Keynote Speakers
Neil J. Young
Neil J. Young is an acclaimed historian, author, and podcaster whose work delves into the intersections of politics, religion, and identity in modern American history. His latest book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, offers the first in-depth exploration of LGBTQ Republicans, earning widespread praise as a groundbreaking and essential contribution to political history. His earlier work, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics, examines the complex alliances within the Religious Right, receiving accolades for its insightful analysis and meticulous research. A seasoned writer, Neil has contributed to prominent outlets such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, and The New York Times. He co-hosts the popular history podcast Past Present and co-produced the hit series Welcome to Your Fantasy, which chronicles the history of the Chippendales. Neil earned his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and has taught at Princeton University. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
Laura Goffman
Laura Goffman is an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern history whose work examines the intersections of public health, empire, and social change in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. Her forthcoming book, Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia (Stanford University Press), traces the development of public health institutions from the mid-19th century to the 1970s, highlighting women’s roles and challenging state-driven narratives of modernity. Committed to recovering the voices of Middle Eastern doctors, practitioners, and ordinary people, Goffman situates the history of public health within its regional and global contexts. Her research spans archives in the Middle East, the UK, India, Zanzibar, and the US, and her scholarship has appeared in leading journals such as Labor: Studies in Working-Class History and The International Journal of Middle East Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University, where her dissertation won the 2019 Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Dissertation Award.
Panelists
Panel 1: (Re)Production: Medicine, Law, and the Body
Moderated by Owen MacDonald
Christen Hammock Jones (she/her) is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania studying American Legal History with a focus on reproductive rights and health in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Her research explores the use of litigation as a political tool for feminist social movements, especially those related to reproductive freedom. Christen is barred as an attorney in New York and has practiced as a litigator at a large international law firm and on the Reproductive Rights & Health team at the National Women’s Law Center. She obtained her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2020 and a dual Bachelor/Master of Arts in English from the University of Georgia in 2014.
Darcy Roake is a PhD history candidate at Tulane University with a focus on the reproductive autonomy and health movements in the U.S. and France. Darcy is also a Unitarian Universalist Minister and has a wide background in social justice and pastoral care in settings as varied as Oxfam America, Amnesty International, the United Nations, the Navajo Nation Public Defender’s Office, Massachusetts General Hospital, Planned Parenthood’s National Clergy Advocacy Board, Community Church U.U. New Orleans and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Darcy received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Brown University and graduated with a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. She has published essays in Guernica, and The New Orleans Advocate, among other venues; was named a “Faith Leader to Watch” by the Center for American Progress and is a former Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and a current Sawyer and Monroe Fellow.
Zsófia Anna Veszely (she/her) is a third-year PhD History researcher at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). She has a BA degree in Sociology from ELTE University (Budapest, Hungary) and an MA degree in European Women’s and Gender History (MATILDA) from Central European University (Vienna, Austria). She is currently on exchange in New York at the CUNY Graduate Center. The title of her dissertation is Sex Education in State-Socialist Hungary in Transnational Perspective: Diversity and Change Over Time. She is interested in the history of gender and sexuality, queer history, intersectionality, and the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
Noah Kupper is an adjunct instructor at Montclair State University. Their research explores intersections of power, subjectivity, and knowledge through decolonial theory, psychoanalysis, and feminist philosophy. They are particularly interested in how historical and material conditions shape our ways of being and knowing. They also find joy in cooking and art.
Panel 2: Statecraft, Scandal, and Spectacle: Gendered Power Plays and the Law
Moderated by Dr. Liz Abosch
Lena Nasrallah is a historian of the modern Middle East, focusing on migrant labor, urban development and medical services in Abu Dhabi. She is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, where she is currently teaching a course on global south urbanisms in the 20th century.
Rachel Elise Wiedman is a Ph.D. student at University of Tennessee that specializes in gender and political culture in the Civil War era North. Her current research utilizes letters written by constituents, local political resolutions, and eulogies to explore how changing ideals of masculinity altered northerners’ values regarding statesmanship, citizenship, and political participation.
Sarah Offutt is a PhD student and teaching assistant at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She received her bachelor’s degrees in History and English from Transylvania University and her master’s degree from West Virginia University specializing in British and British Imperial History. While her primary area of focus is on nineteenth century Britain and its empire, Ms. Offutt employs an interdisciplinary approach to History by incorporating themes and theories from literary studies and woman and gender studies.
Panel 3: Gender Under Surveillance: Policing Bodies and Politics
Moderated by Haiyi Li
Joanna Cardenas is a Ph.D. student in the Department of African American at UC Berkeley. Her research interest lies at the nexus of critical carceral studies, Disability Studies, and Black Feminist Thought, with an emphasis on the intersection of race, class, and gender. Through a close analysis of contemporary California prisons, Joanna’s current work broadly focuses on how systems of confinement inform our understandings around gender, race, and ableism through the enforcement of violence and power. She also studies how carceral systems impact Black and Latinx women in South Central Los Angeles with a focus on surveillance and policing.
Keara Sebold is a PhD candidate at Boston University studying queer cultural history in the US at the turn of the 20th century. Her dissertation focuses on the emergence of the idea of a “lesbian threat” from 1870-1930. She also works alongside the LGBTQ+ Center for Faculty and Staff at Boston University to conduct oral history interviews of Boston’s queer community.
Shareena Jasmin. P K is a research scholar in the Department of History at MES Kalladi College, Mannarkkad, affiliated with the University of Calicut, Kerala, India. Her research revolves around the intriguing topic of “Ideologies and Identities of Insanity: The Emergence of Lunatic Asylums in Colonial Kerala”. Her work seeks to delve into the intricate aspects of colonial psychiatry and legality with the overarching goal of comprehending the concept of madness and its societal management within the historical context of Kerala. She has presented papers in various national and international seminars including the 49th Annual Conference on South Asia organized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the 27th ECSAS conference held at the University of Turin, and the 2024 Spring Conference of Ohio Academy of History held at the Ohio State University.
Kelly N. Giles is a Black feminist qualitative researcher and interdisciplinary scholar, who investigates the ways in which incarceration and secondary criminalization contribute to and sustain social, economic, and emotional disparities affecting marginalized communities. Her dissertation, titled “Incarcerated Love: A Sociological Examination of Black Love in the Everyday,” explores the experiences of Black women who are or have been in romantic relationships with incarcerated or formerly incarcerated men. This research aims to understand the meaning-making processes of these relationships and their impact on Black women’s perceptions of dating, love, sex, and intimacy. By focusing on these relationships and experiences, this work seeks to complicate and problematize the construction and practice of Black love in the United States. Kelly’s research interests are race and racism, gender, age and aging, culture, emotion and feeling, and incarceration.
Panel 4: Gendered Economies: Labor, Power, and the Politics of Work
Moderated by Owen MacDonald
Taryn DeLeon Mendiola is a PhD candidate at Boston College where they are researching the Viking-Age Norse colonies throughout the North Atlantic. They completed their MA at Fordham University where they examined the medieval Icelandic cloth industry and the economic systems that supported it.
Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo is a second-year Public History master’s student at Wayne State University. She also works as a docent and oral history coordinator at the Detroit Historical Museum. Her research centers on the early-twentieth-century Detroit-Windsor border, through the lens of both gender and borderlands history
Emma Chapman is a PhD candidate at the of California, Davis. She studies gender, economy, and family structures in early North America. She was the Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch Fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia in 2024. She has worked on multiple public history projects with entities such as the National Park Service and the Marchand Institute of Public Engagement. She is currently working on research for her dissertation of the effects of absence on families and states in early North America.
Katy Evans is a doctoral candidate at UIC, where she studies the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. She earned her Bachelor’s from Saint Mary’s College in 2016 and her Master’s from Ball State University in 2018. She is currently writing her dissertation on the reconstruction of gendered expectations through women’s participation in the Sandinista Revolution and the decade of revolutionary governance.