LeeRay M. Costa, associate professor of anthropology and gender and women's studies; B.A. University of California, San Diego; M.A. New York University; Ph.D. University of Hawaii-Manoa.

Professor Costa's teaching and research interests include women, activism and social justice, food activism, local and global food systems, feminist theory, gender and sexuality, narrative methodology, and feminist pedagogy. She is currently engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with Dr. Kathryn Besio (University of Hawai'i, Hilo) that examines "Local" cuisine and local food practices on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Her course, Food, Culture and Social Justice teaches Hollins students about civic engagement through their volunteer work at grassroots organizations in the Roanoke Valley. Dr. Costa has also conducted fieldwork in Thailand on women, development, NGOs, and transgendered youth.

Susan L. Thomas (Homepage), associate professor of political science and gender and women's studies; B.A., Calilfornia State Polytechnic University, M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Riverside.

Susan Thomas' academic interests include queer theory; critical theories of race and subjectivity; the intersectionality of women's rights and non-human animal rights; and the state's active complicity in the abuses of marginalized women living in poverty. Her work concerns the hidden power behind 'neutral' rules, the role of male heterosexual privilege in the construction of hierarchal rules and law-making processes, and the invisibility of those subordinated by the public/private divide. While her research focuses on contemporary U.S. culture and politics and their relation to political and economic forces, she addresses, more broadly, questions of gender, race, species and sexual identity in discourses and material practices of anthropocentrism, heteroarchy, and patriarchal capitalism. She is currently researching the politics and policy of civil union laws passed or under consideration in the United States.