Each year the Center for International Education selects a handful of applicants as faculty research Fellows, who then take advantage of a one-course reduction per semester in order to contribute to interdisciplinary research related to the conference topic.Our Fellows are drawn from all University Schools and academic departments, and this year-long Fellowship provides support for original research, on-campus events and colloquia during the year, and a conceptual core of interdisciplinary scholarship for the CIE conference in April.
This year, our Global Studies Fellows are Jennifer Kibicho (College of Nursing), Anna Mansson McGinty (Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies), Blain Neufeld (Philosophy), Tasha Oren (English), and Chia Youyee Vang (History). Click on the bios below to read interviews with the Fellows regarding their upcoming work for the conference.
Now available as a PDF and for Kindle and iBooks: Intersections, Vol. 5. In this issue of Intersections, our Fellows share a preview of their research on diversities they will present at the annual CIE conference.
Intersections Vol. 5 PDF
Intersections Vol. 5 for iBooks
Intersections Vol. 5 for Kindle (right click this link and choose “save as”)
Jennifer Kibicho is Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a Health Economist with expertise in the economics of prescription drug cost drivers and Medicaid policies, and a Certified Public Accountant of Kenya (CPA(K)). She has received funding as the Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) R21 Project, and served as an economic consultant on several research and program evaluation projects. She has several publications in top health policy journals including AIDS and Behavior, and Health Affairs. Her global health research is focused on the intersection of economic vulnerability and structural-level factors including alcohol misuse and gender-based violence as key drivers of HIV transmission and acquisition risk in sub-Saharan Africa.
Anna Mansson McGinty is Associate Professor of Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research centers on the formation of Muslim identities and geographies in the West, examining identity processes, gender and religion, and politics of representations. She is the author of Becoming Muslim: Western Women’s Conversions to Islam (2006), and in one of her current projects, Young, Muslim, and American: An Ethnography of Muslim Youth in Milwaukee, she looks at the diverse religious, political, and personal expressions of Muslim youth cultures and identities in the 21st century United States. Her work has been published in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Gender, Place and Culture, Social and Cultural Geography, and The Professional Geographer.
Tasha Oren is Associate Professor of English and Media Studies and teaches in the Media, Cinema and Digital Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Demon in the Box: Jews, Arabs, Politics and Culture (2004), co-editor of Global Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders (2012), Global Currents: Media and Technology Now (2004) East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture (2005) and Global Asian American Cultures (2016). She has published numerous articles on film, television, screenwriting, Neurodiversity and food media and is currently at work on a book manuscript on food culture and television as well as the forthcoming collection The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism.
Chia Youyee Vang is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she is founder and director of the Hmong Diaspora Studies Program. She is an interdisciplinary history who has given voice to marginalized groups through her studies on displaced peoples. Her research focuses on American involvement in Southeast Asia in the post-WWII era and the large flow of refugees in the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam and her teaching interests include 20th century U.S.-Asia relations, Cold War politics, Hmong/Asian American history, refugee migration, and transnational and diaspora studies. She is author of Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in Diaspora (2010) and Hmong in Minnesota (2008). Her co-edited book, Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women, was published in 2016 and her monograph, Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2017.
Blain Neufeld is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He also serves as Director of the interdisciplinary certificate in Ethics, Values, and Society (CEVS). His research focuses on various issues related to the account of justice and legitimacy known as “political liberalism.” He has written articles and chapters on a variety of topics in political philosophy, including citizenship education, liberal feminism, political liberty, public reason, and international justice. His primary project for 2017 is to complete a book under contract with Routledge tentatively titled Public Reason: Consensus or Convergence?
Becoming a Research Fellow
If you are a member of the UWM faculty, and are interested in applying to be a Global Studies Research Fellow, click here for the 2017/2018 call for proposals and Fellows Application instructions.