Staff

Katherine (Katie) Crawford, Interim Director

Katherine Crawford is Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History and a professor of gender and sexuality studies. In both her teaching and research, she is is interested in the ways that gender informs sexual practice, ideology, and identity, both in normative and non-normative formations. She is an award-winning teacher, having received the Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Vanderbilt and the Von Holst Teaching Prize at the University of Chicago. She has served as co-president of French Historical Studies, and she is currently on the editorial boards of French History and The Journal of the History of Sexuality. Her publications include Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France (Harvard, 2004), European Sexualities, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 2007), The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance (Cambridge, 2010), and Eunuchs and Castrati: Disability and Normativity in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2019). She has published articles in journals such as Renaissance and Reformation; Renaissance et réforme, The Journal of Modern History, and the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. She is currently working on a project tentatively entitled Deceiving Women: The Inscrutable Female Body at the Origins of Modernity and editing a volume of essays on prostitution in early modern Europe.

Elizabeth Covington, Associate Director

Elizabeth Covington is Associate Chair and Principal Senior Lecturer of Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as Senior Lecturer of English. She earned her PhD in English Literature from Vanderbilt. Elizabeth has published articles in Genre and Journal of Modern Literature, and she is currently working on a book about experimental psychological theories of memory and the emergence of modernist literature in Britain. She teaches a wide variety of classes in GSS and English.

Sameira Sheikh, Faculty Director, Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program

(research leave, 2025-2026)

Samira Sheikh is Associate Professor of History and a historian of South Asia. Her research interests include politics and religion in South Asia from 1200-1950, early modern trade, and early Indian maps. She is the author of Forging a Region: Sultans, Traders and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200-1500 (Oxford India, 2010), and co-editor of After Timur Left (Oxford India, 2014), and An Anthology of Ismaili Literature: A Shi’i Vision of Islam (I.B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2008). Sheikh came to Vanderbilt from London where she was a research associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. She is finishing up a book on the city of Bharuch in western India in the eighteenth century. As the East India Company’s power expanded and the Mughal empire grew ever more remote, people in Bharuch adapted to new realities. The book brings to life the travails of individuals caught in a rapidly transforming world while showing how traces of those who experienced early colonialism have been obscured by subsequent politics.

Tasha Rijke-Esptein, Interim Faculty Director, Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program

Tasha Rijke-Epstein is Assistant Professor of History and works as an historian and anthropologist whose research focuses on material transformations of everyday life in Madagascar and the southwestern Indian Ocean. Her work explores how people have reworked the material world over time, informed by their hopes and aspirations, political ideologies, and technical know-how. Her first book, Children of the Soil: The Power of Built Form in Madagascar (Duke University Press, 2023) is a spatial and material history of the Indian Ocean port city of Mahajanga, Madagascar. This book weaves together the untold stories of the lives and afterlives of built spaces to show how several generations of city residents rewrote the past and managed the uncertainties of imperial encroachment, French colonial rule, and global capitalism through the city’s architecture over two centuries.

Terry Tripp, Activities Coordinator

Terry Tripp joined the Warren Center in 2013. Before that, she worked as an administrative assistant in the A&S Dean’s Office. She also worked with the ACLU of Tennessee and did freelance writing and editing for CABLE, a professional women’s organization. She has a B.A. in communications and minors in journalism and French, however, she has forgotten all of her French – even the swear words. She has one husband, two sons, two cats and one dog. Her children have rebelled against her in the cruelest way possible, by refusing to watch the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV series. She hopes they see the error of their ways soon so she can say, “I told you so!”

Ayauna Blair, CHPP Administrator

Ayauna Blair is Administrative Coordinator for the A&S Dean’s Office, providing program support to the Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program and other special projects. She joined Vanderbilt University in 2023 from Knoxville with her two children. She graduated from MTSU with a BS in Liberal Arts as an Africana Studies major and double-minor in English and Global Studies. Prior to Vanderbilt, she was an administrative assistant to the Knoxville City Mayor. Ayauna thoroughly enjoys hands-on activities like DIY event décor, hair braiding, coloring, gardening, and Legos. When she isn’t competing (winning) against her kids in sports, she enjoys digital design, building spreadsheets and volunteering with youth!