FRI Board
Dr. Francisco J. Galarte Director
Francisco J. Galarte is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of New Mexico where he teaches courses in Chicanx, Latinx, and transgender studies. He was born and raised in Brawley, California located in the Imperial Valley along the US/Mexico Border and identifies strongly as a transfronterizo, meaning that the borderlands inform his creative and scholarly projects. His most recent articles have appeared in publications including Aztlan: Journal of Chicano Studies, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. He has been involved with TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly since the journal’s inception in 2011 and served as the Fashion Editor from 2012-2018 and since 2018 has served as co-general editor of the journal.
His research brings transgender studies, Chicanx studies, Latinx studies, and queer studies into critical dialogue. His primary scholarly agenda is to examine the relationship between systems of racial formation and the lived experiences and cultural representations of racialized transgendered subjects. His first book, Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies (University of Texas Press, 2021), explores how transgender analytics intervene or fail to intervene in the current reading practices that exist in Chicana/o Studies for making sense of processes of racialization, gendered violence, queer sexualities, masculinities and femininities.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Board Members
Ex-Officio Members
Francisco J. Galarte, Associate Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, FRI Director, ex-officio (2021-present)
Sarah Davis-Secord, Associate Professor of History, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Chair
Aine McCarthy, Director, Women's Resource Center, ex-officio
Faculty Board Members:
Miriam Gay-Antaki
Daisy Atterbury is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of American Studies, with a joint appointment to the Program of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of New Mexico. Atterbury's research areas include the intersections of gender, sexuality and coloniality, cultural studies, and aesthetics. In 2023, they served as Donald C. Gallup Research Fellow at Yale University. Prior, they received an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Public Humanities through the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research. They have also been recipient of a Lost & Found Archival Research Fellowship and Legacy Fellowship from Lost & Found: the CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. They received their PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY, their MFA from Bard College MFA, along with their BA from Yale University. Their debut book, The Kármán Line (2024), was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and has been described as "a new cosmology" (Lucy Lippard) and "a cerebral altar to the desert" (Raquel Gutiérrez). The book investigates queer life and fantasies of space and place with an interest in unraveling colonial narratives in the American Southwest. Before arriving to UNM, Atterbury taught in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where they continue to teach specialized summer seminars for WGST majors.
Marcella Ernest
Georgiann Davis is an intersex scholar-activist whose research, teaching, and activism are at the intersection of medical violence and feminist theories. Among other contributions, she is the author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. She is currently working on a cultural memoir entitled Five Star White Trash which is an unexpected story about familial trauma, medical abuse, and injustices within the criminal legal system. She is a former board president of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth and a past-president of InterConnect Support Group.
Karen Leong
Shinsuke Eguchi (Ph.D., Howard University) is Professor of Intercultural Communication in the Department of Communication & Journalism at University of New Mexico. Dr. Eguchi is an interdisciplinary scholar-teacher whose work deploys queer of color critique to examine the interlocking systems of domination rooted in socially constructed categories of differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, nation, coloniality, language, and the body. They privilege an intersectional queer analytic.
Graduate Student Board Members:
Jeslyn Pool is a current PhD student in the American Literary Studies program and a graduate student member of the FRIboard. Her research revolves around intersectional "hemispheric" or "transnational" feminisms across the Americas & Caribbean in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in writings by women of color. Drawing from many rich histories of women of color feminisms in the region, she is interested in taking a comparative approach to understanding how these epistemologies might interact across the hemisphere and with the exclusionary and imperial white feminisms of the United States in the era. She ultimately hopes to share these vital feminist counter-histories across educational frameworks to raise awareness of the diversity of 19th-century feminist writers historically understudied and systematically elided.
Taylor Engel, Feminist Research Institute Graduate Assistant, Studio Art
Board members serve 2-year terms. The director serves a 3-year term. The Graduate Assistant is a full voting member of the board and serves a 2-year or 1-year term. All terms are renewable.
Past Board Members
2021-2023
Amy Brandzel, Associate Professor, American Studies and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies (2017-2019; 2019-2021)
Alana Bock, Ph.D. Student in American Studies, FRI GA, ex-officio (2019-2020; 2020-2021)
Leslie Donovan, Professor, Honors College (2020-2022)
Tiffany Florvil, Associate Professor, History (2020-2023)
Bernadine Hernández, Assistant Professor, English Language and Literature (2020-2023)
Scarlett Higgins, Associate Professor, English Language and Literature, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Chair, ex-officio (2018-2023)
Jessica Holland, Director, Women's Resource Center, ex-officio (2017-2022)
Natasha Howard, Assistant Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies (2020-2023)
Olivia Roe, Ph.D. Student in Communication & Journalism (2020-2023)
Natalia Toscano, Ph.D. Student in Chicana and Chicano Studies (2020-2023)
2019-2021
Elizabeth Hutchison: Director, History (2015-2018; 2018-2021)
Amy Brandzel, Acting Chair Women Studies (2019-present), American Studies & Women Studies (2017-2019; 2019-2021)
Jessica Holland, Women's Resource Center, Director, ex-officio (2017-present)
Scarlett Higgins, English, Women Studies Chair, ex-officio (2018-present)
Amy Levi, College of Nursing (2015-17; 2017-2019; 2019-2021)
Andrea Mays, American Studies (2018-2021)
Laura Harjo, Community & Regional Planning, (2018-2020)
Kency Cornejo, Art & Art History (2018-2020)
Dominika Laster, Theater & Dance (2019-2021)
Nancy López, Sociology, Institute for the Study of "Race" & Social Justice (2019-2021)
Carlyn Stewart: Feminist Research Institute Graduate Assistant, Anthropology (2019-2020)
