Women's Studies University of Arizona
Department of Women's Studies
contact: 520.621.7338, 520.621.1533 (fax), address: 925 N Tyndall Ave, PO Box 210438 Tucson, AZ 85721-0438
Sirow, The Southwest Institute for Research on Women
Women's Plaza of Honor (+3 damage points)
Women in Science and Engineering
Women's Studies Advisory Council

Students

Carly Thomsen

After growing up in rural (read: conservative) South Dakota, I made my way to a neighboring blue state and earned a BA in Rhetoric and Applied Writing and Women’s Studies from St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota. It was during this time that I evolved into an activist, primarily focusing on reproductive rights through work with NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota. As a campus and community organizer, I participated in an undercover investigation of so-called "Crisis Pregnancy Centers," and returned to my home state last spring to fight the country’s first abortion ban.

Immediately prior to moving to Tucson, I was working with Winona LaDuke and the White Earth Land Recovery Project on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. I still am not over the fact that big leafy trees just don't grow in the desert...

My thesis research is looking at the ways that abortion-rights discourse utilizes women’s experiences with abortion as a rhetorical strategy to argue for the necessity of safe and legal abortion. I hope to both critique some of the unintended and unexamined consequences of this strategy, and simultaneously add to this discussion by interviewing family members and close friends of women who died from illegal abortions prior to 1973.

I love traveling, cooking, photography and ACTIVISM! I am currently serving as the Director of the Women’s Resource Center on campus, and I have a fabulous Research Assistantship with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women.