I joined the Berea College faculty in 1987 as assistant professor of education and Director of Secondary Student Teaching. Beginning in 1995, I began offering Short Term courses in Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico and Nicaragua. For five years, I served as Director of the Summer Internship Program at the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Through the years, I led several faculty and student travel seminars to Cuba, Costa Rica, and the U.S. border with Mexico.
In 1995, I assumed leadership of the Women’s Studies Program. Within a few years, dedicated women’s studies faculty joined me to develop a full major in women’s studies. Concurrently, the Peanut Butter and Gender luncheons grew in popularity as we replaced brown bag lunches with homemade soups and sandwiches. In 1999, women’s studies students brought feminist author bell hooks to campus as a Convocation speaker. Over the next few years, we kindled a relationship with bell until she joined the faculty in 2004 as Distinguished-Professor-in-Residence. Her presence in the Women’s Studies Program remains an historical highlight.
In 2013, Berea College was invited to join the “Women in Global Leadership” program initiated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I served as Director of the Women in Global Leadership Program in Women’s and Gender Studies, offering an experiential course that brought dozens of governmental leaders into Berea’s classrooms. During my last eight years at Berea College, I offered WGS 486: “Take Back the Kitchen: A New Agenda for Feminism’s Fourth Wave.” At retirement, I wrote Take Back the Kitchen: Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time (forthcoming in 2026).
In 1986, I received the American Educational Research Organization outstanding dissertation award for my doctoral thesis: “Moral Imagination and Peace Education: Paulo Freire’s Third World Approach.” At the invitation of Paulo Freire, I worked with his literacy team in the favelas of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1992, I was an invited researcher at the Department of Ecumenical Studies in San Jose, Costa Rica. In 1998, I received a one-year Fulbright Award to teach graduate courses in Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education at the University of Zimbabwe, and again, in 2013, I received a Fulbright research award to study traditional cooking in southern India.
- Ed.D Social and Philosophical Studies in Education
Books
• Take Back the Kitchen: Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time. (forthcoming 2026).
• Breaking Bread across Differences: A Visual History of Peanut Butter and Gender. Berea College Press, 2019.
• A Kinder and Gentler Tyranny: Illusions of the New World Order. co-authored with D. Michael Rivage-Seul, Praeger Press, 1995.Book Chapters and Essays
• “Sol de Vida,” in The Best of Dunedin Writers Group, Anthology No. 7, 2025.
• “Microfarming Grandmothers and the New South Africa,” in Dunedin Writers Group Anthology, 2024.
• “Take Back the Kitchen,” in Coming of Age Anthology, 2023. (Kentucky Women Writers)
• “Take Back the Kitchen: A New Agenda for Feminism’s Fourth Wave,” in Schmidt, Crockett, and Bogarad, Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction. Fifth Edition, Cengage Learning, 2012.
• “Favela Memories,” in Memories of Paulo. eds. Tom Wilson, Peter Park, Anaida Colon-Muniz, (Sense Publishers), 2010.
• “Critical Thought and Moral Imagination: Peace Education in Freirean Perspective,” co-authored with D. Michael Rivage-Seul, in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter. (London: Routledge), 1993.Journals
• “Occupy Our Kitchens: A Feminism for Everybody,” International Journal of Illich Studies, Fall 2016. https://journals.psu.edu/illichstudies/issue/current
• “The Right to Food: A Global Agenda for the Women’s Movement,” Freedom Center Journal, University of Cincinnati Law School, Fall 2014.
• “Taking Back the Catholic Church.” Tikkun Online Journal, November 2013. http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/taking-back-the-roman-catholic-church
• “Stranger or Kin? Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in Appalachia.” Journal of Appalachian Studies, Vol.10, No. 2, 2011.
• “Feminist Frameworks for Women in the Global Economy,” in online Proceedings from Women and Globalization Conference (San Miguel de Allende: Center for Global Justice), 2005.
• “Globalizing and Mobilizing,” Review of Vandana Shiva’s plenary at National Women’s Studies Association annual meeting, June 10, 2005, NWSA Action, Fall 2005.
• “La Guadalupana,” in Crossroads, September 15, 2003.
• “Freire in the Classroom: Thinking Critically after September 11,” Philosophical Studies in Education, 2002.
• “Remembering Oscar Romero and the Mothers of the Disappeared,” Out of Line, March 2001.
• “A Preferential Option for Women at Berea,” Onyx, Spring 2001.
• “The Method is the Message” Philosophical Studies in Education, 1996.
• “Paulo Freire: Brazilian Educator and Political Activist,” Option (Journal of the Folk Education Association of America), Fall1993.
• “Ethical Imagination in Peace Studies: Beyond the Seville Statement,”Journal of Humanistic Education and Development, December 1989.
• “Peace Education and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Harvard Educational Review, May1987.
• “Social Change without Violence?” critical review of Matthew Zachariah’s Revolution through Reform: A Comparison of Sarvodaya and Conscientization, in Education Studies, Winter1987.
• “Moral Imagination and Peace Education, “Philosophical Studies in Education, 1984.