People

Administrators and Staff

Dr. Elizabeth Gregory, Director, egregory@uh.edu
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  Education
  Selected Publications
  
  Phone: (713) 743-0932
  Email: egregory@uh.edu
  Office: 624 Agnes Arnold Hall
  
  Elizabeth Gregory, Professor of English, directs the WGSS Program and the UH Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality. She writes on American modernist poetry and women’s work and fertility.
  
  Her 2021 book, “Apparition of Splendor: Marianne Moore Performing Democracy through Celebrity, 1952-1970", argues for the brilliance and populist panache of the poems of Moore’s late phase, long ignored by critics. “AOS” offers in-depth readings of these multi-layered poems and of Moore’s daring and innovative use of her late-life celebrity to activate long-held egalitarian principles. Cross-dressed as George Washington in cape and tricorne and writing about accessible topics like sports, TV, holidays, love, activism, mortality and celebrity, Moore reached a wide cross-section of Americans, engaging them in consideration of what democracy meant in their daily lives, around issues of gender/ race/ sexuality/ high-low dynamics/ immigration/ aging/ and more.
  
  Gregory's book “Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood” (2012/2007, Basic Books), based on in-depth interviews with 100+ new later moms and extensive collateral research, shatters the myths surrounding later motherhood. Her more recent work in this realm explores the effect of an expanded school schedule on women’s workforce participation and how to build a culture and economy of care.
  
  Since 1994, Professor Gregory has been the Director of what is now the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program. As Director, she has expanded the program and, along with the Friends of Women’s Studies, developed the early phase of what is now the Carey C. Shuart Women's Archive and Research Collection in UH Special Collections, which collects the papers and oral histories of Houston area women's organizations and women who have made history in Houston. The Friends of Women's Studies sponsor the Table Talk Luncheon, the Barbara Karkabi Living Archives Interview Series, and the Fast Friends Speed Networking socials. Click for more on the IRWGS, founded in 2019.
  
  Education
  - Ph.D. Yale University
  - M.A. University of Kentucky
  - B.A. Barnard College
  Selected Publications
  
  Books
  - Apparition of Splendor: Marianne Moore Performing Democracy through Celebrity , 1952-1970 (U Delaware Press, 2021).
  - Editor, Marianne Moore’s 1960-1969 Poetry Notebook , Transcription and Edition, Marianne Moore Digital Archive (forthcoming, www.moorearchive.org, 2021).
  - Co-Editor, with Stacy Carson Hubbard, 21st-Century Marianne Moore: Essays from a Critical Renaissance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
  - Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood (New York: Basic Books, December 2007; paperback edition with a new Preface, including updated data documenting the recession effect and expanded analysis of the trend, August 2012).
  - Quotation and Modern American Poetry: "'Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads'" (Houston: Texas A&M UP/ Rice UP, 1996).
  - Editor, The Critical Response to Marianne Moore (New York: Praeger, 2003).
  Selected Essays
  - “Late Onset Motherhood: Many Stories, One Radical Plot Change,” in Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40, ed. Nan Bauer-Maglin and Vicki Breitbart (Dottir Press, 2021).
  - Pandemic Gender Snapshots: Series, 1-9 (2020-21) published to date. Houston/Harris County Covid-19 Fatalities by Gender, Race/Ethnicity & Age.
  - Houston/Harris County Gender & Sexuality Data Reports: 2020, 2021 (with Audrey Miller and Claire Chi-Hung Kang).
  - “Is Andy Warhol Marianne Moore?: Celebrity, Celibacy and Subversion.” Twenty-First Century Marianne Moore (Palgrave: 2017): 237-251.
  - Marianne Moore’s ‘Blue Bug’: A Dialogic Ode on Celebrity, Race, Gender and Age,” Modernism/Modernity 22.4 (November 2015): 759-786.
  - "'Still Leafing': Celebrity, Confession, Marianne Moore’s 'The Camperdown Elm,' and the Scandal of Age," Journal of Modern Literature 35.3 (Spring 2012), 51-76.
  - "The Economics and Politics of Delayed Birth Timing," Journal of the Motherhood Initiative 3.1 Mothers and the Economy: The Economics of Motherhood (Spring/Summer 2012), 80-95
  - "Confessing the Body: Sexton, Plath, Lowell, Ginsberg and Berryman," in Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays ed. Jo Gill (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 33-49.
  - "'Combat Cultural': Marianne Moore and the Mixed-Brow," in Critics and Poets on Marianne Moore: A Right Good Salvo of Barks, ed. Linda Leavell, Cristanne Miller and Robin Schulze (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005), pp. 208-21.
  - "Unravelling Penelope: The Construction of the Faithful Wife in Homer’s Heroines", Helios 23, no. 1 (1996): 3-20.
Dr. Dina Alsowayel, Associate Director, dalsoway@central.uh.edu
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  Dina Alsowayel is Associate Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Houston in Texas. She joined the University in 1998 as a post-doctoral fellow in Religious Studies. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University in Political Science and her J.D. from University of Houston. Her B.A. is from Wellesley College. Alsowayel teaches a variety of courses in the History department, these include history of the Modern Middle East, State and Society in the Middle East, Women and Islam, A History of Islam, War in the Middle East and a History of the Palestine-Israeli Conflict. She also takes students to the Arab and Muslim world annually.
Dr. Guillermo De Los Reyes, Associate Director GLBT Studies, jdelosreyes@uh.edu
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  Dr. Guillermo De Los Reyes is an Associate Professor of Latin American Cultures and Literatures and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He also serves as Associate Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and he is a Faculty-in-Residence since 2011. He holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (2004, 1999) and a M.A. and B.A. from the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla (1997, 1994). Dr. De Los Reyes’ research interests are: Colonial Mesoamerica; gender, sexuality, and queer theory; Latin American cultural studies; secret and fraternal societies; and policy studies.
  
  Dr. De Los Reyes is the author of Herencias Secretas: Masonería, política y sociedad en México (2009: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled: “El pecado nefando:” Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Mexico.
  
  More Information click here
Dr. Rachel Afi Quinn, Assistant Professor, raquinn@uh.edu
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  Rachel Afi Quinn received her Ph.D. from the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan in 2012. Her scholarship focuses on race, mixed race identities, gender, and sexuality in the African Diaspora and she employs tools of transnational feminist theory, including ethnography and visual culture in her research. Her first book project, Dominicana-Dominicana: Visualizing Contemporary Dominican Women’s Lives in Santo Domingo, is an interdisciplinary cultural studies project that explores the impact of neoliberal development and U.S. popular media on Dominican women's identities.
  
  For more information, click here.
Dr. Sonny Nordmarken, Postdoctoral Fellow, snordmar@Central.UH.EDU
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  Two goals drive his research: (1) to understand the institutional, relational, and discursive processes that generate transgender inequalities, especially around health, and (2) to understand how social actors, individually and collectively, challenge those processes. Taking an intersectional approach to the study of transgender health, Nordmarken considers how multiple forms of discrimination impact trans people’s physical and mental health, their access to both gender transition-related and non-transition- related health care, and the strategies they use to survive emotionally, physically, and culturally.
  
  Dr. Nordmarken is on leave for FY21 from his position as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia State University.
  
  Recent articles include:
  
  “Queering Gendering: Trans Epistemologies and the Disruption and Production of Gender Accomplishment Practices.” Feminist Studies 45(1): 36-66.
  
  “Contesting Lyme Disease.” The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Body and Embodiment, edited by Natalie Boero and Katherine Mason. Oxford University Press.
Dr. Audrey K. Miller (she/her/hers), Research Associate, Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality, akmiller3@uh.edu
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  Audrey Miller is Research Associate at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality. She also teaches in WGSS, including the psychology-crosslisted course Gender & Violence.
  
  Dr. Miller's research examines predictors and sequelae of violence against women and marginalized groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, sexual minorities, and individuals with disabilities. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference presentations, in scholarly outlets such as Sex Roles, Psychology of Women Quarterly, Violence Against Women, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Journal of Counseling Psychology.
  
  Dr. Miller completed M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology at Ohio University, integrating coursework and scholarship in social psychology, personality psychology, health psychology, and quantitative methods, while completing an APA-accredited clinical program. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in law and psychology through the Division of Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy at University of Washington.
Dr. Aishwarya Lakshmi, Program Director, alakshmi@uh.edu
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  Email: alakshmi@uh.edu
  
  Aishwarya Lakshmi is Program Director of WGSS at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Chicago. Her disciplinary focus is nineteenth and early twentieth century British India, postcolonial literature and theory. She was previously an Assistant Professor of English at Hamilton College, New York.
Kim Howard, Director of Development, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, klhoward@central.uh.edu
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  Kim Howard has served in several development capacities at University of Houston for nearly 20 years, working at Houston Public Media, Blaffer Art Museum and CLASS. She holds a B.F.A. from University of Oklahoma and a Masters in Public Administration from University of Houston.
Bobbie Sue Schindler, Academic Advisor, bschindl@central.uh.edu
Itzel Martinez, Graduate Office Assistant, wgss@uh.edu

Lecturers

SUMMER + FALL 2021:

Introduction to Women's Studies
- Rena Bradley, M.A.
- Dr. Bridget Fernandes
- Dr. Devan Ford-McCartney
- Dr. Aishwarya Lakshmi
- Dr. Audrey Miller
- Grete Norquist, M.A.
- Dr. Andrew Pegoda
- Joy Priest, M.A.
- Dr. Brittany Slatton
Introduction to LGBT Studies
- Dr. Trevor Boffone
- Dr. Rusquin Chadez
- Dr. Andrew Pegoda
- Liam Stone, ABD

Faculty Affiliates

Communication

Beth Olson
713.743.2881 | bolson@uh.edu  
Courses: Gender and Media

Jennifer E. Vardeman
713.743.4294 | jvardeman@uh.edu

Comparative Cultural Studies

Keith McNeal
713.743.3802 | kemcneal@uh.edu

Susan Rasmussen
713.743.3787 | srasmussen@uh.edu 

Economics

Chinhui Juhn
713.743.3823 | cjuhn@uh.edu  
Courses: Economics of Gender, Economics of Education

Education - Counselling Psychology

Nathan Smith
713.743.7648 | ngsmith@uh.edu

English

Hosam Aboul-Ela
713.743.3012 | haboul-ela@uh.edu
Course: Postcolonial Lit

Margot Gayle Backus
713.743.2970 | mbackus@uh.edu  
Courses: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Irish Culture; The British Women's Novel; Queer Closures: The Sexual Politics of Literary Form

Lauren Brosovich
lkbrozovich@uh.edu
Course: Women Writers

Ann Christensen
713.743.2964 | achrist@uh.edu 
Courses: Family, Sex, & Households on the Shakespearean Stage; Gender and Performance in Shakespeare; Labor, Leisure, & Gender in Early Modern Drama

Karen Fang
713.743.2949 | kfang@uh.edu
 Courses: Romantic Women Writers and Film Noir

María Gonzalez
713.743.2938 | mgonzalez@uh.edu 
Courses: Women in Literature, Women Writers, Feminist Theory; Feminist Criticism

Elizabeth Gregory
713.743.0932 | egregory@uh.edu  
Courses: Feminist Methodology, Women Writers, Modern Motherhood

Auritro Majumder
713.743.5873 | amajumder@uh.edu
Course: Postcolonial Lit

Nathan Shepley
713.743.1573 | nshepley@uh.edu
Courses: Gender & Writing

Kavita Singh
kasingh@central.uh.edu
Courses: Caribbean Lit, Postcolonial Lit

Michael Snediker
713.743.3004 | msnediker@uh.edu

Lorraine Stock
713.743.2958 | lstock@uh.edu 
Courses: Writing Medieval Women; Medieval Women in History, Text, and Film

Roberto Tejada
713.743.5847 | rjtejada@uh.edu

Cedric Tolliver
713.743.1407 | ctolliver@uh.edu

Lynn Voskuil
713.743.2979 | lvoskuil@uh.edu 
Course: Feminist Theory & Methodology

Jennifer Wingard
713.743.2975 | jlwingard@uh.edu 
Course: Feminist Theory & Methodology

Health and Human Performance

Daphne Hernandez
713.743.9056 | dhernandez26@uh.edu

Demetrius Pearson
713.743.9849 | dpearson@uh.edu  
Courses: Sport in Contemporary Society

Hispanic Studies

Guillermo De Los Reyes
713.743.3716 | jdelosreyes@uh.edu 
Courses: Gender & Sexuality in Colonial Mexico; Gay/Lesbian Literature in Latin America

Maria Elena Soliño
713.743.3052 | mesolino@uh.edu 
Courses: Hispanic Authors and Feminist Theory

Gabriela Baeza Ventura
713.743.3259 | gbventura@uh.edu

History

Dina Alsowayel
713.743.3732 | dalsoway@central.uh.edu
Courses: Women and Society in the Middle East

Tshepo Masango Chéry
713.743.0507 | tmchery@central.uh.edu
Courses: Love & African Revolution

Xiaoping Cong
713.743.3096 | xcong@uh.edu  
Courses: History of Women in Modern China; East and SE Asian Women in Historical and Cross-cultural Perspectives

Sarah Fishman
713.743.3098 | sfishman@uh.edu  
Courses: Work and Family Life in Modern Europe; Social History of Modern France and Germany

Gerald Horne
713.743.3114 | ghorne@uh.edu  
Courses: Civil Rights Movement

Kairn Klieman
713.743.0907 | kklieman@uh.edu

Natalia Milanesio
713-743-3113 | nmilanesio@uh.edu
Courses: Women in Latin America

Monica Perales
713.743.3103 | mperales3@uh.edu  
Courses: Chicana History, Mexican American Labor History, Identity and Resistance in US History

Linda Reed
713.743.3092 | lreed@uh.edu  
Courses: African American Women in Slavery and Freedom

Todd Romero
713.743.3112 | tromero2@uh.edu  
Courses: Witchcraft in the Old and New World, Gender and Colonialism

Sally Vaughn
713.743.3122 | svaughn@uh.edu  
Courses: Large portions of Medieval history courses deal with women's topics

Leandra Zarnow
713.743.3124 | lrzarnow@uh.edu
Courses: Issues in Feminist Research

Mexican American Studies

Pamela Quiroz

713.743.3134 | paquiroz@ uh.edu

Modern and Classical Languages

Francesca D'Allesandro Behr
713.743.3043 | fdalessandro-behr@uh.edu  
Courses: Women in the Ancient World; Italian Renaissance

Casey Due Hackney
713.743.3240 | cdue-hackney@uh.edu 
Courses: Greek and Roman Mythology

Sandy Frieden
713.743.3051 | sfrieden@uh.edu  
Courses: German Women Film Directors; International Women Writers; New Woman in Literature

Marie Theresa Hernandez
713.743.3074 | mherna18@central.uh.edu
Course: Gender & Sexuality in World Film

Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
713.743.9341 | cmtamber@central.uh.edu
Courses: Female Divinities; Women in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Bhavya Tiwari
713.743.1737 | btiwari@uh.edu

Julie Tolliver
713.743.5368 | Jftolliver@uh.edu
Course: Feminist Philosophy

Philosophy

Cynthia Freeland
713.743.3206 | cfreeland@uh.edu  
Courses: Feminist Philosophy, Feminist Methodology

Johanna Luttrell

Physics

Lawrence Pinsky
713.743.3552 | pinsky@uh.edu

Political Science

Naomi Choi
713.743.0413 | nchoi2@uh.edu
Courses: Multiculturalism in Theory and Practice

Jennifer Clark
713.743.3302 | jclark10@uh.edu

Nancy Sims
713.743.3895
Courses: Women in Politics

Psychology

Psychology

Christiane Spitzmueller
713.743.8625 | cspitzmueller@uh.edu
Courses: Industrial Organizational Psychology

Social Work

Jean Kantambu Latting
713.743.809 | jlatting@uh.edu  
Courses: Forming Alliances across Gender, Race, Class, Culture, and Other Differences

Sociology

Amanda Baumle
713.743.3944 | kbaumle@uh.edu 
Courses: Gender & Society & Sociology of Sexuality

Tracy X. Karner
713.743.3961 | txkarner@uh.edu 
Courses: Gender and Health; Seminar in Masculinity

Sheila Katz
713.743.1918 | smkatz@uh.edu
Courses: Sociology of Gender, etc.

Samantha Kwan
713.743.3948 | sskwan@uh.edu
Courses: Sociology of the Body, etc.

Shayne Lee
713.743.3954 | slee3@uh.edu
Courses: African–American Family, etc.

Maria Monserud
713.743.3962| mamonser@central.uh.edu
Courses: Comparative Family Structures, Sociology of Health Care, etc

Pamela A. Quiroz – Director of CMAS
713.743.3134 | paquiroz@Central.UH.EDU
Courses: Sociology of the Family; Race/Ethnicity, Gender & Social Class; etc.

TO CROSS LIST A COURSE