • Department Chair

  • Amy E. Farrell
    Professor of American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies; John J. Curley '60 and Ann Conser Curley '63 Faculty Chair in the Liberal Arts (1991).
    Denny Hall Room 306
    farrell@dickinson.edu
    (717) 245-1869

  • Department Faculty

  • Amy E. Farrell

    Amy E. Farrell
    Professor of American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies; John J. Curley '60 and Ann Conser Curley '63 Faculty Chair in the Liberal Arts (1991).
    Denny Hall Room 306
    (717) 245-1869 | farrell@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Ohio University, 1985; M.A., University of Minnesota, 1988; Ph.D., 1991.
    Dickinson Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2005-06

    Her research includes 20th century U.S. culture, U.S. women's history, body politics, and the history of fat stigma. Her book FAT SHAME is forthcoming in fall 2010. She has also published a book on the history of Ms. magazine during the second wave of feminism, YOURS IN SISTERHOOD: MS. MAGAZINE AND THE PROMISE OF POPULAR FEMINISM.

  • Megan R. Yost

    Megan R. Yost
    Associate Professor of Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies (2006).
    Kaufman Building Room 162
    (717) 245-1357 | yostm@dickinson.edu
    B.S., St. Lawrence University, 1998; M.S., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2003; Ph.D., 2006.

    Professor Yost received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research examines the gendered nature of human sexuality from a social psychological perspective. She is interested in the ways in which traditional conceptualizations of masculinity and femininity impact sexuality, stigma surrounding sexual identities and diverse sexual practices, and power dynamics in sexual relationships (particularly within consensual sexual sadomasochism). She teaches interdisciplinary courses in Psychology and Women's & Gender Studies on gender, sexuality, and qualitative research methods.

  • Stephanie Gilmore

    Stephanie Gilmore
    Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies (2008).
    Denny Hall Room 105
    (717) 245-1063 | gilmores@dickinson.edu
    B.A., University of Alabama, 1993; M.A., University of Memphis, 1997; Ph.D., Ohio State University, 2005.

    Her research analyzes the nuances of grassroots feminist activism in the 1970s and early 1980s across the United States. Her first book, FEMINIST COALITIONS, is an edited collection of historical essays that examine the rich and diverse coalitions feminists formed in postwar America. Her latest book, GROUNDSWELL: GRASSROOTS FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN POSTWAR AMERICA, was published in September 2012. She has started a new project on the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest.

  • Megan H. Glick

    Megan H. Glick
    Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies (2010).
    Althouse Hall Room G12
    (717) 245-1050 | glickm@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Northwestern University, 2002; M.A., Yale University, 2004; M.Phil., 2005; Ph.D., 2008.

    Megan H. Glick teaches cultural studies of medicine and science, and critical race and gender studies. Recent publications include, “Ocular Anthropomorphisms: Eugenics and Primatology at the Threshold of the ‘Almost Human'” (Social Text, Fall 2012), and “Of Sodomy and Cannibalism: Embodiment, Dehumanization, and the Rhetorics of Same-Sex and Cross-Species Contagion” (Gender and History, Aug. 2011). Her current book manuscript examines ideas of the “human” in 20th century scientific and political discourses.

  • Contributing Faculty

  • David M. Ball

    David M. Ball
    Assistant Professor of English (2007).
    East College Room 401
    (717) 245-1116 | balld@dickinson.edu | Visit Web Site
    B.A., Stanford University, 1998; M.A., Princeton University, 2003; Ph.D., 2007.

    His interests in questions of American modernism, popular culture, and minority and oppositional responses to the American experience have shaped his research on the meanings of success and failure in American prose literature. In the coming semesters, he plans to teach classes in contemporary literary theory, the American short story, graphic novels, and the shape of twenty-first-century American literature.

  • James G. Ellison

    James G. Ellison
    Associate Professor of Anthropology (2005).
    Denny Hall Room 307
    (717) 245-1902 | ellisonj@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Michigan State University, 1987; M.A., University of Florida, 1990; Ph.D., 1999.

    A broadly trained cultural anthropologist, Ellison researches political and economic transformations and culture in eastern Africa, focusing on colonialism, socialism, and "neoliberalism." His main fieldwork sites are in Tanzania and Ethiopia. He also co-directs a summer field school in Tanzania to teach anthropological research methods.

  • Susan M. Feldman

    Susan M. Feldman
    Professor of Philosophy (1980).
    East College Room 211
    (717) 245-1226 | feldmans@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Case Western Reserve University, 1974; M.A., 1976; M.A., University of Rochester, 1978; Ph.D., 1980.

    Her interests include the history of modern philosophy, the problem of knowledge and skepticism, philosophy of science and ethics, both pure" and "applied" to such areas as the environment, the status of women, medicine and public policy."

  • Gloria Melissa Garcia

    Gloria Melissa Garcia
    Interim Director of the Women's Center (2012).
    Landis House Room 9, 2nd Floor
    (717) 245-1966 | garciagl@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Hunter College, CUNY, 2000; M.A., Yale University, 2004; M.Phil., 2008.

  • Laura G. Grappo

    Laura G. Grappo
    Assistant Professor of American Studies (2008).
    Denny Hall Room 4
    (717) 245-1070 | grappol@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Wesleyan University, 2001; M.A., Yale University, 2005; M.Phil., 2006; Ph.D., 2010.

    Laura Grappo teaches interdisciplinary courses focusing on cultural theory, queer studies, Latina/o studies, and the politics of race and gender in the Americas. She has just completed her doctoral dissertation entitled “Home and Other Myths: A Lexicon of Queer Inhabitation.” Her research interests include queer and postcolonial theory, ethics, science fiction, contemporary literature, utopian thinking, political philosophies, and anti-colonial futures.

  • Ann M. Hill

    Ann M. Hill
    Professor of Anthropology (1986).
    Denny Hall Room 210
    (717) 245-1659 | hillan@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Columbia University, 1971; M.A., University of Iowa, 1974; Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1982.

    Prof. Hill has conducted fieldwork in both Thailand and SW China. As a cultural anthropologist, Prof.Hill has focused on ethnicity, kinship and religion.Her current research is about inter-ethnic relations on China's frontiers in Yunnan Province, PRC.

  • Lynn Johnson

    Lynn Johnson
    Assistant Professor of Africana Studies (2004).
    Althouse Hall Room G10
    (717) 245-1394 | johnsoly@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Salisbury University, 1996; M.A., Temple University, 1998; Ph.D., 2007.

    Her research interests are in 19th- and early 20th-century American Literature, African-American Literature, and African Aesthetics.

  • Elizabeth Lee

    Elizabeth Lee
    Assistant Professor of Art History (2006).
    Weiss Center for the Arts Room 225
    (717) 245-1259 | leee@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Wake Forest University, 1990; M.A., University of Minnesota, 1993; Ph.D., Indiana University, 2002.

    Professor Lee teaches courses in modern, contemporary and American art as well as in art theory, art historical methods and the representation of gender and sexuality. Her current research explores the connections between turn-of-the-century American art and the history of the body, medicine and health. Her essay, "Therapeutic Beauty: Abbott Thayer, Antimodernism and the Fear of Disease," has appeared in the Smithsonian American Art journal and the medical humanities journal Hektoen International. She is working on a book-length project that examines how matters of health and illness inform artistic practice among Gilded-Age artists and collectors. She has recently received funding for this research from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Huntington Library, the Wolfsonian Institute and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she is a 2010-2011 Senior Fellow.

  • Helene Kim Lee

    Helene Kim Lee
    Assistant Professor of Sociology (2008).
    Denny Hall Room 113
    (717) 245-1249 | leehe@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Cornell University, 1997; M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003; Ph.D., 2009.

  • Andrea B. Lieber

    Andrea B. Lieber
    Associate Professor of Religion, Sophia Ava Asbell Chair in Judaic Studies (1998).
    East College Room 106
    (717) 245-1482 | lieber@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Vassar College, 1989; M.A., Columbia University, 1993; M.Phil., 1995; Ph.D., 1998.

    Her courses explore the transformations of Judaism as a living religion and evolving culture from its origins in antiquity through its varied manifestations in the 20th century. Special interests include: Judaism and early Christianity, Jewish mysticism (kabbalah), women and gender in Jewish tradition.

  • K. Wendy Moffat

    K. Wendy Moffat
    (on leave 2012-13)
    Professor of English (1984).

    moffat@dickinson.edu | Visit Web Site
    B.A., Yale University, 1977; M.A., 1979; M.Phil., 1981, Ph.D., 1986.
    Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching, 1994-1995.

    Her teaching interests include modernism, literature and sexuality, biography, and literary theory. Her biography, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster, received the Biographer's Club Prize in 2010 and was runner-up for the PEN Biography Prize in 2011.

  • Sharon J. O'Brien

    Sharon J. O'Brien
    (on partial leave 2012-13)
    Professor of English and American Studies, James Hope Caldwell Professor of American Cultures (1975).
    Denny Hall Room 316
    (717) 245-1497 | obrien@dickinson.edu | Visit Web Site
    B.A., Radcliffe College, 1967; M.A., Harvard University, 1969; Ph.D., 1975.
    Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1985-1986.

    Sharon O'Brien teaches interdisciplinary courses in the American Studies and English Departments, looking at the multiplicity of American cultures through the lenses of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. The author of a biography of Willa Cather, she is now teaching and writing memoir and personal essay. Teaching and research interests include the politics of memory; illness and narrative; and lifewriting.

  • Jerry Philogene

    Jerry Philogene
    Assistant Professor of American Studies (2005).
    Denny Hall Room 16
    (717) 254-8953 | philogej@dickinson.edu
    B.A., New School University, 1989; M.A., New York University, 1993; Ph.D., 2009.

    Jerry Philogene specializes in 20th century African American and Afro Caribbean visual arts and cultural history. Her teaching interests include interdisciplinary American cultural history and black cultural and identity politics. Her research interests explore the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as articulated in contemporary visual and popular culture.

  • Susan D. Rose

    Susan D. Rose
    Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, Director of the Community Studies Center (1984).
    239 W Louther St
    (717) 245-1244 | rose@dickinson.edu | Visit Web Site
    B.A., Dickinson College, 1977; M.A., Cornell University, 1982; Ph.D., 1984.
    Dickinson Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2000-2001.

    She is interested in life course studies and systems of socialization (family, education, and religion), with a particular emphasis on comparative family systems and the interaction of gender, class, and race. Other areas of interest include: violence, religion, sex education, stratification, and social policy.

  • J. Daniel Schubert

    J. Daniel Schubert
    (on leave Fall 2012)
    Associate Professor of Sociology (1996).
    Denny Hall Room 314
    (717) 245-1227 | schubert@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Towson State University, 1983; M.A., University of Maryland, 1989; Ph.D., 1995.

    He is interested in social theory, cultural studies, gender, health and illness, and the sociology of knowledge. Publications have focused on the ethics of academic practice and poststructuralist thought. Current research focuses on the lives of adults with long-term chronic illness.

  • Regina M. Sweeney

    Regina M. Sweeney
    Associate Professor of History (2001).
    Denny Hall Room 310
    (717) 245-1682 | sweeneyr@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Tufts University,1980; M.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1986; Ph.D., 1992.
    Dickinson Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2011-12.

  • Vanessa C. Tyson

    Vanessa C. Tyson
    Assistant Professor of Political Science (2007).
    Denny Hall Room 102
    (717) 245-1232 | tysonv@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Princeton University, 1998; M.A., University of Chicago, 2002; Ph.D., 2011.

    Professor Tyson focuses her research on interracial alliances in the House of Representatives, and what political dynamics these alliances create outside of more traditional issues regarding race. More broadly, she focuses on Congress and American Political Institutions, as well as race and gender as they operate as social constructs in the United States.

  • Karen J. Weinstein

    Karen J. Weinstein
    Associate Professor of Anthropology (2001).
    Denny Hall Room 215
    (717) 245-1281 | weinstek@dickinson.edu
    B.A., Washington University, 1991; M.A., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1994; Ph.D., University of Florida, 2001.

    Human variation and adaptation, human osteology, human evolution with an emphasis on the evolution of body size and shape and postcranial anatomy in genus Homo, comparative primate skeletal biology, nutritional anthropology