Leigh-Anne Goins

Assistant Professor Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Leigh-Anne Goins is an interdisciplinary Black feminist scholar with degrees in Communication and Sociology, including a PhD in Sociology from Michigan State University (2015). Leigh-Anne teaches a variety of courses including: Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Women of Color in the U.S., Feminist Methods, Women & the Internet, Black Feminisms & Black Feminist Theories, and (New) Media and Marginalized Bodies. Each course examines the impact digital engagement has on perceptions of belonging and recognition.

Across her research projects, Leigh-Anne incorporates Black feminist scholarship, the sociology of race and gender, fandom studies, and critical media and discourse analysis. Her dissertation focused on Black women’s perceptions of Scandal and Olivia Pope’s character, played by Kerry Washington, and their assessment of the impact digital engagement has on increasing access to belongingness and positive recognition. One current project extends this work, and examines responses to the conclusion of the series. It attempts to ascertain if (and how) Scandal and Shonda Rhimes (her writing, producing, and discussions in the digital sphere)influenced perceptions of Black femininity, decreased misrecognition, and provided the possibility to see Black women as future texts -- complex, messy, human. Through a Black Feminist lens, this qualitative project also interrogates the ways Black women’s digital fandom provides (or fails to) the space to reimagine Black femininity, seeing Black women as complex humans and not through the tropes of controlling images. A second qualitative research project examines college student perceptions of belongingness after their campus experienced a racist event (in the preceding 12 months). This project focuses on the ways students of color navigate campus and the digital sphere in the aftermath of the racist (and sexist) event, asking if digital engagement restricts or increases perceptions of belonging across three spheres: the structure of the school, seen through administration, faculty and staff responses, the university community and culture, and intra-racial or multi-cultural support systems. Throughout in her classes and through her research, Leigh-Anne analyses the symbiotic relationship between digital and non-digital spheres, and the ways people of color negotiate, challenge, and create spaces of resistance and belonging within and between them.