Women of Note
Women of Note - Dr. Leslie Harris and Dr. Jody Usher
Together and separately, Leslie Harris and Jody Usher are dynamic Women of Note at Emory University and in the communities beyond Emory. Together, they have been creative, smart, and strong leaders for Emory University’s Transforming Community Project (TCP), which has been a very successful endeavor throughout every sector of the University aimed at exploring the past, present, and future of the University’s existence. In particular, TCP participants have engaged on topics of race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of human difference. Separately, Leslie and Jody have also made significant positive change in academic and social justice arenas in and outside Emory.
Leslie Harris
Dr. Leslie Harris is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Departments of History and African American Studies. Her scholarship focuses on pre-Civil War African American labor and social history. In particular, she explores this history using socioeconomic, gender, and sexuality lenses to complicate the ways in which Black history in the United States is often presented as a monolithic experience.
In addition to her scholarship, Professor Harris has gained significant visibility as the founder and director of TCP. She explains that series of events coalesced in 2004 that made space for the development and founding of this important project that has fueled a great deal of racial dialogue and progress across the University over the past five years. A combination of campus-wide racial unrest, a widespread desire to have ongoing conversations about race, and significant support from the administration, Harris and others were able to get TCP off the ground. In addition to receiving five years of Ford Foundation funding, TCP has also been recognized locally and nationally.
Harris is also a phenomenal professor, mentor, and role model for undergraduate and graduate students at Emory.
Jody Usher
Dr. Jody Usher has held administrative posts at Emory, most recently as associate dean of the School of Public Health, before joining TCP as co-director in 2006.
Earning a PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Emory, Jody served as assistant dean in three of Emory’s nine schools—Emory College, the Graduate School, and the Rollins School of Public Health. What she calls her “non-linear career path” also placed her in the university president’s office in 2001-2002 to help direct the exhibition Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America in collaboration with the Martin Luther King National Historic Site. Also of importance to what she does today, Jody works to end all oppression by leading workshops through Emory’s National Coalition Building Institute Emory (NCBI) affiliate. Usher is also a great mentor to many individuals and groups at Emory.
Women's Center Links
- Visit the National Women's
Studies Association to learn
about their upcoming conference
in Atlanta, GA at nwsa.org.