Faculty Bios

All courses are taught by National Nurses United instructors, through the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Anna Carella

Anna received her B.A. in French from the University of Michigan, M.A. in International Affairs from the American University of Paris, and Ph.D. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University, with a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies. Her graduate research offered a more rigorous theoretical and practical understanding of the rights based approach to development, investigating how international institutions that adopt human rights rhetoric uphold and entrench systemic injustice in practice. Using feminist methodologies and epistemology, Anna integrates critical theory and empirics into her research and teaching, drawing on transnational feminism, global justice, international relations, human rights, and environmental justice. Prior to her work with NNU, Anna was active in the reproductive justice movement in the U.S. South, serving as Co-Executive Director of a statewide reproductive freedom advocacy organization in Tennessee for six years.

Omid Mohamadi

Omid received his B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Politics with a Designated Emphasis in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Using political theory to explore Iranian politics following the revolution in 1979, his graduate research analyzed the shifting dynamics of religion, secularism, social movements, and geopolitics in contemporary Iran. Through an interdisciplinary lens, his courses balance the interventions of theoretical frameworks with lived experiences of social and political struggles throughout the world. Omid has taught a range of courses in feminism and feminist theory, social movements, the politics of the Middle East and Islam, political theory/philosophy and race and class.

Kel Montalvo-Quiñones

Kel received their Ph.D. in Rhetoric with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley. Their work is primarily concerned with the relationship between political thought and institutional power, person hood and social life. Kel’s teaching and research engages with the fields of gender and sexuality studies, race and ethnic studies, and social and political theory with specialized focus on critiques of liberalism and neoliberalism. Kel’s courses privilege the interdisciplinary methods and critical frameworks of women of color, queer, and trans epistemologies. They teach course topics ranging from queer theory, urban studies, materialist philosophy, migration and borders, futurism and science fiction, liberalism in political and economic thought, and environmental justice.

Sophie Smith

Sophie received a B.A. in Humanities, Media & Cultural Studies and English from Macalester College, and her Ph.D. in Literature with a certificate in Feminist Theory from Duke University. Residing in the southwest borderlands, Sophie’s graduate and current research draws on contemporary political theories of state power in the context of neoliberal transnationalism. Her work explores the granular formations of contemporary governance, technologies of (para)militarization, survival circuits, temporality, public health, and rural resistance in this vital landscape. Sophie is a community organizer, frontlines humanitarian relief worker, and movement researcher with multiple organized efforts in the borderlands, as well as a forest-climate justice advocate for the protection of primary and old growth stands in the pacific northwest. Prior to her work with NNU, Sophie taught in the community college context. She has designed and taught interdisciplinary courses on gender and intersectional feminism, political economy, public health, food politics, borders and migrations, environmental justice, technology studies, and writing craft. Her pedagogy integrates the articulation of political power with the work of social transformation.

Related Links

Rutgers University
Rutgers University, Department of Women's and Gender Studies