Our Director
Lisa Johnson, Ph.D.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Lisa Johnson directs the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at USC Upstate where she has developed programs on campus and in the community to improve young women's lives by equipping them with a wide range of tools in emotional literacy, self-awareness, effective communication, the management of intimate partnerships, and the use of creative arts for self-soothing, self-expression, and self-love. Dr. Johnson holds a PhD from SUNY Binghamton where she completed a dissertation on feminist cultural studies, and has taught gender studies on the university level for fifteen years. Her current research areas include attachment theory in families of origin and adult romantic relationships, the logic of addiction and the phenomenon of cross-addictions between substance abuse and romantic obsession, the socio-psychological dynamics of neurotic behavior and self-defeating cognitive patterns in adolescent girls, and the variations of affective disorder across categories of difference such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. She has been instrumental in the development of outreach programs to serve the needs of African American teen girls in Spartanburg, combining practical information about HIV-awareness with lessons in emotional literacy and assertiveness training.
Her newest book, GIRL IN NEED OF A TOURNIQUET, tells her personal story of struggling with attachment disorders throughout her adolescence and early adulthood, weaving the insights derived from therapy and her own research into psychology among the narratives of romantic distress, substance abuse, and the chronic depression that is finally recognized and treated as the long-suppressed side-effect of the emotional abuse she experienced in childhood.
In 2009, Dr. Johnson debuted her personal narrative, a multi-media performance art meditation on the allure and the airlessness of living life all BOTTLED UP. In this lecture, she waxes poetic on her own personal experience of drinking and drugging and screaming and puking—anything to avoid the sheer terror of feeling her feelings—and then puts it all in a broader psycho-social context.
More information on Bottled Up: Cross-Training for Cross-Additions in a Train-the-Trainers Event by Dr. Lisa Johnson ...
Dr. Johnson has been at the leading edge of new feminist theory for some time now, publishing a landmark book in third wave feminism in 2002, titled Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire. A review in Publisher’s Weekly warns, "It's not for the straitlaced, but sex-positive feminists will find this a provocative, important anthology that speaks honestly to the question of pleasure and how to get it." The introduction was reprinted in 2006 in an encyclopedia of founding texts in third wave feminism called The Women’s Movement Today. With chapters on reconciling feminism with a wide range of ambivalent personal desires, Jane Sexes It Up appeals strongly to the college-age population who may still be in the process of figuring out what kind of feminist they want to be.
With a longstanding interest in feminist cultural studies, Dr. Johnson has published academic articles on Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and the L Word, and she is currently working on a new piece that analyzes images of African American women--especially the Sapphire stereotype--on Ugly Betty. Her most recent anthology, Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It in a Box, garnered Honorable Mention in the Susan Koppelman award for Best Feminist Cultural Studies collection in 2007, and Dr. Johnson's introduction, "Ladies, Love Your Box: The Rhetoric of Pleasure and Danger in Feminist Television Studies," is being reprinted this fall in a new Cultural Studies Reader published by Peter Lang and edited by Douglas Kellner. This media studies angle also shapes SWST 101, an exciting course where students watch documentaries and clips from popular television shows as a vehicle for class debates over gender roles, sexual politics, and the everyday negotiations of selfhood, gender, sexuality, work, marriage, and emotional labor.
Read Dr. Johnson's alumna profile from the University of West Georgia
There are lots of exciting events happening at the Center, including a speaker series, a book club, and a film series, so browse around the site to see what the Center has been up to, and stay tuned for what’s coming up next!