Melissa Ooten, PhD.

Melissa Ooten is a social movements historian, with a particular interest in race and gender relations in the U.S. South.  She holds a Ph.D. from The College of William and Mary and works at the University of Richmond.  She has recently published her first book, Race, Gender, and Film Censorship in Virginia, 1922-1965, which examines ways in which the state regulation of popular culture in the mid-twentieth century worked to buttress economic and legal policies that attempted to relegate African Americans to second-class citizenship.  Her other writing examines prison building in Appalachia, the long Civil Rights movement, feminist pedagogical methods, and public history.  Her current scholarly and activist interests include food justice, feminist activism, ending mass incarceration, and understanding how communities engage in public history and memory-making projects.