Faculty News

Announcing the Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium!

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 19:41:45 +0000

Announcing the Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium! Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/16/2023 - 12:41

The Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium is an annual event, hosted by the department of Women and Gender Studies (WGST) and the Arts and Sciences Honors Program, to celebrate students whose honors theses, in any discipline, thematically address the fields of WGST and LGBTQ studies. Each spring 3-7 students from across the University will be selected to present their work in a colloquium setting for an audience of mentors, friends, family, and interested students, faculty, and staff. Each year, WGST and the Arts and Science Honors Program will select a guest speaker to deliver a keynote address.

The Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium is named after Professor Janet Jacobs in honor of her more than thirty-five years as an esteemed member of the WGST department and her 8 years as Program Director for the Arts and Science Honors Program. Professor Janet Jacobs is Professor of Distinction in Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on ethnic and religious violence, gender, mass trauma, and collective memory. She is author of numerous books and journal articles, including Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions (1989), Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self (1994), Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews (2002), Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory (2010), and The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and Its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivors (2016). Her current work is on genocide, collective memory, and counter memorialization. She is the recipient of numerous book awards and in 2005 she received the Hazel Barnes Prize, the most prestigious single faculty award granted by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Off

Traditional

White

New Faculty Profile: Samira Mehta

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 22:25:18 +0000

New Faculty Profile: Samira Mehta Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/01/2019 - 16:25

The newest addition to our faculty, Samira K. Mehta has joined us this semester as assistant professor in Jewish Studies and Women and Gender Studies. Mehta received her PhD from Emory University in American Religious Cultures, and an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School specializing in Christianity and Culture. Previously, Mehta held a faculty position in the Department of Religious Studies at Albright College in Pennsylvania, and in 2016-2017, held the David B. Larson Fellowship in Health and Spirituality at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. As an American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellow, Mehta worked as the manager of strategic initiatives at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

Mehta is the author of Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian–Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies from the Jewish Book Council, and has been reviewed in Reading Religion (AAR), H-Judaic, eSocialSciences, Contemporary Jewry, Christian Century, and The Catholic Standard. It has been called "a must read for everyone who wants to understand the dynamics of Christian-Jewish families in an increasingly multicultural American landscape, especially the children of interfaith families" by H-Net.

Read Now:

For decades, women on the Pill suffered. They didn’t have to
Lauren MacIvor Thompson and Samira K. Mehta
in The Washington Post

Christmas and Hanukkah,
Together Again
Samira K. Mehta in Religion & Politics

Her book chapter “Family Planning is a Christian Duty: Religion, Population Control, and the Pill in the 1960s,” was included in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20^thCentury United States, eds. Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). She has also authored peer-reviewed articles in the journals Theology and Sexuality and Religion and American Culture. Mehta is currently at work on a new book which will discuss how religion in the United States has shaped discourse on contraception and sexual freedoms.

This semester, Mehta is teaching Jewish Feminisms: From Labor Marches to Women’s Marches, which examines Jewish involvement in secular feminist movements, as well as the effects of feminism on Jewish religious and communal life; asking when and how Judaism has mattered to feminism and how feminism has shaped Judaism from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. She is developing a new course for Spring 2020, Religion & Reproductive Politics in the US, which will focus primarily on how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish conversations about sexuality and reproduction have shaped access and attitudes towards reproductive health in the US over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Mehta writes:

“I am delighted to have joined the Department of Women and Gender Studies and the Program in Jewish Studies here in Boulder. I look forward to getting to know the WGST and JWST communities. Please introduce yourself if you see me around campus!”

Meet the newest addition to our faculty, Samira K. Mehta, assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Women and Gender Studies. Mehta received her PhD from Emory University in American Religious Cultures, and an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School specializing in Christianity and Culture. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States.

Off

Traditional

White

David receives Best Should Teach Gold Award

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:59:41 +0000

David receives Best Should Teach Gold Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/23/2019 - 10:59

We are proud to announce that associate professor Emmanuel David has been awarded the 2019 Best Should Teach Gold Award from CU’s Graduate Teaching Program. This award celebrates excellence in teaching, and is given in coordination with the School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School. In receiving this award, David is recognized as an educator who exemplifies high levels of engagement in pedagogical innovation while contributing time and energy to individual students.

“On top of his important accomplishment receiving tenure, we are also thrilled that Professor David has been selected by CU’s the Best Should Teach committee for the Best Should Teach Gold Award,” notes WGST chair Lorraine Bayard de Volo. “With this award, Professor David joins an elite group of dedicated scholars who demonstrate exceptional talents in teaching and academic leadership.”

This year's awardees were honored in September at a ceremony featuring keynote speaker Bettina L. Love, award-winning author and associate professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Love's work is largely concerned with how teachers and schools working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in intersectional social justice for the goal of equitable classrooms.

David's research and teaching focus on gender and sexuality in a global context. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines, where’s he currently spending his sabbatical working on new projects. David is the author of Women of the Storm: Civic Activism after Hurricane Katrina, and the recent article “Transgender Archipelagos,” which received the Best Article Award from the Society of Queer Asian Studies. David also serves as co-director of the LGBTQ Studies Certificate Program.

Congratulations to Dr. David for this well-deserved recognition of his talents, commitment, and hard work!

Associate professor Emmanuel David has been awarded the 2019 Best Should Teach Gold Award from CU’s Graduate Teaching Program, which celebrates excellence in teaching, and is given in coordination with the School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School.

Off

Traditional

White

Montoya receives Craig L. Brians Award

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:36:49 +0000

Montoya receives Craig L. Brians Award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/22/2019 - 11:36

Celeste Montoya, associate professor of WGST and director or the Miramontes Arts & Sciences Program (MASP), was recently awarded the Craig L. Brians Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Mentorship, by the political science education section of the American Political Science Association. This award is presented annually to a faculty member who shows exceptional dedication to and skill in teaching and mentoring students inside and outside the classroom, including their commitments to formal and informal supervision of undergraduate student research, public presentation and publication of their work, and accompanying them to academic conferences.

Dr. Montoya was nominated for this award by Mariana Galvez Seminario, a WGST and Sociology double major. Mariana writes in her nomination letter, "Dr. Montoya has gone above and beyond in helping me gain confidence... she has helped me see that I have what it takes to be successful." Mariana also relates that before meeting Dr. Montoya, “I hadn’t had any experience with knowledge produced by Latinx people. Growing up, I never had a Latinx teacher, and I never read or knew of anything written by a Latinx person… Suddenly, I realized I had a place in knowledge production, too.”

Mariana is currently assisting Dr. Montoya on a research project surrounding Latina activism and mobilizations, titled Guerreras y Puentes: Legacies of Chicana Feminism and Contemporary Latina/x Activism. “I am so lucky to have someone like Dr. Montoya there—who is not only an extraordinary mentor, but also someone who looks like me,” Mariana writes. In addition to the Craig L. Brians award, Montoya has previously been recognized for her excellence in mentoring and teaching with the 2017 Best Should Teach Award, and twice receiving the Women Who Make a Difference award, in 2013 and 2016.

Off

Traditional

White