Dr. Laura Anh Williams, College Assistant Professor of Women's Studies
Office: Science Hall, Room 286A
Email: lawill@nmsu.edu
Office Hours: Online and By Appointment
Academics
Education
Ph. D. English (Critical Theory and Cultural Studies), 2010 (Purdue University); M.A. English (Literary Studies), 2001 (Purdue University); B.A. English and Fine Art, 1999 (Pacific Union College)
Teaching Interests
Asian American Studies, Gender and Race, Sexuality and Queer Studies, Contemporary Ethnic American Literature, Cultural Studies (popular culture, visual culture)
Courses Taught
Sex, Gender, & the Body; Gender & Horror; Gender, Race, & Food
Research
My work examines narratives (in literature, film, visual art) of alternative strategies employed by disempowered groups (those marginalized because of their gender, race, sexuality, class) to survive and bolster their sense of self. I engage most with feminist theory, queer theory, eco-criticism, animal studies, and food studies.
Publications
- "Consuming Grief and Eating Pie in Pushing Daisies." in The Television World of Pushing Daisies: Critical Essays on Bryan Fuller's Pushing Daisies. Ed. Alissa Burger. McFarland & Co., 2011. 57-72.
- "Foodways and Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies." Journal of Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States (MELUS) 32.4 (2007): 69-79.
- "‘[E]verything else is the same': Configurations of The L Word" with M. Catherine Jonet in Televising Queer Women. Ed. Rebecca Beirne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Paper Presentations and Lectures
- "Consuming Grief and Eating Ashes in 12 Days." Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference, Albuquerque, NM, February 2012.
- ""She is the Meat Made Manifest": Rendering Race, Women and Animals in Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats." Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference, San Antonio, TX, April 2011.
- "The Queer Chronology of Grief in 12 Days." Cultural Studies Association Conference, Columbia College, Chicago, IL, March 2011.
- "‘Now I knew what real people ate': Negotiating Race in Stealing Buddha's Dinner." Joint conference on "Migration, Border, and the Nation-State," United States Association for Commonwealth Literatures and Languages Studies and the Texas Tech Comparative Literature Program. Lubbock, TX, April 2009.
- "Memory, Trauma, and Visual Representation" Special Screening of Waltz with Bashir hosted by the NMSU Women's Studies Program and Department of Criminal Justice, Fountain Theatre, Mesilla, NM, April 2009.
Write-up on Dr. Williams's Gender and Horror course by NMSU student Erica Hobbs. This one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quotes Dr. Williams alongside "the godfather of the American zombie genre," George A. Romero.
