Williams Reads Alumni Panel

This event will be held virtually and is open to all. Zoom Link:

https://williams-ephs-edu.zoom.us/j/88594832963?pwd=Vm1GTWl2Ujc5bjgzQ3Rkb05hcmhVUT09

Meeting ID: 885 9483 2963 Passcode: 625618

Williams Reads invites the community to an alumni panel featuring Tatiana Cruz ’09, Assistant Professor and Interdisciplinary Program Director of Africana Studies at Simmons University ; Aston Gonzalez ’08, Associate Professor of History at Salisbury University; and Jallicia Jolly ’14, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and of Black Studies at Amherst College.

Tatiana Cruz is an historian that specializes in Critical Race, Ethnic, Diaspora, and Gender Studies. Her research centers on 20th century African American and Latinx social movements. She joined the Simmons faculty in 2021 as an Assistant Professor and Interdisciplinary Program Director of Africana Studies in the newly formed Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies in the Gwen Ifill College. She also currently holds a Fellowship for Faculty Diversity at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), where she is working to develop a regional consortium for reparative justice in New England colleges and universities and initiatives to nourish and uplift BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) faculty. Tatiana majored in History and American Studies at Williams, earning an M.A. in History, a Graduate Certificate in African American and Diasporic Studies, and a Ph.D. in History, all at the University of Michigan.

Aston Gonzalez was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow while at Williams, graduating with degrees in History and English. After Williams, Aston earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan. His first book, Visualizing Equality: African American Rights and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century,  published in the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020, was a finalist for both the 2020 First Book Award, The Library Company of Philadelphia and the 2021 Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize.

Jallicia Jolly is a post-doctoral fellow and incoming Assistant Professor in American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Jolly researches and teaches on Black women’s health, grassroots activism, and reproductive justice; the transnational politics of gender, structural racism, sexuality, class, and health; intersectionality and HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and Caribbean; Black feminist health science, Black motherhood, and birth justice. Dr. Jolly’s first book manuscript, Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in the Time of HIV/AIDS, now under contract with the University of California Press, is an ethnography and oral history of young HIV-positive Black Jamaican women’s reproductive justice organizing that chronicles how they build empowerment and self-care around disability, class oppression, severe impoverishment, and lack of access to health care. Dr. Jolly connects her research to tailored community interventions that advance equity, systemic change & community-building within and beyond U.S. borders. Jallicia was a Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Major at Williams. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Michigan.

This event will be held virtually and is open to all. Zoom Link:

https://williams-ephs-edu.zoom.us/j/88594832963?pwd=Vm1GTWl2Ujc5bjgzQ3Rkb05hcmhVUT09 Meeting ID: 885 9483 2963 Passcode: 625618

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