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Women in STEM Conference Panels/Presentations by Autumn M Reed

There has been awareness concerning the lack of women and people of color in academia in the US f... more There has been awareness concerning the lack of women and people of color in academia in the US for some time and more recently the focus has centered around how such institutions can be changed to be more inclusive (Bystydzienski and

STEM Conference Papers by Autumn M Reed

13th LACCEI Annual International Conference: “Engineering Education Facing the Grand Challenges, What Are We Doing, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Jul 2015

American Society of Engineering Education Proceedings, Jun 2015

CDA Conference Presentations by Autumn M Reed

International Society for Language Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jun 2015

National Women's Studies Association Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nov 2014

This paper explores the creation of “U.S. Orientalism,” a course that invites students to rethink... more This paper explores the creation of “U.S. Orientalism,” a course that invites students to rethink the boundaries of the U.S. nation by analyzing its representations of the Middle East. The presentation details the ways in which the instructor uses material from her dissertation on U.S. representations of “honor killings” and embeds feminist pedagogy into course design and delivery to model for students how taken-for-granted discourses of globalization, nationhood, culture, religion, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and class produce a complex and shifting range of subjectivities and geographies. The paper concludes with a discussion of student assessment of the course.

My paper explores the U.S. news' coverage of the 2009 "honor killing" of Noor Faleh Almaleki in P... more My paper explores the U.S. news' coverage of the 2009 "honor killing" of Noor Faleh Almaleki in Peoria, Arizona. I analyze the coverage as a discursive site for the construction of boundaries that further exclude Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian migrants from the U.S. nation. I use discourse analysis to demonstrate how news representations regarding Noor's death are not primarily about mitigating violence against women, but, on the contrary, are situated within a larger debate about how the growing presence of this migrant group disrupts U.S. cultural identity. Indeed, I argue that the U.S. news coverage of Noor's "honor-killing," with all its fine details of gendered, ethnic, religious, and cultural difference, intimately links the murder of this single woman to metadiscourses regarding questions of citizenship, national belonging, and the societal and national security of the U.S. nation. Moreover, regarding national security, I explain how news narratives of Noor's death provide fuel for the flame and discursively elide with the post-911 terrorism-infused moral panic, which particularly targets members of this migrant group. In sum, the work presented in this paper not only assesses boundary formation as it relates to migration, but also pushes disciplinary margins, by incorporating perspectives and approaches from the fields of discourse analysis, gender and women's studies, and media studies.

This paper employs the method of critical discourse analysis to examine U.S. news coverage of the... more This paper employs the method of critical discourse analysis to examine U.S. news coverage of the 2009 murder of Noor Faleh Almaleki in Peoria, Arizona. My analysis elucidates how this coverage is a discursive site for the construction of boundaries that further exclude Muslim and Middle Eastern migrants from the American nation. In addition, I contend that the discourse(s) found in such “honor-killing” coverage can be situated within the larger on-going post 9/11 debate surrounding “societal security.” Finally, using my paper’s findings, I offer my perspective on how critical discourse analysis can be a useful method for feminist activism.

This paper examines FoxNews’ portrayal of the honor-based murders of Pakistani-American Muslims S... more This paper examines FoxNews’ portrayal of the honor-based murders of Pakistani-American Muslims Sandeela Kanwal and Aasiya Hassan. Drawing upon Edward Said’s (1978) theoretical framework of Orientalism, and its reworking by feminists such as Lata Mani (1987), the presenter demonstrates the manner in which FoxNews uses Pakistani women’s bodies as the symbolic terrain upon which they make nationalist arguments of U.S. cultural superiority. To challenge this hegemonic discourse and refocus our attention on addressing the issue of honor-based violence, the panelist offers transnational feminism as a useful framework which recognizes Pakistani agency while avoiding the reification of Orientalist gestures.

Book Chapters by Autumn M Reed

Public and Political Discourses of Migration, 2015

Talks by Autumn M Reed

The growing importance of postdoctoral training as a proving ground for scientific excellence and... more The growing importance of postdoctoral training as a proving ground for scientific excellence and intellectual independence makes it a critical juncture for successful entry into the faculty ranks. This workshop is a unique professional development opportunity for graduate students preparing for the next phase of their scientific careers. Learn from a panel of national postdoctoral fellowship program leaders what makes for a strong applicant and how to maximize your postdoctoral training experience. Graduate students in the biological and biomedical sciences should not miss this very special networking opportunity.

Thesis Chapters by Autumn M Reed

Teaching Documents by Autumn M Reed

13th LACCEI Annual International Conference: “Engineering Education Facing the Grand Challenges, What Are We Doing, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Jul 2015

American Society of Engineering Education Proceedings, Jun 2015

International Society for Language Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jun 2015

National Women's Studies Association Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nov 2014

Public and Political Discourses of Migration, 2015

Welcome to the Politics of Language in USAmerican Society! In this introductory course, we will e... more Welcome to the Politics of Language in USAmerican Society! In this introductory course, we will explore the relationship between language and power in USAmerican contexts. Together, we will learn and apply the qualitative research method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to uncover hidden dimensions of language and power (gendered, racial, class, ethnic, sexual, religious, and ability-related) in advertising, the news, politics, the law, social groups, the workplace, health/medicine, and the classroom. We will also learn best practices and strategies for college (and beyond) success.

Frontiers in Psychology

Calls to diversify the professoriate have been ongoing for decades. However, despite increasing n... more Calls to diversify the professoriate have been ongoing for decades. However, despite increasing numbers of scholars from underrepresented racial minority groups earning doctorates, actual progress in transitioning to faculty has been slow, particularly across STEM disciplines. In recent years, new efforts have emerged to recruit faculty members from underrepresented racial minority groups (i.e., African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and/or Native American/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous) through highly competitive postdoctoral programs that allow fellows the opportunity to transition (or “convert”) into tenure-track roles. These programs hybridize some conventional aspects of the faculty search process (e.g., structured interview processes that facilitate unit buy-in) along with novel evidence-based practices and structural supports (e.g., proactive recruitment, cohort communities, search waivers, professional development, enhanced mentorship, financial incentives). In this policy and...

In the spirit of “hack-a-thons” that build solutions, we leveraged resources from NSF Alliance fo... more In the spirit of “hack-a-thons” that build solutions, we leveraged resources from NSF Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), ADVANCE, and Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate programs to co-develop “hacking diversity in STEM” events for underrepresented groups (URG) in STEM. These activities were carried out at STEM conferences, serving participants who were at the conference, as well as external viewers online. The events included “hacking challenges” and solicited responses to issues experienced by distinct levels of participants: incoming graduate students, continuing graduate students, postdocs, and faculty. The 2015 and 2016 hacking activities, resulted in thousands of responses across social media platforms, and our activity-specific hashtag was a trending topic. Assistance from a leading academic media laboratory, and other national hackathons, influenced the activity’s structure. The activity for students served as a hacking “intervention” to improve underrepresented graduate students’ perception of sense of community, and retention at both the course level and dissertation stages. The sessions for postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and administrators looked at issues that hindered career advancement. The crowd-sourcing, dynamic activities engaged URG STEM mentors who served as coaches in-person and online. A content analysis of the student data showed that broad themes included tackling student isolation, issues of time management, managing expectations of family members, understanding expectations of academic advisors, and success strategies for completing the dissertation. The sessions for faculty and professionals yielded suggestions for professional advancement, and solutions to issues affecting career-life balance. As an example, the career-life balance activity for women in engineering was carried out over Twitter with a 2-hour international discussion session online that preceded a two-hour in-person conference session at an engineering conference. This session with women in engineering as the lead coaches online, yielded the following themes: attention to stress triggers, ways to achieve balance, and professional efficiency. The most important outcomes were part of the in-person discussion that grew out of the online discussion two-hours prior, where Latina and African-American women engineers within positions of power discussed ways that they were challenging norms to develop new professional structures to improve strategies for younger women and others from other underrepresented groups. These structures included developing career-development groups to work on materials to advance careers, influencing family leave policies, and deciding to verbally champion issues that affect students and peers in faculty and higher-level academic administrative meetings. This paper will share ways that these structured social media hacking activities, designed for mentoring and coupled with in-person connections, have leveraged social science theories of sense of belonging and building cultural wealth. Further, these hybridized hacking activities, deliberately designed to mentor underrepresented groups in STEM, access a virtual form of Oldenburg’s (2001) “third place” which layers progress within the alternative space of the hacking activity (purposely located away from the academic institution.) This paper will show results from content analysis of responses with our activity-specific hashtag, and will suggest ways to develop similar, impactful activities to mentor and retain underrepresented groups in STEM.