USU Intersections Announces Six Fellows in Transformative Intersectional Collective

Utah State University has announced six fellows joining the Transformative Intersectional Collective (TRIC), a partnership with University of Utah’s School for Cultural & Social Transformation, supported by an Andrew W. Mellon grant.

The $517,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant will help fund three yearlong cohorts of fellows from USU, University of Utah, Weber State University and Salt Lake Community College to support early career faculty in advanced professional training and development in intersectional studies.

This year, the TRIC fellows will focus on intersectional pedagogy. In year two, the grant will support faculty and students engaged in intersectional research, while in year three, it will support fellows engaged in intersectional community engagement.

"Our first-year TRIC Fellows include six early career faculty from across USU, including statewide," said Christy Glass, interim director of USU's Center for Intersectional Gender Studies & Research. "All fellows have served in critical roles in the Center, as Teaching or Research Fellows, Program Partners or as members of our Advisory Board. They were selected based on their ongoing engagement with intersectional pedagogy and commitment to make connections with other Utah scholars."

USU's six inaugural TRIC fellows are Adena Rivera-Dundas, Cree Taylor, Rachel Turner, Beth Buyserie, Mario Suárez and Rachel Wishkoski.

“What all of these scholars have in common is a deep commitment to issues of inclusion and intersectional studies,” said Amber Caron, program coordinator of USU's Center for Intersectional Gender Studies & Research. “By looping our fellows into the TRIC collective, we hope to connect them to other researchers, teachers and scholars across Utah who can further support them in their work.”

Glass said the center is thrilled about avenues the collaboration will open, furthering intersectional studies and other academic fields.

"In Utah, the potential to support new partnerships, new collaborative relationships and new areas of interdisciplinary inquiry is enormous," Glass said. "The opportunity to partner with the School for Cultural & Social Transformation is the next step in forging new partnerships and pursuing new collaborations."

Kathryn Bond Stockton, dean of the U’s School for Cultural & Social Transformation, said she’s looking forward to the collaboration, as well.

“In all honesty, I stand in awe when I see the remarkable achievements of the still-new Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research at USU,” Stockton said. “We are eager to learn from their stunning work under the leadership of Dr. Christy Glass, and it will be an honor to work side-by-side with their faculty and staff as we partner on the front of intersectional pedagogy.”

Intersectional studies examines the complicated and interlocking systems that create individual and community experiences of discrimination and privilege.

“Everything on fire in our world, we study, and everything everyone is currently debating, we discuss with passion and cool examination,” Stockton stated “We particularly honor the Black and Indigenous women who founded and coined the concept of intersectionality based on the complex, multiple conditions of their lived experiences.”

Learn more about USU's inaugural TRIC fellows:

Adena Rivera-Dundas is an assistant professor of English. Working at the intersections of personal narrative, Black feminisms, and affect studies, she examines the ways in which authors such as Jesmyn Ward, Saidiya Hartman, Claudia Rankine, Kiese Laymon, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Marquis Bey use embodied experience as evidence to create intimacy with readers while simultaneously resisting easy, unearned access to Black subjectivities.

Cree Taylor is a lecturer at Utah State University teaching First Year Composition and Intro to Ethnic Studies. Her classroom is informed by social constructivism, critical race theory, feminism, Black feminist thought and pedagogies of care. She works to establish her classroom as a brave space where students feel empowered to share their own perspectives and have those perspectives challenged in respectful and meaningful ways.

Rachel Turner is an assistant professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at USU Eastern-Price. Her research interests include integrating curriculum and children’s picture books for teaching social studies and the marginalization of social studies in the elementary classroom.

Beth Buyserie is the director of composition and an assistant professor of English at USU. Her work focuses on writing program administration, the teaching of composition, critical pedagogies, professional learning, and the intersections of language, knowledge, and power through the lenses of queer theory and critical race theory.

Mario Suárez is an assistant professor of cultural studies at USU. He's interested in the intersection of race, gender identity, sexuality and class, and how binary notions of gender permeate K-12 STEM spaces and curricula. His intersectional research agenda broadly asks: How does our understanding of gender and sexuality shape K-12 education?

Rachel Wishkoski is a reference and instruction librarian at USU. She serves as a liaison to several academic departments in the arts and social sciences, supports the information literacy curriculum in English Composition courses, and designs outreach and engagement opportunities for USU’s graduate student community. While Wishkoski is the only TRIC fellow who's not also a USU Intersections fellow, she co-organizes the Intersections of Inclusion series, a partnership between USU Intersections and USU Libraries. This series explores questions about knowledge, research, teaching and the academy through an intersectional lens.