New Hire Dr. Virginia Thomas
The Art & Art History Department at Providence College is pleased to announce the hire of Dr. Virginia Thomas. Dr. Thomas will be in a joint position between the Department of Art & Art History and the Women’s and Gender Studies program. She will begin in the fall 2022 and will be teaching two sections of Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies.
In our own department, Dr. Thomas will be teaching a new special topics course, “Special Topics: Race and Gender in American Photography”. Exploring aspects of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary American photography and other forms of visual media, her class emphasizes themes of identity, kinship, belonging, class, politics, and culture. This course fulfills the fine arts and diversity proficiency core and can be found in Cyberfriar!
Dr. Thomas, a familiar face in Providence, received a PhD in American Studies and MA in Public Humanities at Brown University. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Brown in the Spring of 2020 before her more current work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University. “Her research, teaching, and public humanities work examines aesthetic and material relationships within and outside white property- relations, and analyzes the potential of black, brown, and queer kinships to structure more livable words out of existing conditions.” (Rice University, Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality). Apart from her current book project, Thomas is working to build a participatory queer oral history project here in Providence at the Providence Public Library, entitled “Queer StoRIes Project.”
Congratulations Dr. Thomas, we look forward to having you!
Posted by Zari Apodaca ’23
