NCID-2834
Tamanika Ferguson
Visiting Research Scholar of Women's and Gender Studies
Wellesley College
Education/Degree:
1 Communications Studies/Women's Studies Communications Studies/Women's Studies Communications Studies/Women's Studies Communications Studies/Women's Studies (Howard University)
About
Dr. Tamanika Ferguson is currently a visiting research scholar in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Born and raised on the “Best Coast,” Dr. Ferguson earned a BA in Africana Studies and an MA in Africana Studies and Sociology from the California State University. She earned a doctorate in the field of Communication, Culture, and Media Studies and paired it with a Graduate Certificate in Women’s studies, at Howard University, a Historically Black College. Her basic research questions addresses: how incarcerated women demonstrate, in the face of oppressive conditions and institutional violence, their politics and practices of resistance to criminalization and incarceration. This is studied through the lens of intersectional feminist sociology and feminist communication studies, with an interest in women’s advancement and liberation. Dr. Ferguson’s current book project, Voices From The Inside: Incarcerated Speak has been supported by the national women’s organizations, including the American Association of University Women.
Current Work
Dr. Ferguson is currently working on several articles and her first contracted, solo-authored book which generates knowledge and evidence about the root causes of social inequity, the nature and types of incarcerated women’s activism and its emancipatory potential, how carceral policies and practices impact incarcerated women, how incarcerated women express themselves through writing and media platforms, and how conceptions of gender and feminism structure and mediate the identities, harms, and strategic campaigns in women’s prisons. Dr. Ferguson's work offers an important theoretical, cultural, historical, and activist reach for understanding the interplay of criminalization and state violence on incarcerated women and the deeply gendered character of punishment in women’s prisons. She approaches her work as an ethnographer and archival researcher, offering important lessons on how to conduct ethical and responsible research on the intersectional lives of women in California prisons.
Research Area Keyword(s)
feminist resistance, media activism, incarcerated women, California, Prisons, critical resistance, agency, socal activism, abolition feminism