The Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium is named after Professor Janet Jacobs in honor of her more than thirty-five years as an esteemed member of the WGST department and her 8 years as Program Director for the Arts and Science Honors Program. Professor Janet Jacobs is Professor of Distinction in Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on ethnic and religious violence, gender, mass trauma, and collective memory. She is author of numerous books and journal articles, including Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions (1989), Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self (1994), Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews (2002), Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory (2010), and The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and Its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivors (2016). Her current work is on genocide, collective memory, and counter memorialization. She is the recipient of numerous book awards and in 2005 she received the Hazel Barnes Prize, the most prestigious single faculty award granted by the Â鶹ӰԺ.

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Her book chapter “Family Planning is a Christian Duty: Religion, Population Control, and the Pill in the 1960s,” was included in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20^thCentury United States, eds. Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). She has also authored peer-reviewed articles in the journals Theology and Sexuality and Religion and American Culture. Mehta is currently at work on a new book which will discuss how religion in the United States has shaped discourse on contraception and sexual freedoms.

This semester, Mehta is teaching Jewish Feminisms: From Labor Marches to Women’s Marches, which examines Jewish involvement in secular feminist movements, as well as the effects of feminism on Jewish religious and communal life; asking when and how Judaism has mattered to feminism and how feminism has shaped Judaism from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. She is developing a new course for Spring 2020, Religion & Reproductive Politics in the US, which will focus primarily on how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish conversations about sexuality and reproduction have shaped access and attitudes towards reproductive health in the US over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Mehta writes:

“I am delighted to have joined the Department of Women and Gender Studies and the Program in Jewish Studies here in Â鶹ӰԺ. I look forward to getting to know the WGST and JWST communities. Please introduce yourself if you see me around campus!”

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“On top of his important accomplishment receiving tenure, we are also thrilled that Professor David has been selected by CU’s the Best Should Teach committee for the Best Should Teach Gold Award,” notes WGST chair Lorraine Bayard de Volo. “With this award, Professor David joins an elite group of dedicated scholars who demonstrate exceptional talents in teaching and academic leadership.”

This year's awardees were honored in September at a ceremony featuring keynote speaker Bettina L. Love, award-winning author and associate professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Love's work is largely concerned with how teachers and schools working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in intersectional social justice for the goal of equitable classrooms.

David's research and teaching focus on gender and sexuality in a global context. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines, where’s he currently spending his sabbatical working on new projects. David is the author of Women of the Storm: Civic Activism after Hurricane Katrina, and the recent article “Transgender Archipelagos,” which received the Best Article Award from the Society of Queer Asian Studies. David also serves as co-director of the LGBTQ Studies Certificate Program.

Congratulations to Dr. David for this well-deserved recognition of his talents, commitment, and hard work!

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Dr. Montoya was nominated for this award by Mariana Galvez Seminario, a WGST and Sociology double major. Mariana writes in her nomination letter, "Dr. Montoya has gone above and beyond in helping me gain confidence... she has helped me see that I have what it takes to be successful." Mariana also relates that before meeting  Dr. Montoya, “I hadn’t had any experience with knowledge produced by Latinx people. Growing up, I never had a Latinx teacher, and I never read or knew of anything written by a Latinx person… Suddenly, I realized I had a place in knowledge production, too.”

Mariana is currently assisting Dr. Montoya on a research project surrounding Latina activism and mobilizations, titled Guerreras y Puentes: Legacies of Chicana Feminism and Contemporary Latina/x Activism. “I am so lucky to have someone like Dr. Montoya there—who is not only an extraordinary mentor, but also someone who looks like me,” Mariana writes. In addition to the Craig L. Brians award, Montoya has previously been recognized for her excellence in mentoring and teaching with the 2017 Best Should Teach Award, and twice receiving the Women Who Make a Difference award, in 2013 and 2016.

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