Sally McWilliams, PhD, Director

Sally McWilliams

Chair & Professor

PhD in English, University of Washington, Seattle WA 1992

Interests

Transnational feminist theory and activism; narrative strategies employed by women and queer writers across the globe; diasporic Chinese women's literature and graphic novels.

Scholarly Projects

I am engaged in theorizing how a transnational feminist framework reveals the complexities of gender, culture, sexuality, and race in literary works that students often see as outside their spheres of understanding and interpretation. My most recent publication, "Intervening in Trauma: Bodies, Violence, and Interpretive Possibilities in Vyvyane Loh's Breaking the Tongue," examines the representational and theoretical overlap between event and insidious traumas. Another part of this larger project is a close analysis of graphic narratives by women. "Sex in Yop City: Ivorian Femininity and Masculinity in Abouet and Oubrerie's Aya," has been accepted for publication in a collection entitled The Blacker the Ink: Construction of Blackness in Comics and Sequential Art (eds. Duffy, Jennings, and Gateward)

Extended Studies Building  143

s.mcwilliams@pdx.edu

(503)725-8476

Current Curriculum Vitae

Courses Taught:

• WS 301 Gender & Critical Inquiry
• WS 315 Feminist Analysis
• WS 308U Chinese Women's Literature
• WS471/571 Global Feminisms