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Supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation and Brandeis University Contact the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project:
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About the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project: Former Staff
Kecia AliMarissa Collins
Anne Gardner
Melissa J. de Graaf
Raja El Habti
Meghan Henning
Gail Labovitz
Keridwen Luis
Palak Mehta
Ava Morgenstern
Leslie Morrell
Michael Morrell
Monique Moultrie
Meera Sethi
Mini Singh
Judith Tick
Emma Wasserman
Melinda Weeks
Other former staff members
Kecia Ali
| Kecia Ali (Ph.D., Religion, Duke) is Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University. Her research interests center on Islamic religious texts, especially jurisprudence, and women in both historical and contemporary Muslim discourses. She is the author of Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (Oneworld, 2006), which grew out of her work with the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project. She is also the co-author (with Oliver Leaman) of Islam: The Key Concepts (Routledge, in press); other books in progress are a study of marriage and spousal rights in ninth-century jurisprudence and biography of the jurist al-Shafi'i.? She previously held research and teaching fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Brandeis University. |  |
Contact: alikecia -at- brandeis.edu
Visit Kecia Ali's web page
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Marissa Collins
Undergraduate Research Assistant
| Marissa Collins (Brandeis '06) is currently working toward her bachelor of arts in mathematics with a minor in women's studies. Her academic work at the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project concentrates on Jewish/Christian intermarriage and the children of these intermarriages; her technical work includes Web site design and editing. A committed feminist activist, Marissa has served as vice president of the Brandeis chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, a chapter that has garnered multiple awards for its members' achievements. Contact: mrkc -at- brandeis.edu |  |
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Anne Gardner
Former Project Coordinator
Having just graduated from Harvard Divinity School, Anne is a new arrival to Brandeis University, having joined the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project in October 2005. Previous to attending seminary Anne worked for twenty years in higher education, holding a variety of positions within the field of student services. In addition, she has extensive training and experience as a social worker, has spent time as a missionary with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and is currently pursuing ordination within the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. Along with her work at FSE Anne holds a position at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (Bedford, MA), is the Associate Protestant Chaplain at Phillips Academy (Andover, MA) and works as a freelance writer for New England Tennis Magazine. As Project Coordinator she provides managerial and research support while serving as an editor for articles, Web content, and other Project publications.
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Melissa J. de Graaf
Research Analyst, Musicology
| Melissa J. de Graaf is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.She holds a B.A. degree in Music and English from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. degree in Music and Women's Studies from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in Music from Brandeis University. She was a recipient of the American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship in 2004.De Graaf recently contributed to Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Judith Tick and Carol Oja, and Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ellie Hisama and Ray Allen. Her article on the female composers and gendered reception in the New York Composers Forum will be published in the next issue of American Music.She is currently writing a book about music in the New Deal and the New York Composers' Forum concerts, 1935-1940, in which she discusses issues of modernism, national identity, politics, race, and gender.
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Contact: mjdegraa -at- miami.edu
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Raja El Habti
Raja El Habti developed the Arabic language pages on the FSE web site (2002-2003).Raja El Habti is Vice President and Director of Research of Karamah Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. Her current research focuses on gender and Islamic law and scriptural interpretation, as well as the application of the Shari'a Law in Muslim countries and its repercussions on women's lives. She worked with L'Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc, a Moroccan women's organization, from 1999 to 2001, and she was a consultant to the Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité from 2000 to 2001. She is also a Research Associate of the GREMMO (Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Mediterranee et le Moyen Orient) at Lyon 2 University. Ms. El Habti holds a master's degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University, where she focused on issues facing Muslim women, especially with regard to family laws; she has also earned undergraduate and doctorate degrees in Arabic literature from Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. She has published many articles in Moroccan newspapers.
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Meghan Henning
Meghan Henning is Ph.D. candidate in the Religion department at Emory University, where she is studying the New Testament. She is most interested in feminist hermeneutics, post-colonial theory and the theme of suffering. Henning holds a BA in Religion and Economics from Denison University, and an MAR from Yale in Bible.
At Yale, Henning was awarded the Abraham Johannes Malherbe Fellowship (for further study in the New Testament and Early Church History) and the Tew Prize. She was a recipient of the Graduate Arts and Sciences Fellowship at Emory. In 2008 Henning was named a Jacob K. Javits Fellow and received the Society of Biblical Literature-Southeast Kenneth Willis Clark Award for her paper entitled The Intersection of Performance Power and Pain in the Martyrdom of Saints Agape, Irene, and Chione.
Contact: meghan.henning--at--gmail.com
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Gail Labovitz
As a Senior Research Analyst (AY 2002-2003), Labovitz developed material on Judaism for the FSE Project.Gail Labovitz received her doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2002, and was ordained as a rabbi there in 1992. Her dissertation, "My Wife I Called 'My House': Marriage, Metaphor, and Discourses of Gender in Rabbinic Literature," explored the use of ownership metaphors ("women are ownable," "marriage is an acquisition of property") in rabbinic texts of late antiquity to construct marriage, and by extension, gender and gender relations.
Her publications and conference presentations have also explored images of the nursing mother in early rabbinic sources, slavery and marriage in rabbinic thought, and the use of rabbinic sources for the study of women and gender in late antiquity. She has taught at JTS and at the Academy for Jewish Religion.
Concurrent with her research for the FSE, Labovitz coordinated the Jewish Feminist Research Group, a project of the Jewish Women's Studies Program at JTS, and taught adult education through the Kollel program of the Hebrew Union College.
Gail Labovitz is currently Assistant Professor of Rabbinics at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
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Keridwen Luis
Former Project Coordinator
Keridwen Luis is currently an anthropology Ph.D. student in her dissertation stage at Brandeis University. Her dissertation is on the creation of culture and gender in women's intentional communities, and her interests also include folk conceptions of culture and culture theory, women's studies, gender studies, non-heteronormative sexualities, ghost story narratives and belief, and personhood, agency and identity. She holds a Master's degree in Anthropology and Women's Studies from Brandeis, and has been teaching Anthropology, Women's Studies, and Social Theory at various universities in the area for the past few years.
Her recent publications include the entry for "The Anthropology of Women" in The Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2006) and "Les Human Beans?: Alienation, Humanity, and Community in Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God," in On Joanna Russ (2006; upcoming). She was the recipient of a 2005 Brandeis University Prize Instructorship for her class "Unbounded Desires: A Cross-Cultural Look at Non-Heteronormative Sexualities."
Contact: fse_project --at-- -at- brandeis
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Ava Morgenstern
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Ava Morgenstern is a bachelor of arts candidate ('06) in Sociology and Peace and Conflict Studies at Brandeis University. As an undergraduate research assistant at the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project since spring 2004, Ava is currently researching Jewish stances and opinions on heterosexual premarital sex. Ava has also contributed to a national women's health web site, coordinated a Hillel women's organization at Brandeis, and conducted original research on religion and forgiveness with scholars at the University of Pennsylvania.
Contact: ava -at- brandeis.edu
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Leslie Morrell, Former Web Editor and Michael Morrell, Former Web Layout and Maintenance
| Leslie Morrell is an advanced doctoral candidate in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies program at Brandeis University. She is also Program Coordinator and College Instructor for the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University where she teaches Feminist Theory, Representing Women Across Cultures, and Perceptions of Women in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Leslie has served as web editor for many projects including the Graduate Student Association at Brandeis, Desert Humanitarians of the Boderlands, and the Women's Studies Program at NMSU. She enjoys working closely with her husband, Michael Morrell, on web-based projects. Michael Morrell is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Brandeis University. He is also an assistant professor of computers for the Engineering Technology program in the college of Engineering at New Mexico State University. His interests lie in Bible Tools for discovering intertextuality between Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. His studies are in Computational Linguistics. Contacts: lmorrell -at- nmsu.edu AND mgm -at- nmsu.edu Back to Top |
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Monique Moultrie
Research Analyst, Slavery
| Monique Moultrie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. She is specializing in the field of ethics, and her doctoral research will investigate the influence of mainstream Christianity and Islam on the sexual decision making of African-American women. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Sociology from Duke University and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where her concentration was in the sexual ethics of Christianity and Islam. She remains particularly interested in addressing African-American women's expressions of sexuality and the interconnection of religious communities and HIV/AIDS outreach programs. Contact: monique.n.moultrie -at- vanderbilt.edu Back to Top |
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Meera Sethi
Research Assistant 2002-2002
| Meera Sethi (Brandeis '02) earned an MA/MAT in Children's Literature and Education from Simmons College in 2004, after which she taught middle school Humanities at a Boston charter school and worked as an editor for Houghton Mifflin's school division until 2007. She is currently a freelance writer and editor in Chicago. Contact: meeralee -at- gmail.com Back to Top |
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Mini Singh
Mini Singh researched and wrote the contemporary slavery material for the FSE Web site in 2003.She is a recent graduate of the master's program in Sustainable International Development at Brandeis University. Her coursework has focused on human rights based development, gender planning and analysis, and research and advocacy. She conducted her master's thesis with the UN South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme (SAPAP) and evaluated the gender components of the program in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.
A citizen of India, Mini holds an MSW from the Delhi School of Social Work and has six years of experience in the field of gendered human development.
Her work experience includes a World Bank consultancy as a gender specialist, qualitative research and evaluation assignments with the UN, and independent research with ActionAid and Brandeis University. She is currently working as a Program Manager with the Center for International Health and Development at Boston University.
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Judith Tick
Research Analyst, Musicology
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Judith Tick is a music historian who writes about American music, particularly early modernism, and women's history. Among her publications are books and articles about Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and in particular, the biography of the American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger.A Composer's Search for American Music, which won the Irving R. Lowens award as "Best Book of the Year" from the Society for American Music in 1998 and an ASCAP Deems Taylor award. She is an Associate Editor for the journal Musical Quarterly. A member of the faculty at Northeastern University since 1986, she was named a Matthews Distinguished University Professor in 1999 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 as an "innovator in the field of musical biography.". Her new book, Music in the U.S.A. A Documentary Companion, with Paul Beaudoin, Assistant Editor, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2008 Contact: j.tick -at- neu.edu Back to Top |
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Emma Wasserman
Research Analyst, Early Christianity
Emma Wasserman is a Ph.D. candidate in New Testament at Yale University. She is currently working on a dissertation that explores ancient conceptions of the self and moral responsibility in Paul's letter to the Romans. Her interests center on Pauline exegesis, Hellenistic moral philosophy, and theoretical approaches to the study of religion.Her undergraduate thesis on gender and kinship relations in ancient Greek funerals was published as part of the Brown University Senior Honor Theses Series.
Contact: emma.wasserman -at- yale.edu
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Melinda Weekes
1. The African American National Biography Project, published by Oxford University Press. The African American National Biography, a joint project of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and Oxford University Press, was published in an eight volume print edition in January 2008. Weekes was one of many contributors to this historical work, having contributed to the biographies of two gospel music living legends, Edwin Hawkins and Tramaine Hawkins.2. Companion to the Africana Worship Book, published by the United Methodist Church. This volume of essays, interlacing worship pieces with reflections from prominent leaders and emerging thinkers in Africana life, is designed to help churches, professors and students reflect more deeply on worship and practice. Building a bridge of understanding through collective experiences, the Companion to the Africana Worship Book shows the roots and fruits of rich worship. Weekes contributed an essay entitled, Music in Africana Worship .
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Palak Mehta
Palak Mehta had served as web editor for many projects including the African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis. She was a graduate student in Computer Science at Brandeis University.
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Other former staff members
- Carly Daniel-Hughes (2000-2001)
- Tracey Hurd (2000-2001)
- Laura Hymson (2000-2001)
- Leslie Caroline Kelly (2002)
- Elizabeth Kennedy (2003)
- Molly Lanzarotta (2001-2003)
- Elizabeth Penland (2002-2004)
- Dawn Robinson Rose (2000-2001)
- Humaira Zafar (2002)
- Elizabeth Stevens (2003-2005)
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