Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies

Dr. Borland is an art historian specializing in the art and architecture of medieval Europe. Dr. Borland is also the Fae Rawdon Norris Professor of the Humanities and founding Director of the OSU Center for the Humanities, and previously led the Digital Humanities Initiative on campus. She has served in a variety of other positions while at OSU, including as Interim Department Head, Associate Department Head, Director of Graduate Studies in Art History, and the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Fellow for Community Engagement. She is a 2019 graduate of the HERS Institute, a higher education leadership development program. Along with Dr. Nancy Thompson (St. Olaf College), she is managing co-editor of the open access online journal Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art. She was a founding member of the Material Collective (2013-2024), a collaborative group that sought to expand the form of and avenues for academic work, in part through prioritizing creativity, adventurousness, and activism in art historical research and writing. 

She is the author of Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022; paperback ed. 2024), recipient of the Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages (2024), Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and the 2025 Karen Gould Prize in Art History from the Medieval Academy of America.

Research Interests:
medieval medical and scientific imagery, medievalism and collecting, materiality, the corporeal experience of objects and spaces, audience and reception, representations of gender, digital humanities, engaged art history

Research Interests: War and American Culture, Disabled Veterans, Zoos and War, American Studies, Modern US History, Disability Studies, Zoo Studies, Bodies and War

I am a historian of war and society in 20th-century America, with a special interest in the effects of war on American bodies, institutions, and ideas. 

To date, my research has led down two distinct, yet overlapping paths. 

The first path traces the history of disabled veterans in modern American society. In 2015, I published Paying With Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran (University of Chicago Press), which examines changing attitudes toward disabled veterans in the decades surrounding World War I. In 2022, I co-edited the anthology Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History (University of Massachusetts Press), and I continue to write and lecture widely on disabled veterans in the United States, both past and present. 

The second path examines how zoos —both in the United States and around the globe—have been transformed during periods of military conflict. 

I've visited zoos and archives in New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, San Diego, Honolulu, Wroclaw (Poland), Prague, Chicago, and Berlin. This research culminated in my book World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025. 

Going forward, I remain committed to researching war and society in American history. My most recent project, They Are Dead, And Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America, will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in February 2026. It is co-edited with Civil War historian Jennifer M. Murray. 

I am currently working on three book projects. 

The first is a book on alligators for Reaktion Books' "Animal" Series. 

The second is a true crime history about the intersection of murder, psychopathy, and deviance in World War II Mississippi.

And the third is a co-edited volume (with OSU faculty member Matthew Schauer) on animal trade and American empire in modern history. 

Dr. Reanae McNeal is an Assistant Professor in Africana Studies and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. Her research involves decolonial and holistic approaches to accentuating the lived experiences and healing activism of Afro-Indigenous, African American, and Indigenous women, and Black enslaved/freedwomen as well as U.S. Women of Color(s). Thus, her research also focuses on the interrelated histories of African Americans and Native Americans, Womanism/Womanist Spiritual Activism, Digital Ethnic Studies/Digital Humanities, and Health/Healing justice. McNeal promotes social-healing change, advances cross-cultural understanding, cultivates restorative and transformative justice, and fosters the healing of deep wounds through radical love and transformation. McNeal's research-based creative work and scholarly endeavors address such topics as diverse (her)stories, resiliency, faith, spirituality, healing, and mental wellness. Her scholarly-creative work also addresses colonial, historical, and gendered racial traumas as well as advocating for communities of care. McNeal is currently completing her book on the (her)stories of Afro-Indigenous Women's Survivance that also underscores the activist endeavors of Black and Native women. She is the recipient of the NCTE Early Career Educator of Color award and selected as one of OSU's Center for the Humanities Research Group Fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year. Her work has also been supported by the prestigious Catherine Prelinger Award from the Coordinating Council for Women in History.

Research Interests:

Afro-Indigenous Studies
Afro-Indigenous Women's Survivance and Activism

Interrelated Histories of African Americans and Native Americans
Africana/African American Studies
Womanist Studies

Black Women's Studies
U.S. Women of Color(s) Activism
Enslaved Women/Freedwomen
Black and Indigenous Digital Studies
BlPOC Women's Activism
Women's Leadership and Wellness
Colonial, Historical, Gendered Racial, Generational, and Individual Traumas
Empowerment and Resiliency
Reparative, Restorative and Transformative Justice
Health Justice, Healing Justice, and Wellness
Communities of Care
Transformative Pedagogies

Dr. Corinne Schwarz is an Associate Professor of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at Oklahoma State University. She received her Ph.D. with honors in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas in May 2018. Her research and teaching interests include gender–based violence, frontline work, reproductive justice, and anti–carceral feminisms.

Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation. She has also been published in an interdisciplinary range of journals, including Health and Human Rights Journal, Feminist Formations, and Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. Outside of work, Dr. Schwarz enjoys baking, weightlifting, and spending time with her cats, Jasper, Dot, and Duck.

Research Interests:

Gender and sexuality; human trafficking; punishment and social control; frontline work/street-level bureaucracy theory; reproductive justice; feminist methods

My work focuses on the role of television in the mediation of American politics with a particular focus on issues of war and representation. My first book (Terrorism TV, UKP 2012) examined the role of television in managing popular assent to the War on Terrorism. I am also author of a text book on popular culture (Interrogating Popular Culture, Routledge 2014) and co-editor of a collection of essays (American Militarism on the Small Screen, Routledge 2016) about the representation of the US military on television from WWII to today. My current manuscript (under contract at U of Illinois Press) examines the American Forces Network, a global network of radio and television stations available to US military members serving overseas since 1943. It is a cultural history of the service, its transmission networks, and its effects on U.S. service personnel, their families, and civilian "eavesdroppers" in places like Panama, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and Japan.

Jessica Turcat's book Hunger House won the 2023 Saguaro Poetry Prize by Kallisto Gaia Press. Her latest work has appeared in the Brill anthology Women Who Write Animals: Female Literary Representations of the More-Than-Human World as well as San Diego Poetry Annual, Indiana Review, and Rewilding Anthology: Poems for the Environment. She received the OSU Center for the Humanities - Medical/Health Humanities Fellowship for 2023-24 and worked to implement Uplift! 2024 - Educational Parenting Series in Payne County. She draws inspiration for her writing from her studies focused on body politics, feminist mothering, and women's literature.