Dr. Theresa Runstedtler brings to academia an extensive knowledge and background in history, African-American studies, cultural studies and sports.
Previously an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Runstedtler now leads the Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies Collaborative at American University (AU), where she has been chair since fall 2015.
The Canadian-born history professor brings her own distinct identity and research interests — race, gender, resistance in popular culture, imperialism and globalization — to the interdisciplinary program that explores “diverse voices, histories and experiences through socially engaged scholarship,” according to the program’s website.
Runstedtler’s intellectual endeavors began at York University in Toronto, Canada, where there were few courses in the history department that dealt with questions of race, social justice and social movements, she says. One African-American history course, however, inspired her to further her studies by enrolling in a graduate program in the United States.
“I wanted to figure out how we got to where we are and about the interrelations between the situation in the U.S. regarding slavery, internal colonialism … and how that related to not just the Canadian context, but the context all across the global South,” Runstedtler tells Diverse.
She says that she uses an intersectional framework to analyze different concepts, adding that she is always thinking about how what she studies manifests itself in culture and how systems of oppression like patriarchy, White supremacy, and heterosexism all intertwine.
Her passion for sports in her adolescence has also found a way into Runstedtler’s scholarship. Growing up, she was a figure skater and a soccer player, and she was on her university’s rugby team. Before she returned to graduate school at Yale University to complete her Ph.D., she was a professional dancer.
