FACULTY - Jessica Nathanson
Director, Women's Resource Center
Jessica Nathanson received her B.A. from Wesleyan University with a Major in Psychology (because a Major in Women's Studies was not offered at the time). She went on to get her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, in American Studies with a focus on Women's Studies. Her dissertation, The Politics of Identity: Bisexuals, Multiracials, and The Challenge to Community, explored moments of conflict between 1) lesbians and bisexual women in Northampton, MA, over the addition of "bisexual" to the name of a lesbian and gay pride march; and 2) self-identified multiracial people (of African descent) and African Americans over the proposal to add "multiracial" to the 2000 Census racial categories.
Nathanson recently co-edited Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to The 'Experts' http://www.demeterpress.org/MotherKnowsBest.html and is currently at work on a new book project that deals with new media (in the form of feminist blogging) and the production of feminist theory. Her academic writing has also been published in the Journal of Bisexuality, most recently, "Bisexual Pedagogy: Bringing Bisexuality into the Classroom".
At Augsburg, Nathanson teaches Foundations in Women's Studies; Margins as Center: Feminist Theory; Sexuality and Gender: A Global Perspective; Introduction to Men's Studies; Research Methods; and the Senior Seminar. She is also a member of the anti-racism working group and of the queer issues group, and she advises the student feminist collective and the Sexual Assault Advocacy Group at Augsburg (SAAGA).
In her work beyond Augsburg, Nathanson co-moderates the international women's studies listserv, WMST-L, and she is a member of the ethics, equity, diversity, and accessibility committee of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) as well as a member-at-large on the delegate assembly of the NWSA.
