Core Faculty
Incoming Interim Chair
Barbara Bono
Chair
Phone: 716-645-0785
Email: bbono@buffalo.edu
Education: Ph.D. Brown University (English Literature)
Recent Courses:
ENG 307 Elizabethan-Jacobean Drama
ENG 309 Shakespeare: Earlier Plays
ENG 379 Film Genres: Shakespeare, The Movie
ENG 516 Teaching Shakespeare
ENG 502 Introduction to Scholarly Methods
Research Interests:
Dr. Bono's primary research interests include Early Modern British literature, especially Sidney, Spenser and the dramatic literature of Shakespeare and his contemporaries; Feminist and cultural materialists theory and history.
Bio:
Dr. Bono is a respected scholar of Shakespeare and Early Modern British literature. She has published extensively in these areas, including a books, articles and book chapters. Her work on gender includes, Literary Transvaluation: From Vergilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy (University of California Press); “Mixed Gender, Mixed Genre in Shakespeare's As You Like It” (Harvard English Studies) and “The Chiefe Knot of All the Discourse: The Maternal Subtext Tying Sidney's Arcadia to Shakespeare's King Lear” in Gloriana's Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, ed. Susan Cerasano and Marian Wynne-Davies (Harvester-Wheatsheaf Press, 1992). Dr. Bono has served as a Fellow at Harvard University and Cornell University, as well as the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. Dr. Bono is a renowned teacher and has received numerous teaching awards, including SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, and having twice been awarded the Milton Plesur Undergraduate Student Association Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Bono has previously served as the Chair of the Department of English, and the Co-director for the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
Masani Alexis De Veaux
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Phone: 716-645-0794
Email: deveaux@acsu.buffalo.edu
Education: Ph.D. University at Buffalo, (American Studies)
Recent Courses:
WS 330 Global Women's Voices
WS 379 Sex, Gender and Popular Culture
WS 535 Black Women Writers and the Re-Imagination of American Culture
WS 517 Graduate Colloquium
Research Interests:
Dr. De Veaux's primary research interests concerns investigations of the intersections between literature, creativity, and social change as aspects of women's agency.
Bio:
Professor De Veaux is an artist-activist-scholar whose work is nationally and internationally known. Her work covers a diversity of subjects, including global literary discourses, black women writers and the re-imagination of American culture, autobiography and biography, Black Feminist Theories, and writing as methodology. Dr. De Veaux is the author of several notable works including a fictionalized memoir, Spirits in the Street (1973); Don't Explain, A Song of Billie Holiday (1980), a biography of the legendary jazz artist; two independently published poetry collections, Blue Heat (1985) and Spirit Talk (1997); and two award-winning children's books. She is the author of the award-winning biography, Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lord (Norton 2004). In other media, Dr. De Veaux's work appears on several recordings, including the highly-acclaimed album, Sisterfire (Olivia Records); in 1986, she produced the independent video documentary, "MOTHERLANDS: From Manhattan to Managua to Africa, Hand to Hand," in association with the MADRE Video Project. A diversified writer, she is published in five languages-English, Dutch, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish; her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications of black women's literature, women's literature, lesbian and gay literature. As an artist and lecturer, she travels extensively in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan and Europe.
Gwynn Thomas
Assistant Professor
Phone: 716-645-0793
Email: gmthomas@buffalo.edu
Education: Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Political Science)
Recent Courses:
WS 228 Introduction to Feminist Theory
WS 247 Women in Latin America
WS 518 Readings in Feminist Theory
WS 590 Feminism and the Body Politic
Research Interests:
Latin America, feminist theory, citizenship and state development, women's political participation and leadership, transnational feminism, Comparative women's movements.
Bio:
Gwynn Thomas joined the Department in August of 2005 as an Assistant Professor after receiving her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Thomas' work examines the intersection of gender ideology, political culture and state development. She is revising a book manuscript entitled, The Political is Personal: Family in the Contest over Political Legitimacy in Chile, that examines how familial beliefs are mobilized in struggles over the political legitimacy of political leadership of governments and political leaders in moments of transition from democratic to authoritarian governments. Additionally, she is interested in examining how familial discourses have helped to define the rights and responsibilities of citizenship for both women and men. A second project has centered around the election of Michelle Bachelet as Chile's first woman president and her gender equality agenda. She has published research on how Bachelet's election challenged accepted gendered understanding of political leadership. She was recently awarded the Elsa Chaney Award by the Gender and Feminist Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association. Her work has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, the Baldy Center, and the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender.
Barbara Wejnert
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies
Phone: 716-645-0787
Email: bwejnert@buffalo.edu
Education: Ph.D. Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland (Sociology)
Recent Courses:
WS 225 Violence in Gendered World
WS 414 Contemporary Global and Gender Issues
WS 560 Gender and the Global Economy
WS 409/790 Quantitative Methods and Social Research
Research Interests:
gender and democracy, women's health, violence against women, market globalization and gender inequality, women's well-being and health in democratizing Asian, Eastern European, and African countries
Bio:
Prof. Barbara Wejnert is Associate Professor and prior Chair, in the Department of Global Gender Studies at the University at Buffalo. Prior to her appointment at the University at Buffalo she was a faculty at Cornell University, Georgia Southern University, University of Florida and Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She received PhD in political sociology and MA in sociology of family and gender from Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She also pursued graduate studies at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.
Prof. Wejnert interdisciplinary research focuses on the world-wide diffusion of democracy and globalization of market, and their effect on gender equality, women’s health and gender policies. For this work she received grants from the Open Society Institute—the Soros Foundation (in 2005-07, 2003, 1996-1998), Ford Foundation (1996), Kosciuszko Foundation (1996), International Research and Exchange Board (2001-2002), National Endowments for the Humanities (1996, 1993), the Life Course Institute at Cornell (1995) and others.
Prof. Wejnert is an internationally known scholar in her filed and an award winning author of research papers. She had published 5 books pertaining issues of democracy, global development and gender equality and her interdisciplinary research has been published in many leading peer reviewed journals. In addition to many published collaborative research, she is a sole author of publications in the American Sociological Review, the Annual Review of Sociology, the Marriage and Family Review, Journal of Consumer Policy, a monograph of the World Health Organization and others. Her books Women in Post-Communism and Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia and Safe Motherhood in Globalized World. Global Gender Reflections: Progress or Regress, and Women Empowerment through Science & Technology Interventions. She has also created two research databases on Nations, Democracy and Development: 1800-2005 and its sub-set Gender, Democracy and Development 1970-2000, encompassing 200 years’ worth of information relating to more than 120 political, economic and social science indicators of 177 countries. She is currently preparing the database for broad scientific distribution.
Among her other current projects are completions of two books on Diffusion of Democracy as well as Gender, Democracy and Development. She is also pursuing a rigorous field research program on gender policies, women’s well-being and health in democratizing Asian, Eastern European, and African countries. At University at Buffalo, she teaches courses on Contemporary Globalization, Quantitative Methods, Global Economy, Violence in Gendered World, Democracy and Gender, and Gender and Society.