Portia Allie-Turco is a doctoral student in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at University of the Cumberlands. Her professional experience includes the roles of: Licensed Mental Health Counselor, counseling clinic director, college lecturer, chief diversity officer and clinical consultant. Her research and clinical focus is on healing generational, historical and racial trauma.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Rev. Mary Sue Barnett is a Catholic woman priest, ordained by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She is founder of the Louisville Coalition for CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women) a grassroots nongovernmental organization that seeks to implement the rights and principles of this United Nations women’s treaty on the local level. She has advocated for women and girls at the United Nations in New York City and Geneva, has assisted victims during rape kit exams, and has created feminist liturgies for the spiritual support of survivors. She also serves as a chaplain at psychiatric and Trauma 1 hospitals. Barnett recently published Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021).
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021) and Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Melissa Brennan, M.A., LPC, is currently completing her PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision at University of the Cumberlands. Her areas of interest include school counseling, social justice, gender studies, diversity and equality, child and adolescent counseling, and online teaching and counseling.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Angela Cowser earned her PhD at Vanderbilt University and is currently Associate Dean of Black Church Studies and Doctor of Ministry programs at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky. She previously served as Director of the Center for the Church and the Black Experience and Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Chicago, Illinois). She was ordained as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Minister of Word and Sacrament in 2006. Her publications include Radicalizing Women-Centered Organizing and Power in Post-Conflict Namibia: A Case Study of the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (Saarbrucken: Scholars Press, 2013), “Leadership Amidst Poverty: A Mixed Methodological Analysis of the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia” (Journal of African American Studies, 2017), and other articles. She is a member of the Association of Black Sociologists, the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, the American Academy of Religion, and the Chicago Organizers Guild.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Rev. Diane Dougherty is an ordained priest in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She is a lifelong Catholic, former religious sister of 23 years, lay minister of education in Catholic schools, and former Director of Catechesis for the Archdiocese of Atlanta. She is an activist working to promote equality for women and those marginalized by unjust systems in the home, on the street, and in the state.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Marion G. Dumont is a woman, mother, and grandmother. She obtained a Bachelor of Science from Seattle Pacific University focusing on maternal-child nursing. In 2013 she obtained a doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Philosophy & Religion with a specialization in women’s spirituality and a particular focus on women’s mysteries, sacred arts, and healing. Over the course of her career, she has received training in other healing modalities including botanical and energy therapies. As a writer, artist, nurse, and practitioner of the healing arts, her work emerges out of personal experience and an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature, art, and spirituality.
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Rachelle Elizabeth earned her BA in Sociological (emph. social work) with minors in Religion and Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, her MA in Islamic-Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations from Hartford Seminary (now Hartford International), and is currently a doctoral candidate in Theology and Ethics with the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where she is writing on the spiritual cultivation of a dialogue with Nature from a Shakta (Hindu) perspective. Currently, she resides in the north woods of Minnesota with her partner, Sully, a bunch of animals, and the wild.
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Dorislee Gilbert, J.D., is an experienced prosecutor and victim’s attorney. Dorislee was a prosecutor at the Louisville Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office for 15 years, where she served in the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Unit and as the Chief of the Appellate and Research Division. For more than two years, Dorislee was the Executive Director of the Mary Byron Project, a Louisville-based non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing justice to end intimate partner violence. While there, she spearheaded a program to provide free expert legal representation to survivors of intimate partner violence in appeals related to the intimate partner violence. She also helped launch a training program—the Mary Byron Legal Fellows Program—to train attorneys to provide pro bono appellate advocacy to survivors of intimate partner violence. Dorislee has trained judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, victim advocates, and other justice-system participants throughout the Commonwealth and across the nation. She has written on topics including domestic violence, appellate law, and trial and litigation strategy. Dorislee is currently a candidate for Jefferson Circuit Court Division 10. More information is available at www.gilbertforjudge.com.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Kristi Gray is an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in Louisville and has been with that office since June of 2004. She is currently assigned to the Special Victims Unit. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Criminology from Ohio State University in 1991, and her Juris Doctor from Capital University Law School in 1994. From 1994 until 2004, she served as a Staff Attorney and Directing Attorney for the Department of Public Advocacy in Pikeville and Paintsville. Ms. Gray currently serves as the Sexual Assault Liaison and is the point of contact for Human Trafficking cases within the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney. In addition, she is a member of the Louisville Human Trafficking Task Force and the Louisville Sexual Assault Response Team. She also serves on the Kentucky Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Task Force and has been involved in the implementation of policies and procedures to address the rape kit backlog in Kentucky. She regularly provides training to law enforcement agencies and other criminal justice professionals in the areas of sexual assault and human trafficking.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Hye Hyun Han is a Ph.D. candidate focusing on Christian Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the areas of human objectification, including the theological objectification of women in Christianity, sexual objectification of the female body in the continuing wars in Korea, and somatic spirituality for people traumatized by such objectification. She recently published articles titled, “The Body as the Space in which Power Operates: Sexual Violence of Clergymen in the Korean Church” and “Art-Based Spiritual Practice for the Victims of Human Objectification.” She is also an ordained minister of the Korean Methodist Church.
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Tammy Hatfield, Psy.D. serves as a Professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at University of the Cumberlands. Her areas of expertise and interest include online teaching, intersectional feminist pedagogy, diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, feminist therapy, gender studies, body image, identity development, first generation students, and Appalachian culture.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Sarah Johansson, M.Ed, is a middle school counselor and associate professional counselor, and has worked as a K-12 school counselor for over a decade. With a strong interest in student advocacy, specific experience and interests include LGBTQ+, poverty, equity, and inclusion.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Sandy Kirkham, the author of Let Me Prey Upon You, currently serves on the board of the Council Against Child Abuse. She has spoken before the Ohio Senate, a Maryland court, and appeared on a Boston television show. Her story, “Stolen Innocence,” was told in a documentary produced by the Hope of Survivors. Sandy works with survivors of sexual abuse and has participated on SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) conference panels, sharing her perspective from the non-Catholic perspective.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Francoise Alisha Knox-Kazimierczuk earned her Ph.D. from Miami University and is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati in the College of Allied Health Sciences. She is an experienced clinician with over fifteen years of clinical dietetics experience focusing on chronic disease management. Dr. Knox-Kazimierczuk is trained in mix methods and the principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to address racial health disparities through a critical race theory lens. Dr. Knox-Kazimierczuk is a trained Qualified Administrator for the Intercultural Competence Development Inventory (IDI) and has eleven years of experience facilitating Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DE&I) workshops. She has two funded studies focused on addressing racial health disparities.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Dr. Debra Meyers received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and has a master’s degree in religious studies from Mount St. Joseph University. Meyers was recognized for her achievements with Northern Kentucky University’s 2019 Frank Sinton Milburn Outstanding Professor Award, which honors a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service throughout her career. Meyers’ students also extol the ways in which she encourages each one to succeed. In 2017, she received the Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award, nominated by online students she had never met face to face, but who were still so impacted by her tireless work as a teacher, mentor, and service-oriented faculty member. Meyers has published ten books as a professor of history, religion, and gender studies and dozens of articles and book chapters. Her current research project is Gender, Love, and Religion in the Early Chesapeake.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021) and Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Donna Pollard successfully advocated for improved legislation in Kentucky and other states putting an end to child marriage through parental consent. She continues her advocacy both nationally and internationally, most recently having traveled to Finland as the keynote speaker for the Zonta International Centennial Conference, highlighting the devastating implications of child marriage and critically needed global reform. As a survivor herself, Donna realizes the need for healing and support for victims. She founded Survivors’ Corner, a nonprofit that provides this connection and empowerment. Her personal journey can be accessed through the A&E Documentary, “I Was a Child Bride,” and interviews in Glamour, NPR, US News and World Report, PBS, CBS News, and many other outlets. She is a frequent panelist and presenter and has given numerous keynote speeches and testimony before legislative committees.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Kimberly C. Rhyan earned her BS and MA degrees despite the fact that only 3% of foster youth graduate college and she is currently completing the licensure requirements to become an art teacher in Ohio. She is a studio artist, writer, and teacher. She has exhibited her paintings in New York and Ohio, including group shows with her son. She is currently working on a series of paintings that unravels her journey as a survivor. In 2021, she created the cover artwork for Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny. In addition to teaching, she is currently writing her memoir as a means to dispel stigma and defy statistics that foster youths are burdens on society. She proves that trauma doesn’t have to stay a part of our DNA – survivors can thrive and achieve many successes. Please visit her website at kimberlycrhyan.com.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021) and Spiritual Healingfrom Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Quanita Roberson is a personal and professional development resource dedicated to addressing embedded trauma through healing workshops, retreats, and rituals. Quanita is an international spiritual teacher, speaker, author, and life coach. She has presented at the NAACP National Convention on Community/Police Relations and served as the Keynote Speaker for The National Diversity Conference in Brazil.
She holds a master’s degree in Organizational Management and Development with a concentration in Integral Theory. Quanita is a keeper of ancient indigenous wisdom from the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, West Africa. As a water spirit, she brings the gifts of forgiveness and reconciliation to the world—serving as a peacemaker and bridge builder to communities around the world. (www.nzuzu.com)!
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Lauren D. Sawyer is instructional staff at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology where she teaches graduate courses in theology and develops trauma-informed/antiracist curriculum for one of its non-degree programs. Her most recent publications include a co-written chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality (edited by Brian D. Earp, Clare Chambers, and Lori Watson) and an upcoming article in Theology & Sexuality. Lauren earned her Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics from Drew University, and as a doctoral student, she served as submissions editor for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Now living in Seattle, Washington, Lauren enjoys a well-brewed cup of coffee and chilly swims in Puget Sound.
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Meredith Shockley-Smith received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in Educational Studies. Dr. Shockley-Smith is an assistant field professor at the University of Cincinnati Medical School focused on building stronger and more equitable relationships in the community. As the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Community Strategies at Cradle Cincinnati and Queens Village she seeks to work with Black women to co-create sustainable communities that help to reduce stress and in turn lower infant mortality in Cincinnati communities.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Northern Kentucky University. He has authored/edited 15 books and study guides, contributed chapters and essays to 13 other books, and written hundreds of articles and book reviews for a wide range of publications, from academic journals to newspapers. His publications include a specialization in US History, Ohio River Valley History, and topics in Religious, World, and Asian History.
Currently, Tenkotte is directing a non-profit regional initiative of the Kenton County Public Library (KY) entitled ORVILLE (Ohio River Valley Innovation Library and Learning Enrichment).
Ashley Theuring is a practical theology scholar, educator, and advocate, with expertise in trauma theology. She earned her Ph.D. from Boston University and currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She also co-directs Xavier’s Graduate Theology Program, the Institute for Spirituality and Social Justice. She combines her theological depth with a commitment to social justice, having served as an advocate and educator for domestic violence prevention. She has made substantial scholarly contributions, especially in the areas of trauma, domestic violence, and moral injury within religious contexts. Her notable works include her book Fragile Resurrection: Hope After Domestic Violence and multiple articles on methodology, the cross, and trauma.
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)
Tara M. Tuttle, PhD is the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Lewis Honors College with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is also an affiliate faculty of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Equality and Social Justice. Her research examines the intersections of religious belief and female sexuality in contemporary American culture and the deployment of scriptural rhetoric to challenge oppression. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Studies in Popular Culture, and The Journal of Catholic Higher Education.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos is Professor Emerita of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, where she served for 40 years as Dora Pierce Professor of Bible and Faculty Liaison for the Women’s Center. She received her PhD in Hebrew Bible in 1976 from Union Theological Seminary in New York and was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in the Downtown United Presbyterian Church of Rochester, New York in 1977. Van Wijk-Bos is the author of eleven books and many articles, her most recent books are three volumes in the trilogy A People and a Land; The End of the Beginning: Joshua and Judges; The Road to Kingship: 1-2 Samuel; The Land and its Kings: 1-2 Kings; with William B. Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, 2020. She is currently writing a commentary on Deuteronomy in the Wisdom series, edited by Barbara Reid, to be published by the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Rev. Stephanie A. Welsh, BCC is an ordained elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, where she served as a pastor in the Gary District from 2010-2018. She is a Board Certified Chaplain serving as a staff chaplain at the University of Chicago Medicine. She supports the critical care and trauma patient population. Rev. Welsh is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a Master of Business Administration from Benedictine University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Rev. Welsh is featured in the CNN article, “Hospital chaplains are bridging the gap between patients and grieving families who can’t stay by their bedside during the coronavirus pandemic” (April 26, 2020). She was also featured in the Crain’s Chicago Business, “Crain’s 2020 Notable Health Care Heroes” (June 29, 2020). Rev. Welsh is committed to justice, equality, and uplifting the voices of women and the disenfranchised.
Contributed to: Hating Girls: An Intersectional Survey of Misogyny (2021)
Annette Williams is Associate Professor and Chair of the Women’s Spirituality department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion with specialization in Women’s Spirituality. Research interests have centered on the theme of women’s spiritual power and agency within the Yorùbá Ifá tradition and on soul healing from sexual trauma. Among others, she has authored “The Divine Feminine in Yoruba Cosmology” found in Goddesses in Myth, History, and Culture, and “Wisdom of the Primordial Feminine, Wisdom of Women: Odù Ifá and Yoruba Religious Tradition” in Philo-Sophia: Wisdom Goddess Traditions, edited by Debashish Banerji and Robert McDermott. Her latest work is “Deconstruction and Reclamation: A Healing Journey” in Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (Routledge).
Contributed to: Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide (2023)