Monica J. Casper, PhD

Hello!

Welcome to my personal website. Let me introduce myself – I am the Dean of the College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences and a Professor of Sociology at Seattle University, a progressive Jesuit institution in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. My scholarly and creative work is interdisciplinary, collaborative, and public facing, as I am deeply invested in forging a more just and humane world. I center feminism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and love for our planet.

A bit about my background: as the daughter of working-class parents, I was not destined to become an academic. Indeed, early childhood dreams included Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (law was important to my blue-collar family, and to me), a marine biologist, and a race car driver. But while I was a First Gen student at the University of Chicago, an ethnography course altered my career trajectory, and my life. I chose academia, and sociology specifically.

I have authored, co-authored, and edited/co-edited eight books and numerous essays and articles. My research has focused on fetal surgery, breast cancer, cervical cancer, the Pap smear, the HPV vaccine, missing bodies, chemical weapons, environmental toxins, traumatic brain injury, gender-based violence, reproductive technologies, violence against women, inequities in higher education, and more. These themes have also found their way into my creative writing, advocacy, and consulting.

At the heart of my critical and creative inquiry for more than 30 years is a set of intertwined questions, inspired by Foucault, Haraway, and others: Who gets to live? Whose deaths are accelerated? And who gets to decide who lives and dies? These foundational questions led me first to medical sociology and then to social, cultural, and feminist studies of science, medicine, and technology and other interdisciplinary spaces, such as disability studies, trauma studies, animal studies, and bioethics.

I have been especially keen to understand the many ways that women and girls around the world are made unsafe, unhealthy, and unfree, often based on anatomy, ignorance, patriarchal beliefs, racism, and other oppressions. My work is about exposing harm and fostering safety, health, and empowerment for girls and women. Globally, some women get too much health care and technology, while other women not enough—and this divide drives my relentless questioning. At the same time, all girls and women are at risk of gender-based violence.

I am thus a fierce advocate, and academia is not the only space in which I work. I have directed a nonprofit, served on various boards of directors, consulted with and volunteered for a range of organizations, and written more than 60 op-eds. I also co-founded the Consortium on Gender-Based Violence at the University of Arizona and led the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Gender-Based Violence at San Diego State University. And for many years, I was a managing co-editor of The Feminist Wire.

A scholar at heart, I chose a leadership path in academia because I wanted to make a difference. As a Dean, I want every student to have the kind of life-changing college experience I did, and I want every faculty and staff member to feel valued and supported, as I strive to foster humane workplaces. I lean into transparency, collaboration, and humanity. And though higher education is challenged in many ways, I believe deeply in its promise, especially its role in advancing social mobility.

The ways I have navigated my academic career are first a tribute to my family, who instilled in me a love of books, knowledge, and curiosity while also encouraging a healthy respect for dissent. They urged me to recognize and act on injustice, no matter where I found it. I am who I am because my parents, mom Patricia and stepdad Dennis, believed in me. They gave me wings, and so I flew. And these professional byways are also a tribute to my fabulous, brilliant mentors: Adele Clarke, Virginia Olesen, and Donna Haraway.

Thank you for visiting my website! One of my superpowers is connecting people in and across movements and organizations. I look forward to connecting with you.

Monica@MonicaJCasper.com