Doctoral Student in English and Women's and Gender Studies
About
Education/Degree:
MA Gender and Women’s Studies (graduate certificate in Visual Cultures), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015
BA Women’s and Gender Studies (with minors in English and the History of Art and Architecture), DePaul University, 2012
Elise Nagy is a doctoral student in English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, and holds a master’s in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research interests fall under the broad umbrella of gender, arts & culture. More specifically, her work explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, embodiment, race, and disability/mental illness in visual and literary (self-)representation.
Her recently completed thesis, titled "Situating Selfies," draws on feminist and queer theory, feminist disability studies, and several auto-ethnographic interviews to analyze how people navigate embodiment, identity, community, and self-care technologically and in online spaces. This project takes up selfies as a practice and phenomenon, putting them in conversation with 20th century women's self-representational photography and performance-based body art.
She is also interested in the women’s health movement of the 20th century, ongoing critiques of normative constructions of “health,” radical community-based care and health education, and fat positivity/fat subjectivities.
Research Interests:
- Feminist disability studies
- Embodiment, body politics, fat positivity
- A/sexuality and queer theory
- Personal narrative, memoir, autobiography
- Self-representation in literature and visual culture
- New media and cyber-feminist possibilities
- Subversive art practices
- Community building
Selected Papers, Publications, Lectures:
“Selfies and Health: Self-Care and Self-Representation” Women, Health & Healthcare: Readings on Social Structural & Systemic Issues
Ed. Cabell Gathman. Dubuque: Kendall-Hunt Publishing. 2016
“The Mirror, the Camera: Social Media Selfies and Bodily Visibility” (delivered by co-author Sally Evans)
Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference, University of Wollongong, AUS
Dec. 3 2014
“Images of Women as a Health Issue: Health at Every Size and Anti-Fat Bias”
Guest Lecture for GWS 103: Women and Their Bodies in Health and Disease at UW-Madison
Oct. 29 2014
“Ambivalence in the Asylum & the Academy: A Feminist Disability Film Analysis”
Society for Disability Studies Conference, Minneapolis MN
June 12 2014
