In “Serena Williams’ Catsuit and #BlackMommaMagic: Speaking Back Through Fashion,” published today in Dismantle, Sarah Rebolloso McCullough brings a feminist sports studies lens to recent controversies surrounding Serena Williams’ tennis attire, and situates them in a historical context that dates back centuries.

Kalindi Vora investigates relationships between gestational surrogates and commissioning parents as part of a larger discussion of the ethics of increasingly globalized assisted reproductive technologies in “Biopolitics of Trust in the Technosphere: A Look at Surrogacy, Labor, and Family,” published in the latest issue of Technosphere magazine. 

Cultural Studies doctoral candidate Jeanelle Hope is researching the role black women artists play in combatting gentrification in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento.  Hope places gentrification in a greater historical context of a racial resegregation that has been ongoing since deindustrialization.

What opportunities and tensions arise in the production of public scholarship at the intersection of scholar-activism and civic engagement in California's Central Valley?

Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and borders are central frames for the feminist research of Ethnic Studies doctoral candidates Leslie Quinatanilla and Jennifer Mogannam.  Quintanilla’s research on the U.S.-Mexico border is in conversation with women of color feminism.  Mogannam examines what is happening in Palestine through a framework of settler colonialism.

Leslie Quintanilla and Jennifer Mogannam are PhD Candidates in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Pharmacologist Renae Ryan discusses gender equity in STEM, institutional change-making, and the value and importance of inclusive and diverse research teams.

Renae Ryan is a Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology in the School of Medical Sciences at Sydney University, Academic Director of Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), and Chair of the Sydney Medical School Gender Equity Committee.

Natasha Myers’ work is grounded in a thinking through of feminism as a political theory of the asymmetries of power in relations not only between humans but also between humans and the “more than human” world.  Much of Myers’ work explores the possibilities of an aspirational episteme in service to plant beings, termed the Planthropocene.

Legal scholar Ikemoto applies critical race and critical feminist theory to an intersectional examination of reproductive rights and justice issues.  The goal of reproductive justice is for every person to have all the means necessary to make self-determining decisions on behalf of themselves.  This includes access to education, safe neighborhoods, and environmental justice.

Karen Tongson discusses queer theory, gentrification, and popular culture.  Feminist research of popular culture can help us understand what kinds of interventions we can make into prevailing cultural messages and create conditions of possibility for new narratives and trajectories.

Dean Spade discusses feminist frameworks for research and resistance in terms of the dynamic between the personal and political as well as the importance of compassion and care in the work to dismantle normative systems of hierarchy.  Centered in a racial and economic justice perspective, Spade uses pinkwashing as an example to raise questions about propaganda and skill building in community media reading practices.