Co-Editor Ayesha K. Hardison holds a joint appointment in the Departments of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. Her area of study is twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature and culture. Her primary research interests are in literary history and Black women’s writing; she also has secondary interests in cultural history, film, visual media, and popular culture studies.
She is author of Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2014) and co-editor of the volume African American Literature in Transition, 1930-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) with Eve Dunbar. She has published articles in African American Review and Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism as well as book chapters in edited collections analyzing representations of Black women in novels, film, and comics. Additionally, she co-guest edited issues of Women, Gender, and Families of Color and The Langston Hughes Review evolving out of “Black Love: A Symposium,” a national conference she co-organized to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God at the University of Kansas. In 2021, she co-directed the three-week virtual NEH Summer Institute “Hurston on the Horizon: Past, Present, and Future.”
In 2019, she became the editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color. She is also director of the History of Black Writing (HBW) at the University of Kansas.
Contact: hardison@ku.edu
EDUCATION
PhD, English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Co-Editor Jennifer Hamer is vice provost for faculty affairs-faculty development at the Pennsylvania State University. She was formerly Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Kansas. Her general area of study is the sociological and interdisciplinary qualitative study of families, especially those within the United States. Within this broad field, her primary research interests are African American fathers, mothers, and families, especially those that are working class.
She has published in varying journals such as the Journal of Marriage and the Family and Journal of Black Studies. In addition, she is the author of What it Means to Be Daddy: Fatherhood for Black Men Living Away from Their Children (Columbia University Press, 2001). Her most recent book, Abandoned in the Heartland: Work, Family, and Living in East St. Louis (University of California Press, 2011), is an analysis of how working class African American men and women negotiate work, kin care, and family in a poor suburb.
She is former editor of Race and Society, the past official journal of the Association of Black Sociologists; founder and former editor of Black Women, Gender, and Family; and founding editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, a multidisciplinary journal published biannually by the University of Illinois Press.
Contact: jenniferhamer@psu.edu
EDUCATION
PhD, Sociology, University of Texas
MS, Sociology, Texas A&M University
BA, Sociology, The University of Texas
Editorial Board Chair Cécile Accilien is a professor of French and Francophone Studies at University of Maryland. Her area of studies are Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures and Film & Media Studies. Her primary research areas are Caribbean Popular Cultures, Film and Media Studies, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies.
She is the author of Rethinking Marriage in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures (Lexington Books, 2008). She has also co-edited and contributed to two collections of essays, Revolutionary Freedoms: A History of Survival, Strength and Imagination in Haiti (Caribbean Studies Press, 2006) and Just Below South: Intercultural Performance in the Caribbean and the U.S. South (University of Virginia Press, 2007); she co-wrote with Jowel Laguerre English-Haitian Creole Phrasebook (McGraw Hill, 2010) and Francophone Cultures Through Film with Nabil Boudraa (Focus Publishing, 2013). She has published articles in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Women, Gender and Families of Color, Revue française, Southern Quarterly and Diaspora in Caribbean Art. She co-edited the volume Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives (University Press of Florida, 2021), and most recently she finished the monograph Bay lodyans: Haitian Popular Film Culture (SUNY Press, 2023).
In 2019, she became the chair of the editorial board of Women, Gender and Families of Color. She is also on the advisory board of the Haitian Studies Association.
Contact: caccilie@umd.edu
EDUCATION:
PhD, Francophone Literatures & Cultures, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
Book Review Editor Adrienne D. Dixson is Director of the Education and Civil Rights Initiative and serves as a professor of Education Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her scholarship examines the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in urban educational contexts, with a particular interest in how these issues impact educational equity for students and people of color in the urban South. Her work is widely published in academic journals and edited books. Her most recent books include Critical Race Theory and Education: All God’s Children Got a Song (Routledge, 2006), Handbook of Critical Race Theory and Education (Routledge, 2013), Resegregation of Schools: Education and Race in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2013), Researching Race in Education: Policy, Practice and Qualitative Research (IAP Publishing, 2014), and A Condition or a Process?: Researching Race in Education (American Education Research Association, 2021). She was listed in the 2021 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Ranking. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
Contact: adrienne.dixson@uky.edu
EDUCATION:
PhD, Multicultural Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MA, Education Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
BA, Music Theory and Composition, Youngstown State University
Assistant Editor Suleyman Bolukbas is a first year Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. Originally from Turkey, his research focuses on comparative analysis of Turkish literature, gender and sexuality studies in literature and culture, and queer and gothic studies. He is interested in queer readings of the gothic as an international and global phenomenon. His research particularly revolves around the global circulation of gothic narratives in relation to local identities, cultures, and nations as well as how gothic’s queerness is reshaped by them. His research interests also include Islamic gothic, LGBTI+ studies, global Anglophone fiction, and film and cultural studies. In 2022, he became the assistant editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color.
Contact: sfb5885@psu.edu
EDUCATION:
MA, Cultural Studies, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
BA, American Culture and Literature (summa cum laude), with a minor certificate in English Language and Literature, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Media Assistant Tessa Boesker is a third year undergraduate student at the University of Kansas. Seeking a breadth of knowledge and research, Tessa majors in both Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Applied Behavioral Science, concentrating in Community Development. She is also pursuing a minor in Social Justice with a focus on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. All of these fields of study come together to reflect and enhance her commitment to equity and social justice, as she aspires to pursue a career in activism and non-profit work with a focus on LGBTQ+ rights advocacy. Tessa joined Women, Gender, and Families of Color as a Media Assistant in February of 2023.
Contact: tessa.boesker@ku.edu
WGFC BOARD MEMBERS
- Armon Perry, University of Louisville, 2012-current
- Assata Zerai, University of New Mexico, 2012-current
- Brenda Stevenson, University of California, Los Angeles, 2012-current
- Carmen Lugo-Lugo, Washington State University, 2014-current
- Dongbin Kim, Michigan State University, 2014-current
- Francille Wilson, University of Southern California, 2012-current
- Fred Bonner, Prairie View A&M University, 2014-current
- Giselle Anatol, University of Kansas, 2014-current
- Hayward D. Horton, University at Albany, SUNY, 2012-current
- Idethia Shevon Harvey, University of Connecticut, 2012-current
- Juan Battle, Graduate Center, CUNY, 2012-current
- Luz-Maria Gordillo, Washington State University Vancouver, 2014-current
- Lynet Uttal, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012-current
- Psyche Williams-Forson, University of Maryland, 2014-current
- Sharon Harley, University of Maryland, 2012-current
- Sarah Deer, University of Kansas, 2020-current
- Stephanie Fitzgerald, Arizona State University, 2014-current
- Venetria Patton, University of Illinois, 2014-current
- Xiaojian Zhao, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2012-current
PAST BOARD MEMBERS
- Manisha Desai, University of Connecticut, 2012-2022
- Adrienne Dixson, University of Illinois, 2014-20
- Chana Kai Lee, University of Georgia, 2012-19
- Darlene Clark Hine, Northwestern University, 2012-19
- Deena Gonzalez, Loyola Marymount University, 2012-19
- Earl Smith, Wake Forest University, 2012-14
- Emilie Phillips Smith, Pennsylvania State University, 2012-19
- Esther Rothblum, San Diego State University, 2012-19
- Jacqueline Macleod, Metropolitan State College of Denver, 2012-19
- Nikol Alexander-Floyd, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, 2012-19
- Nicola Alexander, University of Minnesota, 2014-19
- Patti Sakurai, Oregon State University, 2014-19
- Robin Jarrett, University of Illinois, 2012-19
- Sandra Magaña, University of Wisconsin, 2012-19
- Sarah Chinn, Hunter College, 2012-19
- Shirley Hill, University of Kansas, 2012-19
- Sylvia Martinez, Indiana University Bloomington, 2014-19
- Tammy Kernodle, University of Miami of Ohio, 2012-19
- Tanya Golash-Boza, University of California-Merced, 2012-19
- Tsianina K. Lomawaima, 2012-19
- Velma McBride, Vanderbilt University, 2012-19
- Yolanda Padilla, University of Texas, 2014-19
- Yuri Jang, University of Texas-Austin, 2014-19
Board members, click here to access meeting minutes.