March marks Women’s History Month, and many notable women have shaped UH into the diverse and groundbreaking University it is today.
As the month comes to an end, here are just some of the UH women faculty members who have made an impact.
Elizabeth Gregory
Along with being director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program since 1995, Gregory teaches British and American modernism, contemporary poetry, ancient and classical literature, feminist criticism and motherhood studies.
She also teaches and publishes work on American modernist poetry, women and fertility.
One notable book that has been recognized by The Washington Post, is “Ready: Why Women Are Embracing The New Later Motherhood.”
As a director at the University, she has developed the Carey C. Shuart Women’s Archive and Research Collection, which compiles records of women who have made a notable impact in Houston.
Linda Reed
Reed serves as the interim director of the African American Studies program. She is also an associate professor of history and a scholar in African American history, with an interest in women and the South.
She is also recognized for serving as the director of the African American Studies program at UH, and for being the national director for the Association of Black Women Historians.
Her award winning book, “Simple Decency and Common Sense: The Southern Conference Movement, 1938-1963,” focuses on years of the civil rights movement that are often overlooked.
She is in the process of completing a manuscript titled, “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: The Life and Times of Fannie Lou Hamer,” about a Mississippi civil rights activist.
Cristina Rivera Garza
As a distinguished professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the Creative Writing program in Spanish, Garza has written six award-winning novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry and three non-fiction books.
These books, originally written in Spanish, have been translated into multiple languages, like English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Korean.
Garza is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, where she will have the opportunity to grow her creative writing talents in Spanish.
Her book, “No One Will See Me Cry” earned the José Rubén Romero National Book Award in 1997 and the 2001 International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award.
Christine Ehlig-Economides
The first American woman to finish a Ph.D in petroleum, Ehlig-Economides is a professor and a Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen distinguished University chair at the school.
Among the many boards she has been a member of, one includes the National Academy of Science Committee on America’s Energy Future. She has also chaired the Academies of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas Shale Task Force in 2017.
Ehlig-Economides has sung in the Houston Symphony Chorus for more than 10 years.
She conducts research on conventional and unconventional oil, and gas well evaluation and design, and is currently working on a textbook titled “Unconventional Resource Engineering.”