Gender and Women's Studies

 

 

Dr. Samantha L. Vandermeade received her Ph.D. in Gender Studies from Arizona State University in 2020 and joined the Gender and Women’s Studies department in UW’s School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the fall of 2020.  

Her dissertation, “Using the Master’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House: Gendered and Racialized Citizenship, Pro-Immigrants’ Rights Advocacy, and White Privilege in the Borderlands,” examined pro-(im)migrants’ rights activism and advocacy among middle-class White women in Phoenix, Arizona. Utilizing a feminist, intersectional analytical lens and drawing upon critical race studies, Whiteness studies, and citizenship theory, the dissertation explored study participants' understandings and enactments of their racialized and gendered citizenship in the context of their activism. The project ultimately found that these White women face thornily difficult ethical questions regarding how to wield the rights entailed in their gendered citizenship and their White privilege on behalf of marginalized, Latinx, non-citizen migrants when those rights and privileges draw their power from very same systems that work to oppress the migrants they seek to aid. The project also makes the case that White women’s lives, as well as their experiences of citizenship and activism, are inherently and fundamentally intersectional and should be analyzed as such.  

Dr. Vandermeade’s larger research interests and teaching focus on intersectional feminist theory; critical Whiteness studies; immigration and the borderlands; (anti)racism; citizenship; race and rurality; sociopolitical conservatism; social justice activism; gendered labor and social reproduction; and feminist pedagogy. She is currently working on a number of projects and publications, including an article on teaching Whiteness in the rural classroom; an article regarding spirituality, (anti-)religiosity, and community among White, antiracist activists; a co-authored article on transnational queer labor organizing; and a co-authored article on the history of methods and methodology within the field of Women’s Studies. She is also revising her dissertation and looking forward to its publication as her first monograph.