Women's Studies Adjunct Faculty
Arianne Burford
Arianne Burford earned her Ph.D in English at the University of Arizona in August, 2007.
Her dissertation, Between Women: Alliances and Divisions in American Indian, Mexican American,
and Anglo American Literatures of Protest to Colonialism investigates nineteenth- and
twentieth-century women writers’ protests against colonialism and their negotiation of
women’s rights discourses. Between Women compares how Sarah Winnemucca, Helen Hunt Jackson,
and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton engage women’s rights discourses to point to the effects of
violence upon American Indian and Mexican American women. These writers call upon Anglo women
to not be complicit, thus articulating new directions for alliances between women that are
anti-racist and anti-colonialist. After such historical contextualizing, her study examines
Cherríe Moraga’s, Helena Viramontes’s, and Evelina Lucero’s treatment of solidarity and portrayal
of alliances between women within the context of unjust incarceration of American Indian political
prisoners and the exploitation of Chicana farm workers. Her additional areas of interest and
research include film studies - particularly images of Latinas in film - African American literature;
social constructions of race, gender, and sexuality; American literature and women writers;
transnational feminisms, border politics and activism; and prevention of various forms violence
against women including labor exploitation, domestic violence, and rape.
