Michele T. Berger

Michele’s teaching and research interests include multiracial feminisms, qualitative methods, and HIV/AIDS activism. Her books include Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS Opens in new tab, Princeton University Press, 2004, and the co-edited collections Gaining Access: A Practical and Theoretical Guide for Qualitative Researchers Opens in new tab, Altamira Press, 2003, and The Intersectional Approach: Transforming the Academy Through Race, Class and Gender Opens in new tab, University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Workable Sisterhood won a “Best Book” Award from the American Political Science Association and was nominated for a “Distinguished Book” Award from the American Sociological Association. In 2006, she received an American Association of University Women, AAUW, “American Fellow” award for her new work on African American mother and daughter communication on health and sexuality.

Currently, she is the Director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University Opens in new tab

Jane Burns

E. Jane Burns’s work centers on issues of gender, feminist theory, and material culture in medieval texts. Her study of courtly love and clothing in thirteenth-century French culture, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture Opens in new tab, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, extends strategies of feminist reading advanced in her earlier Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature Opens in new tab, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. She has edited a volume of essays devoted to dress, textiles, clothwork and other cultural imaginings, Medieval Fabrications Opens in new tab, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, and served as a subject editor for Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia Opens in new tab, Routledge, 2006. Her most recent book, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature Opens in new tab, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, examines the ways that literary representations of women “working” silk, carry the reader to distant cultures across the Mediterranean. Jane Burns teaches courses on feminist and gender theory, women’s spirituality across cultures, and courtship and courtliness.

Susan Harbage Page

Susan Harbage Page has spent her life crossing borders, both literally and figuratively. Born in Ohio, she moved to North Carolina and thus experienced both sides of the Mason-Dixon line at an early age. In 1969, when Harbage Page was ten years old, her mother took her and her three sisters on a three-month European camping trip in a red VW bus. The five women crossed 23 borders, including the Iron Curtain countries of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. At Romania’s border, agents detained the family for a day. Being trapped between two borders and belonging to neither influenced Harbage Page’s work which explores militarized spaces, borderlands, nation, gender, race, archives, representation, and belonging. Her work springs from a lens-based documentary background. She currently works with photography, video, installation, performance, sculpture, material culture, and painting.

Harbage Page holds a master’s degree in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, 2004, a Master’s Degree in Music from Michigan State University, 1983, and a certificate of knowledge of the Italian Language, from the Universitá Per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy, 1984.

After graduate school, Harbage Page worked for National Public Radio stations KANZ, WKAR, and WDAV. During this period Harbage Page was a Program Director and on-air host, producing interviews and recording music.

In 1992, Harbage Page received a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Italy where she lived with a group of cloistered Augustinian nuns in Spello, Umbria. The sisters — who have become friends — supported themselves by sewing, embroidering, and making lace.

Barbara Harris

Trained in Tudor-Stuart English history, Barbara Harris’s research and writing in the last two decades has focused on English aristocratic women in the period 1450-1550. Following a series of articles on the subject, she published English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers Opens in new tab, Oxford University Press, 2002. She was awarded Mellon Emeritus Fellowship in 2008. Her most recent project, The Fabric of Piety: Aristocratic Women and Care of the Dead, 1450-1550 Opens in new tab, is looking at the same group of women in another context: as patrons of building in churches. The first article will be in the Journal of British Studies in April 2009. From 1990-1993, Harris was President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is now President of the North American Conference of British Studies.

Joanne Hershfield

Joanne Hershfield’s publications and research interests focus on the intersection between feminist film studies, cultural studies, and critical theory. Her work is engaged primarily with Mexican film, and Mexican popular and visual culture. Her most recent publication is entitled Imagining la Chica Moderna: Woman and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936 Opens in new tab, Duke University Press, 2008. Other books include Mexican Cinema/Mexican Woman, 1940-1950 Opens in new tab, and The Invention of Dolores del Rio Opens in new tab. Dr. Hershfield is also a documentary filmmaker. Her films include Men Are Human, Women Are Buffalo, 2008, The Gillian Film, 2006, and Women in Japan: Memories of the Past, Dreams of the Future, with Jan Bardsley, 2002.

Silvia Tomásková

A feminist anthropologist/archaeologist with field and historical research in Eastern & Central Europe, Siberia, South Africa, Dr. Tomášková is interested in knowledge production, particularly about places and spaces in the deep past, as alternatives to modernity. Currently, she is the Dean at Irving K. Barber of Arts and Sciences, University of British Columbia-Okanagan Opens in new tab.