France Winddance Twine
France Winddance Twine is a sociologist, documentary filmmaker, a visual artist and an enrolled citizen of the Muskogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. A native of Chicago, she is the granddaughter of Paul Twine, Sr., a Civil Rights activist and founding member of the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, a Civil Rights organization that brought Irish, Italian, German, Polish and Black Catholics together to fight for racial justice. Dr. Twine is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara where she regularly teaches courses on race, gender and class inequality, sociology of the body, sociology of work, girlhood, assisted reproductive technologies and qualitative research methods.
Twine earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a research fellow in the class of 2008–2009 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In 2007 she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics. She has taught and held tenured professorships at Duke University and the University of Washington in Seattle. Twine is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma.
She is the former deputy editor of American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association. Twine currently serves as a member of the International editorial boards of Sociology, the official journal of the British Sociological Association, and the journals Social Problems and . She has also served on the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies, the highest impact peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of racial and ethnic inequalities in the discipline of Sociology.
Twine's research examines the intersections of racial, gender and class inequalities. Her recent publications include Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market , Geographies of Privilege and Girls With Guns: Firearms, Feminism and Militarism. She is the editor for the Routledge series, Framing 21st Century Social Issues.
Career
Dr. Twine is an ethnographer and feminist race theorist who has 84 publications including 10 books. She has conducted field research in Brazil, Britain and the United States. Her research has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Her recent books include Outsourcing the Womb, Geographies of Privilege Edited by France Winddance Twine, Bradley Gardener, Girls with Guns: Firearms, Feminism and Militarism, A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy and Racism in a Racial Democracy: the maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil and an editor of five volumes including Retheorizing Race and Whiteness in the 21st Century: Changes and Challenges and Feminism and Anti-Racism: international struggles for justice.Her articles, film reviews and book reviews have appeared in English and Brazilian Portuguese in international journals: the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Estudos Afroasiaticos, Feminist Studies, , Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Social Identities, Race and Class, and Gender and Society. Twine's current research focuses on inequality in Silicon Valley and transnational gestational surrogacy. One of her most important theoretical contributions is the concept of racial literacy which was first published in a 2004 journal article and developed in her book A White Side of Black Britain.
Twine was a scholar in residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group.
Academic positions and honors
- 2019 Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa from Colorado College
- 2014-2015 Scholar in Residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley
- 2008-2009 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
- 2007 Visiting Professor, The Gender Institute and Department of Sociology, the London School of Economics and Political Science
- 2002–present Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
- 2003-05 Professor of Sociology, Duke University
- 1997-2002 Assistant to Full Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
- 1998-2000 Associate Professor of International Studies & Women Studies, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington at Seattle
- 1997-1998 Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
- 1994-97 Assistant Professor of Women Studies, University of Washington at Seattle
Selected publications
Books
- Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market. Second edition, Routledge.
- Geographies of Privilege, Edited by France Winddance Twine, Bradley Gardener Routledge.
- Girls with Guns: Firearms, Feminism and Militarism, Routledge. Routledge|
- Retheorizing Race and Whiteness in the 21st Century: Changes and Challenges Routledge, co-edited with Charles A. Gallagher Routledge|
- Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market, Routledge. Routledge|
- A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy, Duke University Press. Routledge|
- Feminism and Anti-Racism: International Struggles for Justice,, New York University Press, co-edited with Kathleen Blee. Routledge|
- Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality and Nationalism,, Routledge, co-edited with Helena Ragone. Routledge|
- Racing Research/Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies,, New York University Press, co-edited with Jonathan Warren. Routledge|
- Feminisms and Youth Cultures, a special issue of, Vol. 23, no. 3,, University of Chicago Press, co-edited with Kum Kum Bhavani and Kathryn Kent.
- Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, Rutgers University Press. Routledge|
Journal articles
- Technology's Invisible Women: Black Geek Girls in Silicon Valley and the Failure of Diversity Initiatives International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies, Vol. 1 No. 1 : 58-79.
- Gender-Fluid Geek Girls: Negotiating Inequality Regimes in the Tech Industry, Gender & Society, Vol. 31, Issue 1: 28-50
- White migrations: Swedish women, gender vulnerabilities and racial privileges, in European Journal of Women's Studies vol.18, no.1 : 67–86. Coauthored with Catrin Lundstrom.
- The Gap Between Whites and Whiteness: Interracial Intimacy and Racial literacy, in , vol.3, no.2 : 341-363. Coauthored with Amy Steinbugler.
- Visual Ethnography and Racial Theory: family photographs as archives of Interracial Intimacies, in Ethnic and Racial Studies vol. 29, no. 3 : 487-511.
- A White Side of Black Britain: The Concept of Racial Literacy, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 27, no. 6 : 1-30.
- White Americans, the New Minority?: Non-Blacks and the Ever-Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness, Journal of Black Studies, vol. 28, no. 2: 200-218. Co-authored with Jonathan Warren
- Brown Skinned White Girls: Class, Culture and the Construction of White Identity in Suburban Communities, in Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, vol. 3, no. 2 : 204-224.
- O hiato de genero nas percepcoes de racismo: o caso dos afro-brasileiros socialments ascendentes, in Estudos Afro-Asiaticos, vol. 29 37-54.
Film productions
- Just Black?: Multiracial Identity in the U.S.,, with J. Warren and F. Ferrandiz, New York, Filmakers Library