Intersectionalia
Volume 1, Number 3
March 12, 2024
Warm greetings from Boston! Trust me, I am using the word warm figuratively, not literally. It is cold here! I took a long walk along the Charles River and returned to my room to shiver for a good 20 minutes or so before my body reached room temperature.
The reason for this cold weather torture, you ask? Actually, it’s stupendous. I was invited by the Dr. Nancy Krieger, renowned social epidemiologist, prolific critical health equity researcher and scholar, and professor at the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health to give the International Women’s Day (IWD) 2024 address. This year’s theme: Intersectionality and Health Justice.
It was (and remains) a very heady experience. Beyond the Black feminist writers and intersectionality scholars whom I revere, I’m hard pressed to think of another scholar who has so influenced my worldview on the structural determinants of health. Her ecosocial theory, the notion that people literally embody the effects of discrimination, has been equally impactful. You will often find multiple citations to her work in mine.
Although I have no history of academic fan-personing, I must admit I was a tad anxious about meeting Dr. Krieger. In my world of public health scholars, Professor Krieger is… Beyoncé. I’m thrilled to report that it was anxiety wasted. We headed to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston, and along with a small group of faculty and students from the Women’s Gender, and Health program, enjoyed an engaging, fun, and delicious dinner.
Professor Krieger was warm, funny (she has a big full-throated laugh), laughs easily and often (loved this!), brilliant (but of course!), easy to talk to, and not surprisingly, up to speed on all of the horrible news of the day. Because I love museums so much, Professor Krieger’s selection of the MFA was an inspired choice. Post-dinner brought viewings of two exhibits that Dr. Krieger loved: Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party — powerful, poignant, bold and beautiful black and white photography, and Marking Resilience: Indigenous North American Prints, staggeringly gorgeous! It was well past my bedtime, but I never miss an opportunity to marvel African art, and so I also did a swing through the Benin Kingdom Gallery. Splendid! All and all, a wonderful evening!
Friday brought International Women’s Day, which is celebrated every March 8. I confess that until this invitation, I knew nothing about it. The history dates to a 1908 protest by women in the needle trades who marched through the Lower East Side of New York City to protest child labor, sweatshop conditions, and the right to vote. The first International Women’s Day was held on February 28, 1909 when the Socialist Party of America designated the day in honor of the 1908 protesters.
I commenced my talk with my ambivalence about single-axis holidays. I explained that it was not particular to International Women’s Day, but also Black History Month, which we celebrated last month; Women’s History Month which we celebrate in March; and LGBTQ Month, which rolls around in October. I argued that single-axis holidays violate intersectionality’s core theme of relationality: both/and, rather than either/or.
Thereafter, I highlighted intersectionality as the transformative framework that I needed to have to be excited about IWD. I also spoke about the need for IWD, at least as observed in the U.S., to return to its radical, transformative, progressive roots. The official IWD 2024 website offered a very stylized, corporate version of the day with the slogan: “Inspire: Inclusion.” I noted that the slogan carried all the revolutionary heft of an ad for women’s perfume. In stark contrast, most global IWD celebrations are bold, marked by marches and protests for causes such as reproductive justice and against gender-based violence, as was the case throughout Latin America. The Guardian’s photos of IWD 2024 around the world beautifully captured the radical spirit of the day.
I threaded Audre Lorde’s wisdom throughout my talk, particularly her brilliant insights from her 1982 Harvard University Black History Month speech, Learning From the 60s. This is the speech that delivered the famous quote: “There is no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives.” Professor Krieger suggested that I should publish my talk and well, as the kids say, “I just can’t!”
Wishing you all a happy (Intersectional) Women’s History Month!
Warmly,
Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA
Founder & President
Intersectionality Training Institute
Women’s History Month
Happy (Intersectional) Women’s History Month! I’ve decided to reclaim the month with the intersectional modifier. Invariably, participants in our Get Up to Speed on Intersectionality trainings mention the history of intersectionality as one of their favorite aspects. Many people are surprised to learn that intersectionality’s history long precedes Kimberlé Crenshaw’s clever coinage of the word circa 1989. Grounded in the lives of Black and other women of color in the U.S., and Black feminist activism,
Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock, intersectionality scholar, and Intersectionality Summer Intensive facilitator, “lengthens the historical arc of intersectionality” (p. 24) in her 2016 book, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History. Hancock traces intersectionality’s (written) history to Maria W. Stewart, a freed Black woman, abolitionist and women’s rights activist, writer and one of the first women of any race to speak publicly in the U.S. In Boston in 1830, Stewart exhorted Black audiences in general and Black women in particular, to pursue education, demand their political rights, and to remember who had oppressed them.
Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879)
Hancock calls Stewart’s insights and that of many other brilliant Black women writers and thinkers advancing knowledge about the intersections of racism and sexism before the word intersectionality entered the lexicon, “intersectionality-like thought.” (p. 24). This long historical arc is a foundational starting block for enhancing knowledge about intersectionality’s history, particularly during (Intersectional) Women’s History Month.
Thus, in the spirit of (Intersectional) Women’s History Month, we present a (non-exhaustive) list of literature that engages with “intersectionality-like thought” pre-Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) and Patricia Hill Collins’ (1991) canonical contributions to intersectionality.
We believe that reading these books (they’re mostly books) will deepen your understanding of intersectionality’s historical roots and enhance your growth and depth as an intersectionality scholar or researcher.
A (Select) History of “Intersectionality-Like Thought” Before the Kimberlé Crenshaw Coined the Word Intersectionality
- Stewart, M.W. (1831). Religion and the pure principles of morality: The sure foundation on which we must build.
- *Truth, S. (1851). Ain’t I a woman? National Park Service Centennial. https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/sojourner-truth.htm
- Jacobs, H. A. (1861/2015). Incidents in the life of a slave girl: An autobiographical account of an escaped slave and abolitionist. Dover.
- Cooper, A. J. (1892). A voice from the South: A Black woman of the South. Aldine.
- Beal, F. (1970). Double jeopardy: To be Black and female. In T. Cade (Ed.), The Black woman (pp. 90-100). Signet.
- Combahee River Collective. (1977). The Combahee River Collective statement. In B. Smith (Ed.), Home girls: A Black feminist anthology (pp. 272-282). Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
- Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
- Hull, G. T., Bell Scott, P., & Smith, B. (Eds.). (1982). But some of us are brave: All the women are White, all the Blacks are men: Black Women’s Studies. Feminist Press.
- Smith, B. (Ed.). (1983). Home girls: A Black feminist anthology. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
- Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
- Beam, J. (1986). In the life: A Black gay anthology. Alyson.
- Anzaldúa, G. (1987/2012). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza (Fourth ed.). Aunt Lute.
* Nell Irvin’s Painter’s 1996 biography, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (W.W. Norton & Company) is a riveting account of how Frances Dana Gage, a White feminist writer reconstructed Truth’s famous “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” speech into dialect (e.g., “Ain’t”) that Truth did not use. Gage’s telling also invoked drama that an accounting of the speech by Marius Robinson, Truth’s friend and host of the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, lacked. Gage’s accounting of Truth’s talk was also four times longer than Robinson’s. Painter’s biography is fascinating and provocative read about Gage’s representation and cooptation of Truth’s intellectual labor.
What else should be on this list? We welcome your additions. Email us your recommendations with the subject line “intersectionality history.”
“It was an “Aha! Moment For Me!” Centering Structure in Intersectional Research
An Interview with Lindsay Taliaferro, Ph.D., MPH, M.S.
Dr. Lindsay Taliaferro is an impressively productive Associate Professor of Medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Taliaferro was a member of the inaugural Intersectionality Summer Intensive 2022 (ISI 2022) cohort, and along with fellow ISI 2022 cohort member Stephanie Cook, DrPh, MPH, is a joint-principal investigator on a 2023-NIMH-funded R01 grant titled, “A Strengths-Based, Intersectional Approach to Suicide Prevention Among black Sexual and Gender Minority Youth.”
Doing strengths-based intersectional suicide prevention research anywhere must be challenging; that Dr. Taliaferro is doing this important work in Florida tells you a lot about her grit, fortitude, and commitment to this work. Here, Dr. Taliaferro talks about finding collaborators at both ISI 2022 and 2023, the challenges of starting up her new intersectionality project, learning to center structure in her intersectional work, and the joy of having little ones.
I was thrilled to learn that your R01 grant was incubated in part at the inaugural Intersectionality Summer Intensive 2022 (ISI 2022). What’s the backstory?
Lindsay Taliaferro (LT): One of my goals in attending ISI 2022 was to find a new collaborator with intersectionality research experience to join my team. I found Dr. Stephanie Cook on the ISI’s Slack channel and was impressed by her NYU faculty profile. I reached out and asked if she would be interested in learning more about our project and possibly joining our study team, and after meeting a few times, Stephanie agreed to serve as a multiple principal investigator. She also introduced us to Dr. Kiara Moore, who attended ISI 2023 and is now a coinvestigator on the grant.
This is a relatively new project, just funded last year. Bring us up to speed on what’s happening with it.
LT: We have a fabulous interdisciplinary team that includes Drs. Jennifer Muehlenkamp (MPI), Eric Schrimshaw (Co-I), Rob Dvorak (Co-I), Kiara Moore (Co-I), and Myeshia Price (Co-I). I just hired two fantastic study coordinators, Dr. Lisa Armstrong (Qualitative Research Coordinator) and Ms. Amanda Holtzman (Quantitative Research Coordinator). We are currently developing our longitudinal survey, daily diary survey, and interview guide; recruiting our Community Advisory Board comprising members of our study population; and working with our graphic designer to name and brand our study, while developing social media recruitment advertisements.
What’s been the most enjoyable of starting it up?
LT: Working with this talented study team has been amazing. The team comprises individuals with whom I have worked for many years (Drs. Muehlenkamp, Schrimshaw, and Dvorak), a few times (Dr. Price), and never before (Drs. Cook and Moore). Most important, our study team members, including our study coordinators, bring diverse disciplinary expertise to this project (Clinical, Developmental, Social, and Experimental Psychology; Biostatistics; Public Health Education and Behavior; Social Work; and Anthropology), enhancing the quality of our work. I am excited to learn something new every time we meet!
What have been some of the challenges?
LT: Working with a large, interdisciplinary team brings much joy and enlightenment, as well as the possibility of multiple differing opinions and competing schedules. Just scheduling team meetings when everyone is available has proven challenging with this super busy, in-demand team. Also, we are continuing to learn how best to incorporate insights and expertise from a team with many different experiences in an effective and time-efficient way.
What would you say is the one thing that you learned during your time at the ISI 2022 that has informed your work?
LT: In addition to learning as much as possible and finding a new collaborator with intersectionality research experience, another goal with which I came to the ISI involved understanding how best to incorporate structural factors into the figure depicting our theoretical model, study design, and research approach. My one-on-one mentoring meeting with Dr. Lisa Bowleg helped me conceptualize the placement of our structural factors as the context within which relationships examined in our theoretical model occur. Lisa explained that the structural factors belong in a box surrounding our theoretical model, which is based on the Minority Stress Theory and Integrated Motivational-Volitional model of suicidal behavior, with protective factor moderators. It was an aha! moment for me! The NIH grant reviewers noted our examination of actual structural factors (e.g., state racial and LGBTQ equality indices, urban/rural residence), not just perceptions, within our national study as innovative and a strength of our study design. Thank you, Lisa!
In a world that’s ever grim and challenging what things are bringing you joy these days?
LT: My children, Charlotte (6 years) and Jacob (4 years), always bring me joy. I find them very interesting as unique people, and they make me proud every day.
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!”
LT: I loved the documentary Stamped from the Beginning [based on Ibram X. Kendi’s book about the history of racist ideas in the U.S.] and told others they should watch the film. I suggested my partner show the film to the middle school students he teaches in a public school’s Social Studies program, but because we live in Florida, he can’t.
C3 Intersectionality Publications
Dougie Zubizarreta, MS, a doctoral student in Population Health Sciences in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a member of the ISI 2023 cohort has a new article:
Zubizarreta, D., Trinh, M.-H., & Reisner, S. L. (2024). Quantitative approaches to measuring structural cisgenderism. Social Science & Medicine, 340, 116437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116437
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.
Position Announcements
- The Pauli Murray Center for History and Justice has issued a call for applications for its Proud Shoes Fellowship, an October 2024 book workshop and writing retreat for scholars developing their first full academic book manuscript in history, social justice, politics, law, race, gender, and sexuality studies or related fields. Deadline for applications is May 31, 2024.
- The Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health at the University of Minnesota is hiring a Director of Research (Tenured Faculty), and will soon add other positions. For more information, and to apply, visit: UM Research Director Position.
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@
Salon Title:
Getting Intersectionally Bare for Research and Praxis:
Conducting an Autoethnography to Reflect on the Barriers to PrEP for Black Gay and Bisexual Men

Salon Guest: Dr. Derek T. Dangerfield, II, PhD

We’ve integrated the resources from the chat to align with the discussion at the Salon. Here are some of the key takeaways:
- Underscoring intersectionality’s focus on the nexus between individual and structural-level factors, Dr. D. described the challenges that many Black gay and bisexual men face about whether to take PrEP as “so layered.” Barriers to Black men’s PREP include lack of access, discrimination in terms of clinicians being more likely to prescribe PrEP for White gay men than Black gay men. There are also individual-level factors such as men perceiving themselves to be at little or no risk for HIV, not as risky as they previously were, or not as risky compared with their peers.
- Carlos posed an insightful question to Dr. D. about the overall public health goal: is it to get all Black sexual minority men on PrEP? D answered that the question elicited key ethical questions about the notion of risk. He noted that Black men not taking PrEP is not a health risk behavior akin to others such as substance abuse or violence. He observed that HIV (in the context of PrEP) is the only health issue defined through the absence of the condition. He described the phenomenon this way “… essentially the way we [in public health] are coming at this PrEP issue for Black men is that we are encouraging them to take medicine for a disease they do not have.”
- Lupton, D. (1993). Risk as moral danger: The social and political functions of risk discourse in public health. International Journal of Health Services, 23(3), 425-435. https://doi.org/10.2190/16AY-E2GC-DFLD-51X2
- In light of the history of medical mistrust that informs many Black men’s experiences with clinicians, Dr. D. described how he, as the intervention’s peer change agent, entered the conversation with participants. He said that he always starts with the science, with a focus on health and gets to the structure later. He starts by asking questions such as: “What type of life do you want? Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to prevent HIV? Is that an actionable goal for you?” He described these as classic Health Belief Model questions. Then from there, the discussion flows to HIV prevention and barriers to HIV prevention. A key takeaway here, Dr. D. said, was the importance of acknowledging the role of structure, but also recognizing the need to keep the focus on the individual: “What are we going to do to save you first?” while we wait for public health and the biomedical field to make their advances.
- Tonia asked Dr. D. his opinion about the vulnerability required for reflexivity and positionality statements in peer-reviewed articles, and the implications of incorporating reflexivity into team manuscripts. D. noted that the reflexivity statement was not just about who you are, but “about how who you are affects the science of it.” He said this aspect of reflexivity was underdeveloped or omitted in most positionality statements.
- Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219-234. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112468475 o Finlay, L. (2002). “Outing” the researcher: The provenance, process, and practice of reflexivity. Qualitative Health Research, 12(4), 531-545. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973202129120052 o Jones, R. G. (2010). Putting privilege into practice through “intersectional reflexivity”: Ruminations, interventions, and possibilities. Faculty Research and Creative Activity, 3, 122-125. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=commstudies_fac
- Savolainen, J., Casey, P. J., McBrayer, J. P., & Schwerdtle, P. N. (2023). Positionality and its problems: Questioning the value of reflexivity statements in research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17456916221144988. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221144988
- Verdonk, P., & Abma, T. (2013). Intersectionality and reflexivity in medical education research. Medical Education, 47(8), 754-756. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12258 o Wilkinson, S. (1988). The role of reflexivity in feminist psychology. Women’s Studies International Forum, 11(5), 492-502. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(88)90024-6
- Asked to talk about intersectional strengths, Dr. D. said his research team has been debating resilience as a problem not a strength, and shout out to ISI 2022 cohort member, Elle Lett, an adverse event. He said that the strengths lie in keeping the focus on the social-structural context that shapes HIV risk for Black GBMSM, and in knowing that the community was not deficits-focused as portrayed in much of the science, but rather very much interested in engaging in health behaviors.
- Fergus, S., & Zimmerman, M. A. (2005). Adolescence resilience: A framework for understanding healthy development in the face of risk. Annual Review of Public Health, 26(1), 399-419. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.26.021304.144357
- Shaw, J., McLean, K. C., Taylor, B., Swartout, K., & Querna, K. (2016). Beyond resilience: Why we need to look at systems too. Psychology of Violence, 6(1), 34-41. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000020
- Suslovic, B., & Lett, E. (2023). Resilience is an adverse event: A critical discussion of resilience theory in health services research and public health. Community Health Equity Research & Policy, 2752535X231159721. https://doi.org/10.1177/2752535X231159721
- Responding to a concluding question about the need for more trans-inclusive research on PrEP, Dr. D. stressed that the “trans experienced deserved its own line of work.” Highlighting intracategorical complexity, Dr. D. highlighted the vast heterogeneity within Black GBMSM communities. He encouraged a “cease and desist” on asking researchers who study minority communities to do research on all minorities. He recommended instead that research be focused on specific communities, and on identifying the within-group diversity and heterogeneity.
Next Salon: Dr. Jasmine Abrams
Salon Title: Filling the Intersectional Qualitative Research Gap: Writing the Intersectionality Article That I Most Needed, March 13, 2024 5 to 6:30 pm EDT
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