Heather Hewett

Heather Hewett is a Program Officer for Higher Education Initiatives, where she is working on projects that advance institutional and system-wide change grounded in justice, equity, and humanistic knowledge. Prior to joining ACLS, she served as chair and associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and affiliate of the English Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz (currently on leave). She holds a PhD and an MA in English, and a Graduate Certificate in African Studies, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her BA in English is from Yale University.

Hewett is the coeditor of #MeToo and Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, and Teaching about Sexual Violence and Rape Culture. Her research explores migration, community, and literary genealogies in the fiction and film of Anglophone African and African diasporic women writers; the relationship between life writing, feminism, and social change, focusing on narratives about gendered violence and caregiving; and intersectional feminist approaches to teaching. A literary critic and essayist, her essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as LIBER: A Feminist Review, Women’s Review of Books, Boston Review, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, as well as literary journals and several anthologies. She serves on the boards of WSQ and Blossom Hill Foundation, a nonprofit that works with refugee children and youth from the Middle East.