Kenna Neitch

Kenna Neitch (she/her) teaches in areas of gender, sexuality, feminist methods and theory, and women’s literature. Her research takes a transnational feminist approach to Central American women’s testimony and activism, particularly in digital and collective forms.

Education

Ph.D., Texas Tech University (English, 2021)
M.A., Texas Tech University (English, 2016)
B.A., Texas Lutheran University (English and Philosophy, 2014)

Research

Kenna Neitch’s current book project, Persistence: Women's Testimony and Sustainable Activism across Central America, centers indigenous and decolonial feminist theory in its transdisciplinary analysis of precarious women’s testimonies in collective and digital forms. She engages with feminist knowledge production in Central American women’s strategies of testimony and coalition building in the last forty years. Persistence draws on feminist digital humanities to provide one of the first scholarly accounts of #MeToo in Central America in dialogue with previously unexamined women’s encuentros (institutional publications). Through persistence, her project offers a new cross-disciplinary framework for how scholars talk about and learn from activists and marginalized communities.

Her work is available or forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Feminist Studies, Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing, Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, and The Global South.

Courses Taught

WGS 201
WGS 211*
WGS 401
WGS 602

*cross-listed as AAA 211/AMS 211/CRES 211/LAS 211

Publications

Book Project
Persistence: Women’s Testimony and Sustainable Activism across Central America. Advanced contract.

Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Mountains of Memories: ‘Visibilizing’ Solidarity and Multivocality in Central American Women’s Encuentros.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 48, no. 1, 2022, 125-149.

“Rewriting Mythology, Reclaiming History: Christine de Pizan and Gore-Booth on Gender Performance and Equality.” Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal vol. 49, no. 2, 2020, pp. 113-129.

Co-winner of the 2018 Feminist Studies Graduate Student Award: “Indigenous Persistence: Challenging the Rhetoric of Anti-colonial Resistance.” Feminist Studies vol. 45, no. 2/3, 2019, pp. 426-454.

Additional Publications
Review of Scales of Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Transborder Activism, Maylei Blackwell. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 49, no. 3, 2024, pp. 689-691.

Review Essay: “Testimonial Innovation in Immigration Literature." Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing vol. 35, no. 1, 2020, pp. 81-84.

Review of Overcoming Global Inequalities, edited by Immanuel Wallerstein, Christopher Chase-Dunn, and Christian Suter. The Global South: Engaging with the Poetics of Peripheralization vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 2017, pp. 140-143.