The Feminist and Gender Studies Department is thrilled to share that Mae Howard (Feminist & Gender Studies '19) will be starting a PhD in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, starting this fall.  Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has a rich history at Rutgers University. Inaugurated as a department in 2001, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has grown from offering a few courses at the University in 1973 to becoming one of the strongest interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate programs in the United States. 

As a doctoral student, Mae plans to explore the relationship between the material, aesthetic, and haptic expressions of BDSM and those of the medical industrial complex and carceral state. Their research asks questions such as “Can BDSM serve as an insurgent framework with which to understand and revise the history of performance studies and its racist ableist biases? What can kink subculture tell us about the primacy of submission within the public and private sphere of institutionalization, hospitals, home care, and the policing of bodies that do not conform to gendered or ableist standards?” 

Mae will be embarking on this new academic journey after having a completed an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and a Certificate in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where their graduate studies culminated in a final project at the intersections of queer, trans, disability, performance, visual, gender and sexuality studies. Through the PhD program at Rutgers, Mae is excited about returning to their roots in FGS and bringing together their many interests and preoccupations: “The mentorship that Dr. Guessous, Dr. Lewis, and Dr. Kumar provided to me as a student in FGS from 2015-2019 has allowed me to further my practice, research, and relationship building across Leather communities and artistic spaces. I come to the pursuit of a PhD in Women and Gender Studies not only to integrate my roles as scholar, organizer, and artist, but to deepen my commitment to the discipline’s ideas and concepts most catalytic to my practice: the move from spectating to witnessing, the role of collective praxis, and the transmogrification of trauma through endurance practices.”

Congratulations, Mae!  We could not be prouder of you!