Dr. Melissa Ooten
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Profile
Melissa Ooten is the Director of the will Program and Associate Dean of Social Justice Engagement and Practice for Westhampton College at the University of Richmond. She has worked with will since 2005 and is deeply committed to educating the next generation of social justice advocates. She holds a Ph.D. in history from The College of William and Mary and specializes in intersectional feminist histories and linking theory to praxis in pedagogical practice. Her publications include: A People’s Guide to Richmond and Central Virginia (University of California Press, 2023), an alternative guidebook co-written with Jason Sawyer that centers community histories of struggle, resistance, and resilience; Audacious Voices: Profiles in Intersectional Feminism (She Writes Press, 2018), a collection co-edited with Holly Blake that features twelve stories written by alums about the power of the will program in their lives; and Race, Gender, and Movie Censorship in Virginia, 1922–1965 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). She has written a number of articles on issues ranging from mass incarceration to eugenics to teaching #BlackLivesMatter through film. In 2022, she received a Virginia Public Humanities fellowship to support her work on A People’s Guide. She has been a member of the National Women’s Studies Association since 2006, and she has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education since 2020.
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