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Vivian May

Director, Humanities Center; Principal Investigator, CNY Humanities Corridor; Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Syracuse University

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Vivian M. May has published widely on Black feminist intellectual histories, intersectionality, and feminist theory and literature. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, she is author of two books: the first, Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist (Routledge, 2007), shows how Cooper deserves a much wider audience for her innovative and often daring contributions to a Black feminist public sphere. Her most recent book, Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries (Routledge, 2015), demonstrates how often intersectionality is resisted, misunderstood, and misapplied and pushes for more meaningful engagement with intersectionality’s radical ideas, histories, and justice orientations. She also served as President of the National Women’s Studies Association (2014-2016).