Intersectionalia
Voluune 1, Number 2
February 13, 2024

Greetings from Tulum, Mexico! I know. I know. Don’t hate. At least once a month you will find me complaining about the impossibility of my workload. About how I can’t tell the difference between a Tuesday and a Sunday because the days are all work-filled. And then there are moments like this, when I find myself in a beautiful, sunny, and warm location overlooking a gorgeous beach, still working, but also thinking, “Yeah I must be doing something right.”

And why am I in Tulum you may wonder? Well, I’m here at the invitation of our March 2024 Intersectionality Research Salon guest, Dr. Jasmine Abrams, a research scientist in public health at the Yale University School of Public Health, primary author of the excellent 2019 Social, Science and Medicine article, “Considerations for employing intersectionality in qualitative health research” and also, the founder of Thrive Institutes for Professional Development, and its popular Writing Well Retreat for Researchers.

I had heard rave reviews about Jasmine’s retreats from previous attendees — nods to you Dr. Faye Belgrave and Dr. Tamara Taggart — and now join the chorus singing kudos about the retreat. It was wonderful, and I remain grateful for the opportunity.
But have no envy, by the time you read this, I will be back in Philadelphia, freezing my butt off, just as I was before I left for Tulum. Impermanence. It all ends.
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The Intersectional Genius of Audre Lorde

Poet Audre Lorde, 1983. (Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
This gripe about Black History Month aside, February also marks the month of the indomitable Audre Lorde’s (1934-1992) birth. Born on February 18, 1934, Audre Lorde, a self-described “Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple,” was many things: a “warrior poet,” a teacher, a novelist, a woman living with cancer, and poet laureate of New York 1991-1992. Lorde wrote eloquently and profoundly about intersectionality (albeit not using that word) and thus is essential reading for anyone wanting to be more in the know about intersectionality. See what I did there?
Start with Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. The 1984 book includes some of Lorde’s most well-known essays. I’ve been reading and re-reading Sister Outsider since Dr. Margaret Stetz, my undergraduate Women’s Studies professor and mentor introduced me to it in 1986 while I was a junior at Georgetown University. I recommend that you read Sister Outsider from cover to cover. I return to several essays time and time again. Many of these are among Lorde’s best known, and offer powerful lessons about why Lorde and her work are so foundational to intersectionality. Here are some excerpts from my favorite Lorde essays:
- Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference is the speech in which Lorde reflects:“As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of whom I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely though all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.” (pp. 120-121)
- The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, where Lorde reminds us: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (italics in original). They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” (p. 112). Red hot fire! This essay is filled with more poignant and catalyzing gems. Read this masterpiece and savor its lessons for your intersectional work and praxis.
- Underscoring a point that I like to emphasize often, intersectionality is grounded in the lives and experiences of Black women in the U.S., not the conventional and abstract top-down theories of the academy. Note here how Lorde comes out swinging about misogynoir in the introduction to Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface: “Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. Black women have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black women, and addressing those issues does not make us any less Black.” (p. 60)
- The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action has long been my go-to when I needed fortification. Earlier in the essay she asserts: “Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior power doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?” (p. 42). Are you? Now at age 58, the same age that Lorde was when she died, I feel confident that I can answer, “Yes.”This is also the essay in which Lorde exhorts us to speak even when we are afraid, and to not be cowered by fear in the face of injustice. Feel the fear and act. In the conclusion, Lorde reminds us: We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. (p. 44)
Obviously, I love Audre Lorde! Her writing has soothed, energized, and challenged me for almost 40 years. Accordingly, I never pass up a chance to quote her in my presentations and writing. Hence, my 2021 Health Education and Behavior article, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”: Ten critical lessons for black and other health equity researchers of color.”
Sometimes, we get to meet our legends; if we’re lucky, they surpass our expectations. Winter 1989 brought this opportunity. In this photo, I am speaking to Ms. Lorde at a 1989 Women, Race and Ethnicity conference at Georgetown University, a year after my graduation.
What you can’t tell in this photo was how incredibly nervous I was to meet her. There’s no world in which I would have dared approach the Audre Lorde on my own without Margaret’s prodding (Margaret, thank you!). I am confident that my question was basic and banal but note the serious regard with which Ms. Lorde is listening to me. And I obviously didn’t make too much of a fool of myself, or she was simply kind and generous, for she invited me and a handful of other graduate students back to her room the following afternoon. She was coping with cancer and thus fatigued, but still made time to meet with us while she rested. It remains one of the most meaningful moments of my life.

“I think an intersectionality course should be a requirement for all public health programs”
An Interview with
Tiara C. Willie, PhD, MA
By any account, Dr. Tiara Willie, a social epidemiologist, Bloomberg Assistant Professor of American Health in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH), and member of the inaugural 2022 Intersectionality Summer Intensive cohort, is killing it. In 2023 Dr. Willie found herself the Principal Investigator of three active National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants: a K01, R34 and R01. Here, we chat about her grant success, why intersectionality is so vital to her work, the graduate intersectionality course that she’s teaching this semester, and the things that bringing her joy.
Take Intersectionalia readers into the journey of having three active NIH grants during the same year. Did you sleep while writing the applications?
TW: I submitted [all of the grant applications] one after the other. And I had my second kiddo in 2022. So, l didn’t sleep if I’m honest. It was a very busy time during my first three years on the tenure track.
What’s the secret to your NIH grants success?
TW: One of the things that made me so successful at getting grants is the knowledge I picked up from the different trainings from doctoral and postdoctoral programs, and through these early career years. These trainings have helped me be strategic about which grants I applied to and when to apply to them. My doctoral and post-doctoral training really helped me articulate why my research questions were important and my epidemiology background helped me explain to grant reviewers the significance of the research problem and the impact of my work. In my early years on the tenure track, I did the career-elevating trainings that helped me with NIH grant writing. The first training was a mixed methods research training through NIH that was hosted in my department at the BSPH. The second training was the 2022 Intersectionality Summer Institute. Even though I did the mixed methods research (MMR) training in my doctoral program, and was training in intersectionality through Women’s Studies in my Master’s program, these specific trainings during my early career years really helped me explain to NIH reviewers the innovation and impact of my work, and to be more intentional about the study design and my scientific collaborations. Both trainings showed me grant examples and pulled apart the “anatomy” of the grant for an MMR audience and an intersectionality audience. After leaving these trainings I had a much clearer idea of how to communicate with reviewers.
Your latest grant, your R01, is focused on applying a multilevel trauma informed approach to increase PrEP initiation among Black women in Baltimore with a history of social-structural challenges such as gendered racism and interpersonal violence. What was the genesis of this important project?
TW: I feel like I’ve been working since before my PhD program towards this type of project. I shared on Twitter not too long ago that my personal statement to my PhD applications clearly stated that I wanted to use an intersectional lens to understand the relationship between intimate partner violence and HIV acquisition so I can develop structural and community level interventions in the future. And in my tweet, I was so surprised that 10 years later I’m actually doing the thing that I wanted to do. The reality is that [the problem of IPV and HIV] is really a multilevel problem and we just need multilevel solutions that are intersectional and trauma-responsive.
What part of this project scares you or challenges you the most?
TW: Sustainability. I think this is one of the things that I struggle with as an epidemiologist trained in implementation science and who is also leveraging critical theories to develop something as meaningful and impactful for communities that have been historically marginalized and erased. If I’m fortunate enough to develop an intervention that is meaningful and impactful for the key priority populations that I’m working with, how do I make sure that it’s sustained when the research project ends? When the NIH funding stops? And that’s actually one of the things that really scares me or challenges me about this project. I plan to develop a community advisory coalition whose primary focus is to gain buy-in with key stakeholders at the governmental level to put funding towards this project once it ends. And that funding is not for me nor my research team but for the actual implementation partners to continue the core components of the project once we’re done.
Regarding the application of intersectionality to your project, what’s the one thing that you want to be able to do, but are not sure you know how to do?
TW: How to measure intersectionality structurally within the healthcare system. Because one of the assessments is measuring the effectiveness of the clinic-based intervention component on clinic aggregated data that’s routinely collected (e.g., number of Black women receiving PrEP, number of Black women screened for partner violence). And while my outcomes will be disaggregated by social identities, I really want to be able to quantitatively assess intersectionality structurally within the healthcare systems to see if our clinic interventions are actually having impact. It’s something that I’m constantly thinking about; maybe looking at the local policies within each of the healthcare systems might be an indicator of [structural intersectionality].
Tell us about the decision to develop the Intersectionality in Public Health graduate course that you’re teaching this semester. Why did you think this was an important course to teach?
TW: Oh my goodness how far back do I need to go to answer this question? I went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for undergrad with my major in Biology and a minor in Women’s Studies. I was an undergraduate Women’s Studies student who took graduate seminars. One of my favorite professors was Dr. Michele Tracy Berger who taught a graduate seminar on Black feminist thought. That class provided me with a lens to not only understand a population that I wanted to work with in my future career but also to really understand my own experiences growing up as a young Black woman. And I remember at that point knowing that I wanted to teach a class that aligned with the course content but with a health focus.
My research interests have blossomed throughout my career but intersectionality and applying it to the context of violence, HIV, and Black women’s health has been at the core of my work. I knew that wherever I landed for my faculty position that I wanted to teach intersectionality as my content course. It’s such an important course to teach in public health for anyone who is intentionally or unintentionally working with marginalized populations. I personally think it should be a requirement for all public health programs. This type of course provides students with a framework to understand systems of power and privilege in ways that are not usually discussed in regular public health courses. And I personally think we’re doing a disservice as a field to the future of public health practitioners and researchers who are trying to work with historically marginalized populations if they don’t understand intersectionality or how to apply it to research, policies, programs, and practices.
In a world that’s ever grim and challenging, what things are bringing you joy these days?
TW: Personally, it’s definitely spending time with my two kiddos and my husband. They provide me with a lot of joy. I intentionally stopped working nights and weekends because the days are long but the years are short. And I refuse to miss these moments with my kiddos and my husband. I also still enjoy my me-time. I have an amazing sister who’s 10 years younger than me who’s finishing her JD this May. And my mother decided to go get her MPH at JHBSPH. And those things provide me with so much joy to see the impact of me reaching my dreams and how it spreads to other people around me.
I also love spending time with my maternal grandmother. Not only because she’s the only grandmother I have left but it really makes me appreciate all the sacrifices she made as a sharecropper and domestic worker in North Carolina to create a life for my mom which then led to a life for me. And to sit with her and to see the joy on her face knowing that two generations from her I’m able to live a life that I love because of the intentional decisions that she made living through the Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era in a rural county in North Carolina. Professionally, I lead an amazing lab of primarily women of color students – scholars who not only keep me on my toes but really represent the future of public health in the space. And it really provides me with a lot of professional joy to see them thrive in different aspects of their journey.
What the last book, piece of music, or art you enjoyed that made you think, “This is so good, I gotta tell everybody about this!”
TW: I love Beyoncé. I don’t know who hasn’t listened to the Renaissance album but they need to if they haven’t.
So you and I just had the privilege of spending 5 days at the Thrive Writing Well retreat in Tulum. Inquiring minds want to know whether you were cooking up anything intersectionality-related at the retreat.

TW: Oh my goodness take me back to Tulum! I was fortunate enough to finish writing a grant application that leverages a couple of theoretical frameworks, including intersectionality, to look at social structural challenges among Black opposite sex couples at the intersection of gender identity and socioeconomic position to understand how these challenges influence relationship dynamics and mental health over time. I also started drafting two outlines for two different commentaries, one on intersectionality and gender-based violence, and the second one is on structural and interpersonal violence among Black women and girls in the United States.
As a member of the inaugural cohort of the Intersectionality Summer Intensive in 2022, what would you say is the one thing that you learned during your time at the Intensive that has informed your work? Or alternatively, the thing that you continue to find most challenging about applying intersectionality to your work?
TW: Learning how to break down the different components of the grant and being intentional about applying intersectionality at each of those steps has been one of many things I’ve learned and the most important thing that has informed my grant writing and helped me critique research that claims to be intersectional.
The one thing that I find most challenging about applying Intersectionality is knowing when to stop including intersectional social positions to retain feasibility. I think my nature is to be as inclusive of as many marginalized populations that represent these various intersections as I can. But I also must balance it with the constraints of NIH funding and just knowing when to stop.
C3 Intersectionality Publications
Daniela Fernandez, PhD, a social psychologist, Postdoctoral Associate within the Office Vice President of Research (OVPR) at The George Washington University, and Intersectionality Research Saloniste, published a new article:
Fernandez, D., Orazzo, E., Fry, E., McMain, A., Ryan, M. K., Wong, C. Y., & Begeny, C. T. (2024). Gender and social class inequalities in higher education: intersectional reflections on a workshop experience. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.
Would you like to be featured in The C3? We’d love to hear from you. Please email us at info@
We thank you in advance for your support.
Centering Black Women in Workplace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives
I recently learned about Every Level Leadership and its Black Women Thriving project. Run by Ericka Hines, Every Level Leadership works with organizations to ensure that their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion are reflected in their daily actions and operations. The Black Women Thriving project is a bold and visionary project based on 19 focus groups and a survey of 1,431 Black cisgender and transgender women, and gender-expansive people. I was struck by the BWT’s espousal of themes that anyone meaningfully engaged with intersectionality would recognize. The BWT site page asks provocatively: “Do you want a truly equitable organization?” Then answers, “Then Center Black women in your efforts. When Black women thrive, so many unquestioned, inequitable norms and power structures will have been broken that thriving will replace surviving for everyone.” Download the Black Women Thriving Report: 2022.
Nancy López, PhD Awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant for Intersectionality Research
Dr. Nancy López, a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, and Director and Co-Founder of the Institute for the Study of “race” and Social Justice at the University of New Mexico was awarded a new Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $110,000 grant for her intersectionality research.
Titled “Climate for Latino Students: Employing Intersectionality for Understanding Latino Student Success in Higher Education,” the project will investigate how universities collect data about “race,” ethnicity, gender, and class and will seek to establish a gold standard for how universities should understand and respond to the complexity of these intersections. This is such important and groundbreaking work. A hearty kudos to Dr. Lopez and her team for this latest accomplishment in advancing intersectionality research.
Check out the takeaways from the December 2023 Intersectionality Research Salon when she was the featured guest.
Position Announcement
1-year postdoctoral fellowship opportunity with option to renew is available on Dr. Tiara Willie’s Gender-Based Violence and HIV among Women Project. The successful candidate must have a PhD, DrPH or SCD in a relevant field, and experience with advanced analytic approaches and experience with (or a willingness to learn) qualitative research. To apply, submit your CV, cover letter, and two letters of recommendation to twill2@jhu.edu.
Got something that you’d like to see featured in This, That & The Other? We’d like to know about it. Please email us at info@

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Team ITI Welcomes Luxsyn: Our Newest (And Youngest, Tiniest and Cutest) Member
ITI Director of Operations, Dr. Jenné Massie is the mother of a new baby girl. Born on January 9th, 2024 Luxsyn, or Lux as those of us smitten with her call her, is the newest member of Team ITI. She joins her older sister, 3-year-old Styles and 9-year-old brother, Brock. Jenné and baby are well and thriving. Congratulations Jenné and Carlton, Jenné’s husband. And welcome to the world Luxsyn. We’re trying our best to make it better for you.
ITI Founder and President, Dr. Lisa Bowleg Talks Intersectionality on the Med+Design Podcast – Listen Here!
- Get That Dissertation Done! Navigating the Intersectional Dissertation: May 17, 2024
- The 2024 Intersectionality Summer Intensive application window is closing VERY soon, as in this Friday: February 16, 2024 at 11:59 pm EST