Molly is an educator, scholar, and organizer based in the Pacific Northwest (Coast Salish/Puyallup land) and received their Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland. Molly’s academic work is grounded in women of color feminisms and queer of color critique. They are currently working on their manuscript tentatively titled, " Becoming Your Labor: Identity Production and the Affects of Labor” based on their dissertation research that was awarded the American Studies Association’s 2021 Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Award. “Becoming Your Labor” weaves together women of color feminisms and queer of color theory, along with theories of work and affect theory to analyze the ‘affects of labor’ – the visceral and active consequences of our working environments that metabolize through our bodies and produce our identities, relationships, and communities.
Molly regularly teaches “Queer of Color Theorizing,” “Women of Color Feminist Theory,” and “Resistance/Activism/Social Change.” All of Molly’s classes are grounded in pedagogies of abolition and love and center the importance of praxis. As an organizer, Molly centers their power building and community convening praxis on abolitionist and transformational justice frameworks. Their organizing is by us/for us, in the places and within the communities they call home. Molly believes in the transformative power of storytelling, radical listening, vulnerability, imagination, and love, and that community and relationship building is necessary for systemic change.
In 2018 Molly co-founded the Seattle-based Reckoning Trade Project and the virtual project Junqtion, a community space made by and for TLGBQIA2S workers, with a focus on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the trades. In 2022 Molly founded the LGBTQ+ Trades Worker Archive housed in the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle. Molly is the program lead for the National LGBTQ Workers Center, a member of Scholars for Social Justice and actively organizes with abolitionist and anti-imperialist organizations.
Research Interest:
Queer of color critique, women of color feminisms, gender and sexualities studies, theories of work, affect theory, trauma, affect, ethnography.