GRID Postdoctoral Fellow

2014-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow

Brianne Gallagher 

Contact: brianne.p.gallagher@dartmouth.edu
Office: 215 Wilson Hall

       My research focuses on the relationships between war and trauma, with a particular emphasis on gendered modes of embodiment. My dissertation project, "The Biopolitics of the U.S. Soldier's Wounded Body: Gender and the Global War on Terror," examines the historical and contemporary development of rehabilitation and therapeutic technologies that treat wounded bodies of war. Specifically, it examines the shifting gender and sexual dynamics of the military–medical complex in the Global War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. The project explores how soldiers and veterans attempt to demilitarize trauma by reclaiming their bodies, their selves, from military and therapeutic discourses of knowledge and power. It examines a growing archive of poems, films, 
art works, veteran testimonies, and new media that address the traumatic affects of the wars for soldiers and civilians since the events of 9/11.

       This dissertation thus contributes to a growing literature in feminist theories of gender and militarism, feminist science and technology studies, and disability studies that reframe the horrors of war in order to imagine and actualize more demilitarized, egalitarian futures. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth, I will collaborate with Professor Susan Brison, the GRID Faculty Seminar Leader, and co–teach GRID's annual seminar during the first year. In addition, I will teach WGST 96: Advanced Research in Women's and Gender Studies, an experimental course that runs parallel to the GRID seminar for interested students. Moreover, I will turn my dissertation project into a book manuscript for publication so it can reach a broader audience. I look forward to meeting the wonderful faculty and students of the Dartmouth community and to the many new conversations and collaborative projects that will push my research in exciting directions.