Research area: As an interdisciplinary scholar, Meshell’s work draws on the fields of Black Studies and Critical Mixed Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Comic Studies to look at representations of difference and identity in the media. Specifically, she researches how queer Black women represent themselves in alternative media. She is concurrently working on three graduate certificates at the University of Washington in: Science, Technology, and Society Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; and Public Scholarship.
Bio: Meshell received her BA in English from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Washington Bothell. She is originally from Lakewood/Lacey, WA. She is a senator for the Department of Communication in the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) and serves as a liaison to the Faculty Senate Council for Multicultural Affairs. She also sits on the Graduate Student Advisory Board for the Office of Graduate Student Equity and Excellence.
Courses taught:
- COM 389: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media
- COM 489: Black Cultural Studies in Winter 2021
- COM 490: Representing Beyond the Binaries: Mixing Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media.
Publications:
- Sturgis, Meshell and Ralina Joseph. “’You’re the Whitest Black Person I Know: Speaking Back to Microaggressions with a Poetics of Interruption.” In Women’s Studies in Communication, 45(3), 2022, (pp. 358-377).
- Sturgis, Meshell. “Getting Home: With Communication, Love, and Practice.” In QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 8(2), 2021, (pp. 131-138).
- Sturgis, Meshell and Ralina L. Joseph. “Visualizing Mixed Race and Genetics.” Race and Media: Critical Approaches. Edited by Lori K. Lopez (pp. 39-56). New York: NYU Press, 2019.
- Sturgis, Meshell. “Review of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings (New York University Press).” In Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, 9(1), 2020.
- Sturgis, Meshell and Victoria Thomas. “Review: The Rachel Divide.” In Journal of Women’s Studies in Communication, 4(3). 2020.