Amy Heath-Carpentier

Academic Coordinator
Lecturer in Global Studies
PhD, California Institute of Integral Studies
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    • Office Hours: http://wucc.me/JsjGp

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    • Washington University
    • MSC 1217-137-255
    • One Brookings Drive
    • St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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    Amy Heath-Carpentier, PhD, is the Academic Coordinator for Global Studies, organizing the program’s academic affairs and supporting the grant and research programs. An award-winning educator, her courses cover topics such as gender and queer analysis in international affairs and development, Irish studies, nationalisms, conflict, and methodology and research design.

    Dr. Heath-Carpentier is the Founder and Emeritus Leader of the Government, Policy, and Social Impact (GPS) Career Community, a 900 student and 1080 alumni strong WashU community offering career exploration and education, internship and job search strategies, and networking opportunities for students and alumni through the Center for Career Engagement. Alongside her colleague and GPS leader Susan Craig, she hosts the GPP Podcast: Career Coaching for Budding Advocates, Politicos, Policy Wonks & Social Entrepreneurs.

    A sociologist of religion, Dr. Heath-Carpentier researches how religion and local feminisms comingle with anticolonial movements, particularly in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She is interested in how women negotiate their participation in and experience of war through institutional or extra-institutional religious experience.

    Recent Courses

    Furies and Die-Hards: Women in Rebellion and War

    Furies and Die-Hards: Women in Rebellion and War juxtaposes contemporary social science perspectives on women and war with the history and testimonies of Irish women during the Irish revolutionary period (1898-1922), the Irish Civil War (1922-1923), and the Free State. Under English rule from the twelfth century Norman invasions to the establishment of the Irish Free State and the partition of Northern Ireland in 1922, Ireland presents a compelling, historical laboratory to deliberate on the relationship between gender and political conflict. Intentionally transdisciplinary, the course draws from across disciplinary discourses and highlights perspectives across race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality. Topics include: political organizing, nationalism, rebellion, radicalization, militarism, terrorism, pacifism, and peacebuilding. Rooted in Cynthia Enloe's enduring question "Where are the women?" and drawing on sociologist Louise Ryan's landmark essay by the same name, we inquire how and why Irish nationalist women, who were integral to building the revolutionary movement, became "Furies" and "Die-Hards" in the eyes of their compatriots when the Free State was established (Bishop Doorley, 1925; President Cosgrave, 1923). Taking advantage of the plethora of archival resources now available through the Irish Decade of Centenaries program, the course incorporates the voices of Irish women through their diaries, military records, letters, interviews, speeches, newspapers, and memoirs.

      Gender Analysis for International Affairs

      Gender is a central, but too often obscured dimension of the policy and practice of international affairs, relations, and development. In this transdisciplinary course, gender is not a synonym for women, as Terrell Carver reminds us. Students take gender seriously as an analytical category and examine how masculinities, femininities, gender identities, and sexualities shape the construction, implementation, and outcomes of global governance, politics, economics, and interventions. Traversing macro and micro levels, the course exposes students to diverse voices from around the world, which they utilize to conduct gender analyses on case studies relevant to their interests. Throughout, we will be mindful of 1) how gender functions in tandem with sexuality, class, race, religion, and ethnicity (intersectionality) and 2) how multidimensional identities morph historically, regionally, and culturally. The student builds a gender analysis toolkit and practices what Cynthia Enloe describes as "feminist curiosity," exploring the relationship between gender and power in various aspects of international affairs.

        Books

        Morin, E. (2022). The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (A. Heath-Carpentier, Ed.). Sussex Academic Press. dio: 10.2307/j.ctv3029jw9.

        Articles & Chapters

        Heath-Carpentier, A. (2022). Historical perspectives: Irish nationalist women’s religious and political revolutions. In B. McNamara & H. O’Brien (Eds.), The study of religions in Ireland: Past, present and future (pp. 20-44). Bloomsbury Publishing.

        Heath-Carpentier, A. (2021). Revolution and revelation--A study of the religiopolitical lives and legacies of two Irish republican friends, Maud Gonne and Ella Young. The Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, 8, 1-32.

        Heath-Carpentier, A. (2021). Convergences : Discuter la complexité du projet féministe avec Edgar Morin (Confluences: Negotiating complexity of the feminist project with Edgar Morin). In A. Pena-Vega (Ed.), L’avenir de terre-patrie (pp. 196-203). Actes Sud.

        Counts, C., Darlington-Hope, M., Heath-Carpentier, A., & Hamlen, B.R. (2005). A constructivist model for on-line curriculum development: A theoretical framework. Proceedings of the 25th annual Adult Higher Education Alliance Conference.

        Klass, D. & Heath, A. (1997). Grief and abortion: Mizuko Kuyo, the Japanese ritual resolution. Omega 34 (1), 1-14.