We are pleased to announce that the 2020-2021 Ron Troyer Research Fellowship has been awarded to Professor Sandra Patton-Imani, Associate Professor of American Studies in the Department for the Study of Culture and Society.

Professor Patton-Imani has a long and distinguished research record.  Her second book, Queering Family Trees: Race Reproductive Justice and Lesbian Motherhood, New York University Press, is forthcoming. Her first, Birthmarks: Transnational Adoption in Contemporary America, was published by New York University Press in 2000.

Her current research builds on her forthcoming book. It is a digital storytelling project, exploring questions of family history and national belonging in the United States, focusing in particular on questions of race, gender, reproduction, and power. Drawing on oral history, participant observation, and archival research, it approaches family genealogy as an aspect of resistant history-making for multiracial and mixed-race families whose existence in United States history has often been misinterpreted or erased. It focuses on intersecting family trees that cross multiple racial-ethnic categories. The research will be analyzed and interpreted by students in her courses, resulting in a public online digital story-mapping project highlighting aspects of mixed-race family histories that have previously been erased. The stipend that goes with the Fellowship will help advance that research.

Professor Patton-Imani has been a member of the Drake faculty since 2001. Prior to that she was a member of the faculty at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D and M.A. in American Studies from the  University of Maryland, College Park, and her  B.A. in American Studies and Communications (Radio-TV-Film)) from  the California State University, Fullerton.

— Arthur Sanders, Ellis and Nelle Levitt Professor of Politics/Associate Provost