Top of page

Skip to main content

Studies in Sexualities

People
- Affiliated Faculty
- Program Directors( current )
News & Events

Main content

Home
People
Program Directors

Program Directors

Sameena Mulla

Co-Director of SIS, Associate Professor - WGSS

sameena.mulla@emory.edu

Alix Olson

Co-Director of SIS, Associate Professor- WGSS, Oxford

alix.olson@emory.edu

People

Affiliated Faculty
Program Directors( current )

Back to main content Back to top

Academic Calendar Course Atlas College Catalog Undergrad Office

Emory College Offices
Emory College Leadership

Emory University

550 Asbury Circle
Candler Library, Suite 128
Atlanta, GA 30322

Copyright © Emory University

EEO Employer-Disability/Veteran Statements | Copyright | Privacy Statement

Top of window

Sameena MullaCo-Director of SIS, Associate Professor - WGSS

Sameena Mulla is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She uses anthropological approaches to examine the intersections of law and health-care in U.S. interventions into sexual violence, and the ways in which they are invested in regimes of gender, race, and power.

More information about Professor Mulla can be found on her bio page.

Contact Information

Email

sameena.mulla@emory.edu

Websites

Bio Page

Top of window

Alix OlsonCo-Director of SIS, Associate Professor- WGSS, Oxford

Dr. Olson is an assistant professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the co-director of Emory's Studies in Sexualities program. Olson holds a PhD in Political Science and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of MA, Amherst. Olson's research interests include contemporary social and political thought; feminist, queer, and anti-racist politics; and the history of social movements. Dr. Olson's book The End of Resistance, an intellectual genealogy of four decades of resistance under neoliberalism, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (Jan., 2024). Olson is currently at work on two projects. The Promise(s) of Resilience: Governance and Resistance in Complex Times (Columbia University Press) offers a critical examination of the rise and circulation of the concept of “resilience” within 21^stCentury political life. Mad Max, Fury Road: Feminist Apocolypse (Bloomsbury Publishing) is an experimental manuscript, combining film analysis, poetry, and contemporary political theory. Dr. Olson has published articles in Contemporary Political Theory, New Political Science, Wagadu: Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies and contributed book chapters to a range of scholarly collections. She has received the “Christian Bay Award” for the paper presented at APSA that “best exemplifies the goal of New Political Science: making the study of politics relevant to the struggle for a better world.” Dr. Olson has served as program chair for the American Political Science Association's (APSA) New Political Science division and is currently co-chair of the National Women's Studies Association's (NWSA) Reproductive Justice interest group. At Umass Amherst, Dr. Olson received the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award and, more recently, she received Oxford College Mizell Award for teaching-service and Emory University's "Women of Excellence" Teaching Award (2022). Dr. Olson has participated in the Emory Arts and Social Justice Fellowship, a number of CFDE Teaching Fellowship programs, and is the recipient of an Allen Grant (Oxford) and the 2023-2024 University Research Committee grant (Emory). At Oxford, Dr. Olson is faculty advisor for ReVision Intersectional Feminists.

Prior to Olson's academic life, she toured internationally for over a decade as a spoken word artist, regularly appearing in media outlets like HBO's Def Poetry Jam, Air America (with Rachel Maddow), and NPR. She was the recipient of OutMusic's Artist of the Year, the DC Rape Crisis Center's "Visionary Award," and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Olson has published widely within popular media including in Ms. and Curve Magazines, co-authored Burning Down The House (Soft Skull Press, 2002), and is editor of the spoken word anthology Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (Seal Press, 2007) which bell hooks calls an anthology “to resurrect you.” Her poems have been featured in over a dozen anthologies and scholarly journals, including Women's Studies Quarterly (forthcoming, 2024), and on Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q. Olson has produced three spoken word albums and poetry books, and the award-winning documentary film Left Lane: On The Road With Alix Olson. Dr. Olson has lectured and taught social justice, art and politics, and writing workshops and performed spoken word poetry at over 300 colleges and universities, and at political conferences, high schools, and prisons across the United States and internationally.

Education

BA| Wesleyan University| 1998

MA| University of Massachusetts, Amherst| 2013

PhD| University of Massachusetts, Amherst| 2018

Publications

Books

The Ends of Resistance: Making and Unmaking Democracy, Columbia University Press- 2024
Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, Avalon Press (editor)- 2007
The Art(s) of Political Thought (co-editor), Suny Press- forthcoming 2025
The Promise of Resilience: Governance and Resistance in Complex Times, Columbia University Press- forthcoming 2025

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

The Promise(s) of Resilience in Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis (Routledge Press), 2024.
"Parables of Resilience: Promising Pessimism, Octavia Butler's 'Purpose,' and the Making of Worlds" in Feminist Theory, 2024
Repossessing Utopia from Below: Black/Feminist/Queer Utopianism in American Political Thought” in Utopian Imaginings: Saving the Future in the Present (Suny University Press), 2024
Hope as Antiracist Praxis in African American Political Thought in The Oxford Compendium of Hope (Oxford University Press), Fall 2023.
Critical Exchange: Toni Morrison and Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, 2020.
Queer(y)ing Permanent Partnership. Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, 12, Summer 2014.
Towards A Post-Parsimonious Political Science in Studying Politics Today: Critical Approaches to Political Science, eds. Nancy S. Love and Mark Mattern. London: Routledge, 2014 (reprint).
Archiving Optimism in Agitation with a Smile: Howard Zinn’s Legacies and the Future of Activism, eds. Steven Bird, et al. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, May 2013.
Towards A Post-Parsimonious Political Science. New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture35:3, September 2013.

Research Interests

Contemporary Social and Political Thought; Feminist, Queer, and Anti-Racist Politics; History of Social Movements; Art and Politics.

Contact Information

Email

alix.olson@emory.edu