Feminist Intersections

Heba Sigurdardottir is a doctoral student at the University of Tampere at the Faculty of Social Sciences.  Her research is oriented toward global and transnational sociology with a focus on social movements' discursive strategies across different media platforms. For her doctoral dissertation, she has selected the #MeToo movement and related activism as a case study, partly due to its global reach and local impact.  In her research, she has analyzed newspaper coverage of the #MeToo movement in different national contexts, and podcast and YouTube activism against gender-based violence in Iceland.

Dr. Gina Marie Longo is a feminist digital sociologist who studies how everyday people construct their understandings of citizenship, family, and nation in digital spaces. She received her doctorate from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is currently an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Longo is a co-founder of the Digital Sociology Lab, which provides skill-based training to students and faculty through workshops and hands-on research experience. She has been featured in Sage Publication’s Gender & Society Podcast, ABCNews.com, MEL Magazine, and the London School of Economics US Centre blog. Her work has received awards for outstanding scholarship from ASA’s International Migration Section, the Eastern Sociological Association, and the University of Wisconsin’s interdisciplinary Research Center on Gender and Women.

Who is your favorite superhero and why? We answer this question before exploring the impact of fandoms on social activism, gender, and how society can be reimagined to better support people with invisible disabilities. Dr. Cook discusses how her new book acts as a how-to guide to doing chaotic good within any fandom. Tanya Cook is a sociology professor at the Community College of Aurora near Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2019, Cook was one of 26 community college faculty awarded a research grant from Mellon/ACLS to support sociological research on fandom. Her current project, Always Keep Nerd Fighting: Fandoms as Social Movements, investigates how and why fans are becoming more charitable and politically engaged. Cook’s forthcoming book, co-authored with Kaela Joseph, on how to engage in fan activism, is scheduled for publication in early 2023. Her research and writing interests include social movements, sociological theory, and popular culture. She was recently awarded the Barbara R. Walters Award from the Easter Sociological Society for her paper “‘It’s a Gift and A Curse:’ How Covid Reframed Our Understanding of Disability as Intersectional Identity.” When she’s not trying to find new ways to use popular culture and fandom to democratize the classroom, you can probably find her at Comic Con.

Households matter. They influence the educational attainment and occupational aspiration development of students. Scholars have found an overwhelmingly positive relationship between household involvement and student educational and aspirational outcomes. However, most investigations of this relationship have occurred within a Western context. Minha Khan explores the influence of households on low-income female Pakistani college students’ educational and occupational journeys. Her research advocates for the need to re-assess existing theories of education from an intersectional and feminist lens before claiming generalizability, while highlighting the harm that can be done when policy decisions are made on the basis of non-inclusive literature, especially for marginalized communities.Minha Khan is a Sociologist of Education with a particular interest in educational access and opportunity. Her research has previously explored how schooling in a child’s non-native language can make learning inaccessible, how household and gender norms complicate accessing higher education for female students and the role of education in breaking the inheritance of despair in low-income families. Since graduating from Stanford University in 2021, Minha has been working as a Research and Design Consultant at Noora Health, USA, and The Citizens Foundation, Pakistan. She is also an incoming postgraduate student in Oxford University's Social Policy and Intervention Department. In her free time, Minha enjoys drinking tea, having conversations, and trying to figure out how the world works.Erin Baker, Ph.D. (she/her) is an associate professor of sociology at Minot State University. Dr. Baker's research explores motherhood, mental health, education, and homeschooling.  For more information, visit https://erinebaker.com/Whitney Hunt, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colgate University. Whitney’s research broadly explores social and cultural constructions of gender and race, with a particular lens on how individuals and groups engage with institutions of media, science, and technology. For more information, visit her website.

Erin Baker and Whitney Hunt meet with Salam Aboulhassan to discuss her research on the experiences of Muslims at work. Resources American-Arab Anti-Discrimination CommitteeNAACPCare.orgSociologists for Women in SocietySociologists for Women in Society - FacebookSociologists for Women in Society - Twitter Salam Aboulhassan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Wayne State University. Her past research explored intimate partner violence and the social construction of reputation among Arab American women, publishing her first set of findings in the Journal of Family Issues. Her current research focuses on the racialization of Muslims within US workplaces. In early 2019, she was awarded the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant. She is also a community activist who focuses on issues of sexual abuse and sexual assault within immigrant Arab communitiesWhitney Hunt, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colgate University. Whitney’s research broadly explores social and cultural constructions of gender and race, with a particular lens on how individuals and groups engage with institutions of media, science and technology. For more information, visit her website.Erin Baker, Ph.D. (she/her) is an associate professor of sociology at Minot State University. Dr. Baker's research explores motherhood, mental health, education, and homeschooling.  For more information, visit https://erinebaker.com/