Rebekah Toussaint
Ph. D. Student
advisor:
Adrienne Petty
Email:
[[rljoyce]]
Current Research:
Gender and Race; 19th/20th c. America; Transnational/Comparative; Public History and Memory
Bio
Rebekah Toussaint is a first-year Ph.D. student at the College of William and Mary, where her research focuses on intersections of gender and race in 19th century social movements, both from American and transnational perspectives. She is further interested in public history, memorialization, and memory. Her forthcoming research examines the era of pre-integration and processes of integration in the Hampton Roads chapter of the YWCA. She currently serves as an apprentice for the College's National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library's Digital Media Archive.Rebekah earned a B.S. in Sociology and International Studies (2013), a M.A. in Humanities (2016), and a Graduate Certificate in Women's and Gender Studies (2016) from Old Dominion University. Her M.A. thesis, "We Are Still in Apartheid:' Girls’ Perspectives on Education Inequality in Democratic South Africa and Models for Social Change," examined the historic barriers that Black South African girls faced in pursuit of secondary and higher education under apartheid, and how those barriers have evolved and remained since the legal ending of apartheid. Since 2016 she has taught courses in Women's and Gender Studies at the collegiate level as an instructor for Old Dominion. She developed several courses including "History of Women's Activism," "Activism and the #MeToo Movement," and "Gender in Film."
