Core Faculty
Carla María Thomas, Associate Professor English and Director of the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Dr. Carla María Thomas received their BA (change for: B.A.) and MA (change for: M.A.) from Florida State University (2006 and 2008, respectively) and their PhD from New York University (2016). Dr. Thomas’s research focuses on accessibility to the field of Medieval Studies broadly defined and to the literature of their specialized area of Early Middle English literature specifically in two important ways: by analyzing ways the premodern literary field can become more welcoming to scholars of all levels and backgrounds, including practical methods for opening up the classroom; and by editing, translating, and producing research on Early Middle English texts, preferably in Open Access publications where possible. Dr. Thomas’s 2020 publication on expanding the purview of the traditional Medieval English Literature course in U.S. university settings was published in an Open Access edited collection by punctum books titled Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures .
In their Early Middle English research, Dr. Thomas pays special attention to eschatological poetry and their manuscripts: that is, poems on Judgment Day and death and their surviving witnesses. Two articles forthcoming in 2025 include a creative-critical piece that focuses on The Grave a late 12th-century death poem) and transhistorical connections of lost intimacy in another Open Access edited collection and another on the overview of sexuality in England in an Arc Humanities Press collection.
Courses of interest to WGSS students that Dr. Thomas regularly teaches include (for all others, please refer to their English faculty profile page):
- LIT 4383: Women and Literature
- ENL 4930: Special Topics - 21st-Century Medieval Monstrosity (typically summer)
- ENG 6455: Special Topics - Medieval Gender and Sexuality
In addition to their academic research, Dr. Thomas is also a founding member of the Medievalists of Color, a founding Executive Board member of RaceB4Race©, and President of the Early Middle English Society. Outside of academia, Dr. Thomas enjoys playing video games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, painting, practicing piano, frolicking on the beach, and losing to their little gremlin at chess.
Jane Caputi , Professor, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Communication
Dr. Caputi is a Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Florida Atlantic. Dr. Caputi’s primary research is in contemporary American cultural studies, including popular culture, gender and violence, and ecofeminism. Dr. Caputi has written many articles and authored four books: Call Your Mutha': A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene; The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: The Fates of the Earth; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. She also has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006) and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2015). In 2008 she curated the popular culture section of an exhibit “Political Circus 2008: Hating Hillary, Baiting Barak, and Pandering with Palin” and followed this up in 2016 with From (Castrating) Bitch to (Big) Nuts and Beyond: Political Sideshow 2016, co-curated with Adrienne Gionta. Both of these exhibits were sponsored by the Schmidt Galleries, Florida Atlantic University. A new exhibit sponsored by the Schmidt Galleries “Political Pandemonium: Presidential Popular Culture from 2008-2008” opens online on Oct. 1, 2020, http://fau.edu/artsandletters/galleries/
Jane Caputi's newest book Call Your “Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene, was published by Oxford University Press in a series on “Heretical Thought.” Please visit this link for more information.
Dr. Caputi was FAU’s Distinguished Teacher for 2001 and received FAU’s Research and Scholarly Activities award (Professor level) for 2005 and for 2012. In 2013, she was named “Feminist of the Year” by the Palm Beach County National Organization for Women (NOW). In 2016, she was named Eminent Scholar of the Year by the American Culture/Popular Culture Association and in 2020 the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology selected her for their Saga Award 2020 for Special Contributions to Women’s History and Culture.
Dr. Caputi recently was interviewed by Ms. Studios More Than a Magazine, a Movement. The gender-based violence episode, which features Dr. Caputi interview, is slated as of now to drop later this summer, on August 15, 2025.
The highlight reel about the show is also posted on Instagram and posted to Threads, Twitter, Ms. Facebook and BlueSky.
Please click the link below for more information.
Luisa Turbino Torres , Assistant Professor, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science
Dr. Turbino Torres (she/they) received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Delaware in 2022. She was born and raised in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where she went to the Federal University of Minas Gerais for her bachelor's and Master's degrees. She specializes in transnational feminist politics, activism, and social movements, culture and politics, and Latin American domestic and international politics. She employs interpretivist methodologies and explores how power dynamics present in different cultural spaces have effects that go beyond the individuals and feed into many systems of oppression. Her most recent work looks at the political participation and resistance of women and LGBTQ+ communities around soccer in Brazil to address gender, sexuality, and other intersections, and it is based on 2 years of digital ethnography, interviews, and archival work. You can learn more about Dr. Turbino Torres' work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Executive Committee
In addition to the core Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty, a dedicated group of FAU staff and professors serve on the WGGS executive committee in order to facilitate the research, curriculum and programming goals of the WGSS Center.
- Kenneth Frankel , Coordinator and Associate Librarian
- Yolanda Gamboa , Professor, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature (Ph.D., Purdue University)
- Marquese McFerguson , Assistant Professor, School of Communication & Multimedia Studies (Ph.D., University of South Florida)
- Kate Polak , Instructor and Research Associate, Department of English (Ph.D., University of Cincinnati)
- Lotus Seeley , Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, Department of Sociology (Ph.D., University of Michigan)
- Mashaekh Hassan, WGSS Graduate Student Representative
- Amanda Ciocca, WGSS Graduate Student Representative
Faculty Affiliates
In addition to the WGSS faculty, there are faculty affiliates. They include faculty in the departments across the university. Their representation signifies the truly interdisciplinary nature of WGSS. Some of the affiliates include:
Department of Anthropology
- Meredith A. B. Ellis , Associate Professor (Ph.D., Syracuse University)
- Adriana Garriga-Lopez , Associate Professor (Ph.D., Columbia University in New York)
- Katharina Rynkiewich , Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies (Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis)
School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
- Carolina Estrada-Gutsche , Visiting Instructor (M.A., Lancaster University UK, Phd (ABD) Lancaster University UK)
- Robert "Ted" Gutsche , Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Iowa)
- Nanetta Durnell-Uwechue , Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Intercultural Communication Sequence (Ph.D., Ohio State University)
- Laura Bruns, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Wayne State University)
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
- Dawn L. Rothe , Professor (Ph.D., Western Michigan University)
Department of Counselor Education
- Carmen Gill , Professor and Chair (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Department of Curriculum, Culture, & Educational Inquiry
- Traci Baxley , Professor and the Coordinator of the Social Foundations: Multicultural Education Program Area (Ed.D., Florida Atlantic University)
- Dilys Schoorman , Professor (Ph.D., Purdue University)
- Melissa Antonelli , Assistant Professor (Ph.D. Florida Atlantic University)
Department of Economics
- Ting Levy , Senior Instructor (Ph.D., University of Florida)
College of Engineering and Computer Science
- Jessica Brynes , Director Undergraduate Advising & Students Services (M.Ed., Women in Engineering and Computer Science Coordinator)
- Sree Ranjani Rajendran , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore)
Department of English
- Barclay Barrios , Professor and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies (Ph.D., Rutgers University)
- Eric Berlatsky , Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies (Ph.D., University of Maryland)
- Sika Dagbovie-Mullins , Professor (Ph.D., University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign)
- Andrew Furman , Professor (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University)
- Taylor Hagood , Professor (Ph.D., University of Mississippi)
- Wendy Hinshaw , Associate Professor and Director of the English Writing Program (Ph.D., Ohio State University)
- Carissa Ma , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Ohio State University)
- Timothy Miller , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame)
- Romeo (Oluwasegun) Oriogun , Assistant Professor (M.F.A., University of Iowa)
- Richard Shusterman , Eminent Scholar (D.Phil., Oxford University)
- Taryne Jade Taylor , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Iowa)
Department of History
- Adrian Finucane , Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs (Ph.D., Harvard University)
- Barbara Ganson , Professor (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin)
- Patricia Kollander , Professor (Ph.D., Brown University)
- Ben Lowe , Professor (Ph.D., Georgetown University)
Department of Jewish Studies
- Rachel Harris , Gimelstob Eminent Scholar Chair for Judaic Studies and Professor of Film and Multimedia Studies (D.Phil., University of Oxford)
Department of Languages, Linguistics & Comparative Literature
- Carla Calargé , Professor of French and Francophone Studies (Ph.D., University of Iowa)
- Nuria Godon , Professor of Spanish and Program Head, Spanish (Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder)
- Mary Ann Gosser , Professor of Spanish and Caribbean Literature and University Honors Coordinator (Ph.D., Yale University)
- Michael Horswell , Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Dean, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters (Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park)
- Michael Rapoport , Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Provost's Fellow for Academic Affairs, and Director of Undergraduate Studies (Ph.D., Yale University)
College of Nursing
- Kyndall Mammah , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Barry University)
Department of Political Science
- Luzmarina Garcia , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
- Rebecca LeMoine , Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Angela Nichols , PJHR Director and Associate Professor (Ph.D., The University of North Texas)
- Annette LaRocco , Associate Professor and Senior Associate Director of the Leon Charney Diplomacy Program (Ph.D., University of Cambridge)
Phyllis & Harvey Sandler School of Social Work
- Allan Barsky , Professor (Ph.D., University of Toronto)
Department of Sociology
- Robert Caputi , Instructor (Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara)
- Yangsook Kim , Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Toronto)
- Patricia Widener , Professor (Ph.D., Brown University)
- Gina Carreño-Lukasik , University Instructor
Department of Visual Arts and Art History
- Karen Leader , Associate Professor of Art History (Ph.D., New York University)
- Mehrdad Sedaghat Baghbani , Assistant Professor of Graphic Design (M.F.A., Michigan State University)
University Galleries
- Véronique Côté , Director of University Galleries and Instructor of Museum Studies (M.F.A University at Buffalo, M.A. Harvard University)
Wilkes Honors College John MacArthur Campus
- Sondra Bickham Washington , Assistant Professor of African American Literature (Ph.D., University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa)
Affiliate Faculty
William L. Leap , Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University (Washington, DC) and an Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic (Boca Raton, FL). He is the founding senior editor of the Journal of Language & Sexuality and, since 1993. His writings about language and sexuality address topics as varied as race/class inequities, gender differences, language socialization, subaltern voice, and problems of queer historiography. Key publications include American Indian English (1993), Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English (1996), Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World (co-edited with Ellen Lewin), Speaking in Queer Tongues: Gay Language and Globalization (co-edited with Tom Boellstorff), and the widely reprinted papers “Language, socialization and silence in gay adolescence,’ “Queering gay men’s English, "and “Homophobia as moral geography.” He is currently completing a multi-disciplinary study of language, identity and same-sex desire in the US military, in Renaissance-era Harlem, in women’s softball teams, in cruising sites, and in other locations “before” Stonewall.