Faolan Thompson

I received my BA in History from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon and my MA in Gender Studies from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. As an undergraduate, I co-chaired the Gender Studies Symposium, one of the longest-running undergraduate conferences in gender studies in the United States. My undergraduate research focused on post-World War II moral panics over homosexuality in Oregon, drawing on histories of the science of sexuality and urban space. After nearly a decade working in the service industry (and as a summer camp counselor), I returned to school to get my master’s from Charles University’s English-language Gender Studies program, where I focused on feminist political theory, feminist science studies, and environmental humanities. My master’s thesis conducted an interdisciplinary close reading of an Australian scientific travelogue, examining how gender and settler colonialism informed scientific inquiry in early twentieth century Australia.

My current research examines nature-based programming aimed at working class and immigrant children in the United States from roughly the Progressive Era to the Cold War. I examine the roles of gender and race in conceptions of national belonging during an era of assimilation for European immigrants, with a focus on how discourses of nature and environment, as well as material access to the “natural world,” played a role in developing twentieth-century ideals of happy, healthy childhoods. Throughout my work, I have been driven by questions of how expertise disseminates and functions on a social and cultural level.

Advisor: Laura Lovett