Affiliated Postdoctoral Fellows & Visiting Scholars
The Center welcomes the following post-doctoral and visiting scholars from other programs as affiliates of the CSGS. Students should view the schedule for more information on their courses crosslisted with GNSE and those they may teach in the Core. Postdoctoral fellows are also eligible to advise B.A. and M.A. theses.
Post-doctoral scholars are listed alphabetically by school/division - Divinity, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Divinity School
Maureen Kelly
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow at the Divinity School and in the College, Divinity School
Ph.D., Religion Literature and Visual Culture, University of Chicago
makelly@uchicago.edu
Maureen Kelly works on the connected questions of power, truth, and subjectivity in the study of Religion, with a focus on the role of Christianity in the genealogy of the modern subject. This work attends to the relationship between the formation of concepts and the formation of subjects, raising topics of gender and sexuality through the lens of power. Her current work re-reads the Confessions of Rousseau and Augustine through a Foucauldian critique of confession, exploring the Foucauldian notion of truth-games, the relationship between public rituals of truth-telling and their political and ethical effects, and the affective histories of their rhetorical forms. In teaching this year, her courses address the sexual ethics of early Christianity delineated from Greco-Roman sexual ethics in the final volumes of Foucault’s History of Sexuality (Foucault and the Christians), and the modes though which writing establishes authority in early modern and Enlightenment founding texts of self-government (Religion, Writing, Revolution).
Mark Lambert 
he/him/his
Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., Theology, University of Chicago
lambert@uchicago.edu
I teach and write across the boundaries of religious studies, history of medicine, and medical ethics. My research explores the dynamic relationship between religion and medicine, particularly at the intersection of stigmatized illness, religious belief, and public health paradigms. Currently, I focus on the complex cultural interpretations of leprosy throughout history and how they have impacted therapeutic responses to the disease, especially in the context of the 19th- and 20th-century leprosy settlements on Molokai, Hawaii. Calling attention to how Native Hawaiians were disproportionately victimized by a century-long policy of permanent segregation, I also address the extent to which the myth of leprosy’s sexual transmission further embedded the disease in patterns of moralization. In my teaching I not only interrogate the role of religion vis-à-vis reproductive health, but I also examine links between the stigmatization of leprosy, HIV/AIDS, and monkeypox as sites where cultural assumptions about sexuality becomes contested.
Christine Trotter 
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow in the Divinity School and the College
Ph.D., Biblical Studies, University of Chicago
crtrotter@uchicago.edu
Dr. Trotter is a scholar of the New Testament and early Christian literature with interests in the ethical consequences of biblical interpretation, especially in relation to women, gender, Christian anti-Judaism, and ecology. She has taught extensively about the intersection of religion and gender, with a focus on the portrayal of women in biblical literature and debates in the early church regarding gender roles. She is currently researching the history of biblical interpretation concerning Elisabeth, a character from the Gospel of Luke who is often remembered for her unusual pregnancy but rarely recognized for her prophetic insight. Dr. Trotter is teaching Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations I this fall and will offer Suffering, Grief, and Consolation in the winter and Heaven, Hell, and Life After Death in the spring.
Raúl E. Zegarra 
he/him/his
Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., Theology, University of Chicago
rzegarra@uchicago.edu
An award-winning scholar, Raúl E. Zegarra is the author of four books, multiple book chapters, academic articles, and translations. Raúl received his PhD from the University of Chicago, and holds master's degrees in philosophy and theology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the University of Notre Dame, respectively. His research focuses on the relationship between faith and politics, with particular emphasis on how this relationship shapes the identity and commitments of minoritized groups. He currently teaches at the University of Chicago and is part of the editorial team at the of Hispanic Theological Initiative. Raúl recently has finished his fourth book, A Revolutionary Faith (Stanford UP, 2023) on liberation theology’s theory of social justice, and is currently working on a new book project—Questioning Latinidad—that attempts to problematize some of the assumptions of Latinx theology regarding the relationship between race, gender, and religion.
Humanities
Maggie Borowitz
she/her/hers
Humanities Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., Art History, University of Chicago
mkbwitz@uchicago.edu
Maggie Borowitz studies modern and contemporary Latin American art. Her research focuses upon the relationship between art and politics in the late twentieth century, with special emphasis upon feminist practices in Mexico. She teaches courses that explore twentieth- and twenty-first-century art practices across the Americas and theories of feminism, gender, and sexuality. Her current book project explores the vibrant feminist art scene of 1970s and 80s Mexico City, principally through the work of the artist Magali Lara. Engaging with affect theory and feminist studies, the project investigates the political potency of expressions of female subjectivity. Her research has been supported by the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship. She holds a PhD and an MA in art history from the University of Chicago, as well as a BA in anthropology, also from the University of Chicago.
Thaomi Michelle Dinh
she/her/hers
American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow, English Language and Literature
Ph.D., English, University of Washington
dinh@uchicago.edu
My research is concerned with questions around care and violence. I am currently writing a set of articles from my dissertation: one on motherhood and storytelling, and the other on Asian American abolition. Calling attention to the ongoing violence on refugee and immigrant lives, each article theorizes care as a way of linking individual trauma to a larger community, giving us a path to retrieve history. I am building upon my work on care and storytelling in my book project on everyday sexual violence and wartime violence in Asian America. Focused on intersections of racialized, gendered, and sexualized violence, this project considers the socialization of rape culture in Asian American lives. As an instructor, I use cultural, gender, and ethnic studies to create meaningful connections between students and their communities. I am excited about teaching and mentorship, especially for first-generation students of color like myself.
Emily Dupree
she/her/hers
Humanities Teaching Fellow, Philosophy
Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Chicago
edupree@uchicago.edu
Emily Dupree received her PhD from the University of Chicago and her JD from the University of Chicago Law School. She works at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and moral psychology. Her research interests include the social nature of moral personhood, the rationality of revenge under conditions of oppression, the metaphysics of gender, and gender abolition. She is currently working on a manuscript on the contingency of moral personhood as exemplified in Barbara Loden's 1970 film, Wanda.
Noah Hansen 
he/him/his
Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Chicago
noahh@uchicago.edu
Noah Hansen received his PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 2022. His research and teaching focus on Caribbean and African American literature and political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with an emphasis on critical theorizations of labor, gender, and political economy in the global colonial periphery. His dissertation traces the emergence of Black working-class internationalism in the interwar period, analyzing how socioeconomic processes of class formation and new forms of transnational literary representation converge to make the generic figure of the “Negro Worker” a defining fulcrum of Black Internationalist political aesthetics. Thinking across economic, political, and cultural spheres, his work takes up the question of how class becomes genre in Black Atlantic literature. Hansen is also currently engaged in archival research and writing on the literature of the Marcus Garvey movement.
Jordan Johansen 
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow in the Humanities
Ph.D., Classics (Program in the Ancient Mediterranean World), University of Chicago
jjohansen@uchicago.edu
Jordan Johansen (she/her/hers) received her PhD in Classics (Program in the Ancient Mediterranean World) from the University of Chicago in 2022. She is a scholar and teacher of ancient Mediterranean history, culture, and literature with a focus on Greco-Roman Egypt, gender and sexuality, environmental history, borders and cross-cultural interactions, papyrology, and classical reception. Her current book project Flooding Borders: Imagined Spaces between Egypt and Nubia in the Greco-Roman Period draws on a diverse range of evidence to re/de/construct the multiplicity of real and conceptual borders accumulated in the physical and imaginary spaces of the Nubian-Egyptian borderlands. In 2022-2023, she is teaching Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations (Fall 2022), Intermediate Greek: Tragedy (Winter 2023), and Monstrous Women in Antiquity (Winter 2023). She received her BA in History, Anthropology, and Music with a minor in Human Rights from Southern Methodist University and studied classical languages at the University of Vermont and the University of Dallas.
Steven Maye
he/him/his
Humanities Teaching Fellow, English Language and Literature
Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Chicago
sgmaye@uchicago.edu
I teach and research in the areas of media studies, gender and sexuality studies, and 20th- and 21st-century North American literatures, especially poetry. My current book project, Lyric Formats, examines how queer poets, women poets, and poets of color have converted the deficiencies of lyric poetry, as a means of representation, into assets for reimagining the media publics in which they and their readers are embedded. My other current project concerns the “episode” as both a genre of contemporary narrative and a genre for life. Here, I show how scripted television programs of the past four decades have used the powers of abstraction, idealization, and selective memory that adhere in sexuality to renegotiate the marriage plot, making narratives of love and sex available for endless deferral while opening them up to more capacious inhabitation.
Helina Mazza-Hilway
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
mazzah@uchicago.edu
Helina Mazza-Hilway's research focuses on modern Japanese literature and culture, particularly as it intersects with issues of gender, 'deviance', and self-expression. Her current book project, Writ(h)ing Subjecthood: Toward a Feminine Grotesque in Modern Japanese Literature, examines modern subjectivity in the works of three early twentieth-century women writers, and illustrates their approaches to writing a ‘feminine grotesque’--as generative as it was abject and aberrant-- within the ongoing negotiations of their emergent subjecthood. Other research interests include trauma & resilience, non-human selfhood, genre fiction & minor literatures, and theories of readership.
Maximilien Novak 
he/him/his
Humanities Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., French Literature and History, University of Chicago/EHESS Paris
maxnovak@uchicago.edu
I earned a double PhD in French Literature and History from UChicago and the EHESS in Paris. I worked on the history of propaganda and public opinion in 18th and 19th century France and Germany. I am currently working on a book project that examines the relationship between the history of sexuality and nationalism. I am particularly interested in the way scientific discourses on sexuality and sexual diseases are orchestrated to fit a narrative of xenophobia and nationalism, following the development of printing, resulting in what I describe as the "contamination" of public opinion. My primary sources include Fracastoro's 1530 treatise "Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus" and 1736 French treatise “De Morbus Veneris” written by Jean Astruc, physician of Louis XV. This study is situated at the intersection between the History of Science, Politics, and the History of Sexuality.
Aurore Spiers 
she/her/hers
Humanities Teaching Fellow
Ph.D., Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
aspiers@uchicago.edu
Aurore Spiers (she/her) is a historian of film and media, primarily from Europe and the United States. She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from The University of Chicago in 2022. Mainly focused on women’s contributions to cinema, her work interrogates historiographical processes—what history gets written, how, and why—through the lens of gender and intersectional feminism. It asks why women (and other marginalized groups) have so often been forgotten, and what strategies—critical, creative, speculative, etc.—may be employed against historical erasure. Her first book project, based on research from her doctoral thesis, studies women’s labor in French film archives from the 1920s through the 1970s. Her writing, on topics ranging from the reception of The Birth of a Nation (1915) in France to the rediscovery of Alice Guy Blaché within the context of the Women’s Liberation Movement, has appeared in 1895: Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze and Feminist Media Histories. She is also a contributing editor and country coordinator (France) to the Women Film Pioneers Project.
Elizabeth Tavella
she/they
Humanities Teaching Fellow, Romance Languages and Literatures
Ph.D., Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago
etavella@uchicago.edu
Elizabeth Tavella’s research interests focus on comparative studies of literature and critical animal studies, and more broadly on the environmental humanities within intersectional frameworks that draw on queer ecologies, decolonial approaches, and critical theory. Elizabeth is currently finalizing two articles that engage with the emerging field of transecology: the first on reproductive justice and bodily autonomy across species examined through a variety of sources ranging from medical treatises and legislation to literary texts; the second on nonhuman animals, from octopuses to platypuses, who defy classification and challenge the very foundation of category-based epistemology. A new project emerging alongside this research investigates speculative fiction, centered on Indigenous, Black, queer, and trans futurities which aims to explore the intersection between multispecies studies, social justice, and political ecology.
Social Sciences
Jordan Bimm
he/him/his
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor, Institute on the Formation of Knowledge
Ph.D., Science & Technology Studies (STS), York University
jordanbimm@uchicago.edu
Jordan Bimm is a historian of science, technology, and medicine, focused on the human and biological problems of spaceflight. His work on the early history of aerospace medicine in the Cold War investigates how women, LGBTQ people, and racial minorities were excluded from America's astronaut corps through the medicalized construction of an ideal spacefaring body assumed to be white, straight, and male. His research tracks the nearly-forgotten stories of non-white, non-male space medicine test-subjects used to furnish biomedical data to scientists, and also the mis-gendering of celebrity space animals popularized in media. He has been a NASA History Fellow, and currently holds a Guggenheim Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum. Most recently, he was a SSRHC Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University.
Jennifer Caputo
she/her/hers
Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Sociology and the Center for Health and the Social Sciences
Ph.D., Sociology, Indiana University
caputoj@uchicago.edu
My research examines how social structures and statuses including family, gender, and race/ethnicity shape cognitive, mental, and physical health as adults age. My current National Institute on Aging-funded work uses panel data to assess how characteristics of relationships between older parents and their adult children, such as the frequency of interactions and sharing a household, affect older adults’ cognitive functioning trajectories. Other ongoing projects explore racial and ethnic differences in the predictors and mental health implications of coresidence with adult children, assess burden and support needs among caregivers of hospitalized older adults, and develop approaches to improve older adults' research study recruitment rates. Before joining the University of Chicago, I worked on an interdisciplinary research team investigating gender gaps in health and survival at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany.
Iris Clever 
she/her/hers
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor, Institute on the Formation of Knowledge
Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles
clever@uchicago.edu
I am a historian of science, technology, and the body. Much of my work is concerned with the quantification of bodies, the human experience of measurement practices, and the role bodies and technologies play in defining the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in science. My current work contributes to a deeper understanding of the precarious nature of classifications of bodies. It aims to show why classifications that seem “natural” reproduce biased assumptions about race and sex. With concrete historical case studies and insights from critical gender, race, and science studies, I make visible how scientists worked to transcend classifications from the human context of knowledge production.
Michelle Johns 
she/her/hers
Senior Research Scientist, Academic Research Centers, NORC
Ph.D., Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
johns-michelle@norc.org
Michelle M. Johns is a Senior Research Scientist in the Academic Research Centers of NORC at University of Chicago. Dr. Johns' work focuses on how stigma and resilience shape the lives of LGBTQ+ communities, and her research employs qualitative and quantitative methodologies to assess critical questions about LGBTQ+ identities and experiences of minority stress, violence victimization, mental health, and sexual health over the life course. Dr. Johns has worked in multiple institutional settings and across sectors, including the CDC Division of Adolescent and School Health, the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities at the University of Michigan, and Howard Brown Health Center--a non-profit health organization serving Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community. Dr. Johns holds an MPH and PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan.
Jeffrey Lockhart 
he/they
James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Michigan
jlockhart@uchicago.edu
Lockhart is a James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and the Knowledge Lab. He is also an Associate at Harvard University's GenderSci Lab. Lockhart received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan, and an MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the scientific and technical construction of sex and sexual difference.
Tasneem M Mandviwala 
she/they
Postdoctoral Scholar
Ph.D., Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
tasneem@uchicago.edu
Tasneem M. Mandviwala is a cultural and developmental psychologist, intersectional feminist, artist, and activist educator focusing on the identity development and experiential knowledges of marginalized communities in the US. She holds a PhD in comparative human development (University of Chicago) and an MA in English literature (University of Houston). Her work includes a forthcoming book titled South Asian American Stories of Self: The Dis-United States of Muslim Womanhood (Springer 2022), The Invisibility of Power: A Cultural Ecology of Development in the Contemporary U.S.(2021; coauthored with M. B. Spencer and J. Hall), and various community outreach pieces on AltMuslimah.com and Amaliah.com. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Urban Resiliency Initiative (University of Chicago) examining the relationships between male youth of color and law enforcement officers. She also serves as the Advisory Council Coordinator for Silk Road Rising’s think and create tank, Polycultural Institute in Chicago, IL.
Paula Martin 
she/they
Teaching Fellow in Comparative Human Development and the College
Ph.D., Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
paulam@uchicago.edu
Paula is a qualitative social scientist working in the fields of medical anthropology and sociology, gender studies, youth studies, and feminist science and technology studies. She holds a PhD from the Department of Comparative Human Development and a MA from the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Her dissertation, "Practicing Gender", examined the interlocking logics of time, gender, and evidence that shape the provision of gender affirming care to young people in the United States. Based in clinical ethnographic observation, her work follows providers and young people as they use the tools of medical and scientific practice to craft livable worlds and envision more liberatory ones. The dissertation considers the specific use of early interventions into gender, such as puberty-suppressing medications and gender-affirming hormones, while also examining clinical research efforts attempting to articulate the impact of those interventions.
Karen Okigbo
she/her/hers
Postdoctoral Researcher, Harris School of Public Policy
Ph.D., Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center
kokigbo@uchicago.edu
Karen Okigbo is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Harris School of Public Policy. Broadly speaking, her research is on the areas of immigration, race, ethnicity, and family. Her recent work focuses on intermarriage and endogamy among second-generation Nigerian-Americans and explores their marital decision-making processes. Her research also speaks to the gendered expectations and experiences of Black immigrants when selecting a marital partner. Karen received her PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center. She also holds Masters degrees in Social Policy from the University of Pennsylvania and Sociology from North Dakota State University, and a Bachelor's in Politics from Princeton University.
Hannah Ridge
she/her/hers
Postdoctoral Scholar, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights
Ph.D., Political Science, Duke University
hridge@uchicago.edu
Hannah Ridge (she/her) is a postdoctoral scholar in Human Rights. Her work examines when citizens want democracy for their country and when they are satisfied with the democracy that they have. Additional research features religion/secularism politics. Hannah earned a PhD in Political Science at Duke University. At the University of Chicago, she will teach on gender and politics in the Muslim world and comparative democracy.
Kelsey Robbins
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences
Ph.D., Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
kelseyrobbins@uchicago.edu
Kelsey Robbins is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist with research interests in religion, moral authority, and the politics of gender and reproduction. Her current book project explores how lay Catholics in the Republic of Ireland are transforming popular and deeply entrenched understandings of Catholic morality and ethical action by challenging the authority of the Catholic hierarchy and by reconfiguring relationships between the laity, the clergy, and the Irish state. Her work argues that fundamental to these efforts to renew and revitalize Catholicism are negotiations surrounding gender, sexuality, family formation, and social and biological reproduction. As a Teaching Fellow, Kelsey serves as the BA Preceptor for the Department of Comparative Human Development and teaches courses on ethnographic research methods and reproductive politics.
Zoya Sameen 
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences
Ph.D., History, University of Chicago
zsameen@uchicago.edu
Zoya is a historian of gender, law, and empire in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asia. Her current book project The Scatter of Empire: Prostitution, Law, and Trouble in Colonial India examines how legislative interventions into prostitution such as regulatory laws, cantonment codes, municipal rules, and border regimes were circumvented and challenged by the Indian and European women they targeted. Pushing against established histories of colonialism, gender, and sexuality in India that have focused on governmental mandates with respect to legislation and codification, her project foregrounds notions of trouble and disruption to present a new reading of colonial interventions into sexuality as they unfolded on the scattered ground of empire. Zoya's research interests also include understanding gender history at the intersection of law, technology, and environment, as well as digitally mapping women's mobility across borders and regions.
Agatha Slupek 
she/her/hers
Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences
Ph.D., Political Science, University of Chicago
aaslupek@uchicago.edu
Agatha Slupek is a feminist political theorist. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century feminist activism and thought, critical legal theory, the study of affect and emotion, and theories of rhetoric, performance, and voice
Connor Strobel 
he/him/his
Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows
Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Irvine
strobel@uchicago.edu
Connor ‘Noor’ Strobel is a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, and affiliate of the Department of Sociology. His research focuses on why identities, groups, and social practices become contested and then how these contestations arise and are repealed. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Devising Deviance: Race, Power, and the Making of an Underclass which develops a framework for understanding why and how laws are stretched to regulate unanticipated groups and behaviors. In addition to this project, he has a forthcoming co-authored book with New York University Press on the political mobilization of non-traditional sexual minority groups and has been published in multiple peer-reviewed venues on topics including the role of gender in eating disorder recovery and the competing foundations in Islamic feminisms.
Thuto Thipe
she/her/hers
Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of History
Ph.D., History and African American Studies, Yale University
tthipe@uchicago.edu
Thuto Thipe’s research focuses on social and legal history of 19th and 20th century South Africa. She is interested in how changing conceptualisations of, rights to, and uses of land both shape and reflect different imaginings and meanings of race, gender, citizenship, and class. Her manuscript in progress, Black Freehold: Landownership in Alexandra Township, tells the story of the history of land ownership in Alexandra Township, near Johannesburg, from its founding in 1912 to 1979.The disruption that black people’s freehold land ownership in Alexandra caused to white supremacist order drove the South African state to invest enormous financial resources and political capital in dismantling black freehold rights, physically demolishing large parts of the Township, and forcibly moving tens of thousands of people from Alexandra in efforts to destroy the social, political and economic realities that residents produced under freehold.