Suzanne Persard Assistant Professor CAS | CRGC | Critical Race Gender and Culture Studies
- Degrees
- PhD, Emory University
- Bio
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Suzanne C. Persard (PhD, Emory University) is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies at American University, Faculty Affiliate of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center and a faculty member of the Ethnographies of Empire research cluster. As an interdisciplinary scholar, writer and curator, her research, teaching and curatorial practice center histories of gender and sexuality within indentured Indian archives; queer and feminist visual cultures; and theories of decoloniality.
Dr. Persard was profiled by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center for her work as an activist and founding member of Jahajee Sisters, the first organization in the U.S. committed to ending gender-based violence against Indo-Caribbean women. She was the curator of the Remnants of Another (2023) at Twelve Gates in Philadelphia, convening Indo-Caribbean the work of visual artists from Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname featuring a special exhibit by the Indian Talent Merrymakers from Jamaica. In her capacity as a scholar and expert on Indian indentureship, she has served as an acquisitions advisor for the University of Pennsylvania Indo-Caribbean Collection. Her research appears in the following publications: Feminist Review; Journal of West Indian Literature; Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies; and Journal of Indian Indentureship and Its Legacies. Anthologized chapters are published in, or forthcoming from Routledge (Routledge Companion to Gender and Feminist Studies in the Caribbean); Oxford University Press (Oxford Handbook of Dance Praxis); and Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques.
Her public writing has appeared in ; ; ; and . Her poetry appears most recently in the 2024 anthology of Caribbean Hindustani poetry translations, . She was awarded a poetry prize from Small Axe and writing residences from Hedgebrook in Seattle and Mumbai.
As a former activist, Dr. Persard organized in social justice movements for over a decade. She was a former support group facilitator for LGBT Caribbean women and trans communities in New York City; conducted political education workshops on topics ranging from popular education to reproductive justice; and conducted arts and activism workshops with survivors of gender-based violence. From 2014-2019, Dr. Persard served as an expert advisor to Amnesty International in the role of LGBT Thematic Specialist. During this period, she represented the rights of sexual and gender minorities on behalf of Amnesty International at the United Nations; authored issue briefs on abuses against transgender women incarcerated in the U.S. prison system and conversion therapy used against LGBT youth in the United States. For years, she worked closely with legal clinics throughout the country, providing expert statements to LGBT asylum-seekers the Caribbean, Central America and South Asia.
- For the Media
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Teaching
Spring 2024
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WGSS-400 Feminist, Gender, Sexulty Thry
Fall 2024
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WGSS-225 Gender, Politics & Power