Dr. Rachel Levitt received their PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and joined the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies department as an Assistant Professor in 2017. Their research, which is being supported by a Faculty Enhancement Award during the summer of 2019, focuses on what queer studies theories of law and violence have to teach us about bullying, whose victimization gets to count and who is seen as disposable, and how that process of counting or being rendered disposable operates through the intersection of race, class, gender, nation, empire, and settler colonialism. Dr. Levitt has taught Introduction to GWSS (including First-Year Seminar sections), Research Methods in GWSS, Queer Studies, Intersections of Violence & Resistance, and the graduate Theories and Methodologies seminar, and is scheduled to teach Resistance and Movements for Social Change and a queer feminist legal theory course next year.
Prior to coming to K-State, Dr. Levitt was involved in Native liberation organizing, queer justice work, and various labor movements. Since moving to Kansas, they have become involved in local activism as a Board Member of the Flint Hills Human Rights Project and serve as co-chair of the LGBTQ* Faculty Staff Alliance on-campus.