Heather Montes Ireland
Dr. Heather Montes Ireland (she/her/ella) is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University in Chicago USA, where she is also the Acting Director of the LGBTQ Studies Program and is affiliated faculty in the Critical Ethnic Studies Program and the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies. She studies race, gender, class, and sexuality in global economic, financial, and labor systems through interdisciplinary and intersectional methods. Broadly, her research and teaching interests include women and queer of color feminisms, racial capitalism, intersectional economic justice, poverty finance and the global economy, and Latina/Chicana/Boricua studies.
Dr. Montes Ireland is currently at work on a book manuscript which examines the cultural formation of entrepreneurialism and practices of global finance as these bear upon the lives of women of color in the U.S. and transnationally. The monograph contends with the gender, racial, and sexual politics of U.S. and global economic policy by examining discourses of poverty class racialized mothers, particularly Latinas and black women in the U.S., and racialized women of the global south, in entrepreneurial global development practices. In addition to questions of economic justice, global economy, microfinance, entrepreneurialism, and wealth disparities, she also writes on Latin@ queer studies, Latina feminisms, and queering race as part of the knowledge bases in pursuit of the decolonization of systems of gender, racialization, and economics.
In 2016-17, Montes Ireland held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies at Marquette University where she was also faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. At Marquette, she taught courses on queer of color critique, feminist theories of intersectionality, and mothering and reproductive labor/justice. A former McNair Scholar, alumna of a working-class HSI, and a Boricua feminist, She has worked extensively with first generation, students of color, and LGBTQ students in various capacities and is committed to centering underrepresented students in her teaching and mentorship practices.
She earned her PhD in gender studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a graduate minor in Latino/a studies, and she also holds a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and a master’s degree in women’s and ethnic studies.
While at IU, she was honored with the inaugural Peer Mentoring Award by her colleagues in the IU Gender Studies Graduate Association.
Supervisors: Dr. LaMonda Horton-Stallings (Chair) and Dr. Marlon M. Bailey
Phone: (773) 325-8977
Address: DePaul University
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
Schmitt Academic Center 564
2320 N. Kenmore Ave
Chicago, IL
USA
Dr. Montes Ireland is currently at work on a book manuscript which examines the cultural formation of entrepreneurialism and practices of global finance as these bear upon the lives of women of color in the U.S. and transnationally. The monograph contends with the gender, racial, and sexual politics of U.S. and global economic policy by examining discourses of poverty class racialized mothers, particularly Latinas and black women in the U.S., and racialized women of the global south, in entrepreneurial global development practices. In addition to questions of economic justice, global economy, microfinance, entrepreneurialism, and wealth disparities, she also writes on Latin@ queer studies, Latina feminisms, and queering race as part of the knowledge bases in pursuit of the decolonization of systems of gender, racialization, and economics.
In 2016-17, Montes Ireland held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies at Marquette University where she was also faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. At Marquette, she taught courses on queer of color critique, feminist theories of intersectionality, and mothering and reproductive labor/justice. A former McNair Scholar, alumna of a working-class HSI, and a Boricua feminist, She has worked extensively with first generation, students of color, and LGBTQ students in various capacities and is committed to centering underrepresented students in her teaching and mentorship practices.
She earned her PhD in gender studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a graduate minor in Latino/a studies, and she also holds a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and a master’s degree in women’s and ethnic studies.
While at IU, she was honored with the inaugural Peer Mentoring Award by her colleagues in the IU Gender Studies Graduate Association.
Supervisors: Dr. LaMonda Horton-Stallings (Chair) and Dr. Marlon M. Bailey
Phone: (773) 325-8977
Address: DePaul University
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
Schmitt Academic Center 564
2320 N. Kenmore Ave
Chicago, IL
USA
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Publications by Heather Montes Ireland
Microfinance has become standardized within global development policy, disproportionately impacting the lives of women of the global South and, increasingly, in the global North with the dismantling of the welfare state. Poverty finance policies employ an entrepreneurial model to facilitate women’s labor market participation whereby borrowers are extended microcredit, or small loans, to invest in their microbusinesses. Global poverty finance is, however, deeply gendered and racialized in ideology and practice. This paper explores the ways that entrepreneurialism, as a cultural formation, privatizes women’s labor into normative gendered, feminine, and domestic labor sectors alongside the expansion of markets and neoliberal restructuring of economies. This paper argues that entrepreneurialism, and its narrative and visual rhetoric galvanized by poverty finance brokers, uphold a genderand racially segregated micro labor force based upon a false dichotomy of “noble” racialized mothers o...
This four-volume encyclopedia set provides an in-depth look at the lives of women and girls in approximately 150 countries, offering readers transnational feminist analysis of the many issues that are critical to the survival and success of women and girls. Coverage includes the key roles women play in their families, careers, religions, and cultures; how issues for women intersect with colonialism, transnationalism, feminism, and established norms of power and control.
Organized geographically, each volume presents detailed entries about the lives of women in particular countries. Additionally, each volume offers sidebars that spotlight topics related to women and girls in specific regions or focus on individual women's lives and contributions. The organization of the set enables readers to take an in-depth look at individual countries as well as to make comparisons across countries.
Book Reviews by Heather Montes Ireland
Presentations by Heather Montes Ireland
Facilitators of this workshop have incorporated social media projects as part of course curricula and would like the opportunity to connect and share with others about the experiences of using these pedagogical tools. This workshop will explain the instructors’ motivations for using social media projects such as Twitter, instructions on how the projects were administered over the course of an academic term, and project outcomes from both student and instructor perspectives. Interactive discussions and visuals will foster a space to create dialogue about using Web 2.0 in the classroom as a form of feminist activism and its potential to transgress traditional classroom boundaries.
Recent discourse in the mainstream “gay” movement has advanced the perceived ‘normalcy’ of LGBTQ folks as citizens of and adherents to the norms of the heteropatriarchal nuclear family model, as the paradigm through which our rights to marriage equality hinge. Conversely, queer of color scholars such as Ferguson and Esteban Munoz critique the idea of 'normal' through intersectional lenses of queer theory, feminist theory, Marxism, and critical race criticism. In this panel, four queer students of color, graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines, engage the theoretical frameworks of queer of color critique to defy the heteronormative and the homonormative. Exploring issues of complex sexualities, sexual identities, race, and queer desire, we will ask and attempt to answer: what are the concerns of modern sex through a queer of color framework? While often queer/people of color are asked to educated straight/white audiences, this panel will address a queer audience regarding the assimilationist tendencies of gay movements which ask us to divorce ourselves from a politics of racial, economic and social justice. Panel attendees will be challenged to think beyond the current modes of mainstream gay politics. Nishida will discuss his case study of Hawaii "mahu" society and the origins of this genderqueer community," Montes Ireland will explore the resistance of queer Latinas & Chicanas through silence and sexing the creative mind, Cahill and Dansby will consider the queer desires that are deemed suitable to the mainstream movement, and we will examine how we might move towards a liberatory queer of color sex(ual) politics.
Bios
Erin Cahill is an undergraduate student and artist, Tab Dansby is a senior in Public Health, Heather Montes Ireland is a graduate student in Women & Ethnic Studies and a graduate instructor of Women Studies, Keith Nishida is a graduate student and instructor of Design & Human Environment, all at Oregon State University.
Growing Up Disney: Cultural Constructions of Identity, Race & Gender in Children’s Fantasy (CMI Event) at Living Learning Center Performance Hall
Aladdin, Pocahontas, the Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Hercules, Mulan. Popular and academic debates about racist, sexist, homophobic, and culturally bigoted characterizations, dialogue, and plots have accompanied the release of several Disney films. This panel discussion will examine how the globally consumed animated films of Disney construct cultural identities of race and gender.
We are honored to host the following speakers:
**Dr. Janet Wasko, Knight Chair in Communication Research, School of Journalism & Communication is a leading scholar in the political economy of communication and the Disney Company. She is the author of Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy and Dazzled by Disney: The Global Disney Audience Project; and has instructed the popular course, “Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy.”
**Heather Montes Ireland is a graduate instructor in Women Studies at Oregon State University in the School of Language, Culture and Society and a graduate student in Women & Ethnic Studies. She is the 2010-11 Judy Mann DiStefano Scholarship recipient for Outstanding Women Studies student.
For more information about UO Living Learning Communities visit http://housing.uoregon.edu/reshalls/academic_programs.php
Conference Roundtables by Heather Montes Ireland
Research Projects by Heather Montes Ireland
Brief abstract: To make transnational feminist sense of the microfinance phenomenon, we must first excavate microfinance from neoliberalism. Seeking to unveil inequalities of power that perpetuate economic injustice against women of color worldwide, I conducted an analysis of the ontology of microfinance and neoliberalism itself, using the economic justice framework I designed as my analytical tool. Furthermore, I chart the promise of transnational feminist analysis to (re)configure oppressive structures (including neoliberal microfinance) into more just possibilities of our social world.
Microfinance has become standardized within global development policy, disproportionately impacting the lives of women of the global South and, increasingly, in the global North with the dismantling of the welfare state. Poverty finance policies employ an entrepreneurial model to facilitate women’s labor market participation whereby borrowers are extended microcredit, or small loans, to invest in their microbusinesses. Global poverty finance is, however, deeply gendered and racialized in ideology and practice. This paper explores the ways that entrepreneurialism, as a cultural formation, privatizes women’s labor into normative gendered, feminine, and domestic labor sectors alongside the expansion of markets and neoliberal restructuring of economies. This paper argues that entrepreneurialism, and its narrative and visual rhetoric galvanized by poverty finance brokers, uphold a genderand racially segregated micro labor force based upon a false dichotomy of “noble” racialized mothers o...
This four-volume encyclopedia set provides an in-depth look at the lives of women and girls in approximately 150 countries, offering readers transnational feminist analysis of the many issues that are critical to the survival and success of women and girls. Coverage includes the key roles women play in their families, careers, religions, and cultures; how issues for women intersect with colonialism, transnationalism, feminism, and established norms of power and control.
Organized geographically, each volume presents detailed entries about the lives of women in particular countries. Additionally, each volume offers sidebars that spotlight topics related to women and girls in specific regions or focus on individual women's lives and contributions. The organization of the set enables readers to take an in-depth look at individual countries as well as to make comparisons across countries.
Facilitators of this workshop have incorporated social media projects as part of course curricula and would like the opportunity to connect and share with others about the experiences of using these pedagogical tools. This workshop will explain the instructors’ motivations for using social media projects such as Twitter, instructions on how the projects were administered over the course of an academic term, and project outcomes from both student and instructor perspectives. Interactive discussions and visuals will foster a space to create dialogue about using Web 2.0 in the classroom as a form of feminist activism and its potential to transgress traditional classroom boundaries.
Recent discourse in the mainstream “gay” movement has advanced the perceived ‘normalcy’ of LGBTQ folks as citizens of and adherents to the norms of the heteropatriarchal nuclear family model, as the paradigm through which our rights to marriage equality hinge. Conversely, queer of color scholars such as Ferguson and Esteban Munoz critique the idea of 'normal' through intersectional lenses of queer theory, feminist theory, Marxism, and critical race criticism. In this panel, four queer students of color, graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines, engage the theoretical frameworks of queer of color critique to defy the heteronormative and the homonormative. Exploring issues of complex sexualities, sexual identities, race, and queer desire, we will ask and attempt to answer: what are the concerns of modern sex through a queer of color framework? While often queer/people of color are asked to educated straight/white audiences, this panel will address a queer audience regarding the assimilationist tendencies of gay movements which ask us to divorce ourselves from a politics of racial, economic and social justice. Panel attendees will be challenged to think beyond the current modes of mainstream gay politics. Nishida will discuss his case study of Hawaii "mahu" society and the origins of this genderqueer community," Montes Ireland will explore the resistance of queer Latinas & Chicanas through silence and sexing the creative mind, Cahill and Dansby will consider the queer desires that are deemed suitable to the mainstream movement, and we will examine how we might move towards a liberatory queer of color sex(ual) politics.
Bios
Erin Cahill is an undergraduate student and artist, Tab Dansby is a senior in Public Health, Heather Montes Ireland is a graduate student in Women & Ethnic Studies and a graduate instructor of Women Studies, Keith Nishida is a graduate student and instructor of Design & Human Environment, all at Oregon State University.
Growing Up Disney: Cultural Constructions of Identity, Race & Gender in Children’s Fantasy (CMI Event) at Living Learning Center Performance Hall
Aladdin, Pocahontas, the Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Hercules, Mulan. Popular and academic debates about racist, sexist, homophobic, and culturally bigoted characterizations, dialogue, and plots have accompanied the release of several Disney films. This panel discussion will examine how the globally consumed animated films of Disney construct cultural identities of race and gender.
We are honored to host the following speakers:
**Dr. Janet Wasko, Knight Chair in Communication Research, School of Journalism & Communication is a leading scholar in the political economy of communication and the Disney Company. She is the author of Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy and Dazzled by Disney: The Global Disney Audience Project; and has instructed the popular course, “Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy.”
**Heather Montes Ireland is a graduate instructor in Women Studies at Oregon State University in the School of Language, Culture and Society and a graduate student in Women & Ethnic Studies. She is the 2010-11 Judy Mann DiStefano Scholarship recipient for Outstanding Women Studies student.
For more information about UO Living Learning Communities visit http://housing.uoregon.edu/reshalls/academic_programs.php
Brief abstract: To make transnational feminist sense of the microfinance phenomenon, we must first excavate microfinance from neoliberalism. Seeking to unveil inequalities of power that perpetuate economic injustice against women of color worldwide, I conducted an analysis of the ontology of microfinance and neoliberalism itself, using the economic justice framework I designed as my analytical tool. Furthermore, I chart the promise of transnational feminist analysis to (re)configure oppressive structures (including neoliberal microfinance) into more just possibilities of our social world.