Welcome, Dr. Jaime Cantrell!

Dr. Jamie Cantrell is the newest member of the Board of Directors at Basic Necessities. She will be responsible for recruiting clients and community partners in the Texarkana, Arkansas area, and will assist with grant writing & donor outreach. Last year, Jaime hosted a successful diaper drive for Basic Necessities at Texas A&M University in Texarkana!

Jaime's bio follows:

Dr. Jaime Cantrell

"Dr. Jaime Cantrell is an Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, where she teaches courses in Literary Criticism, The South & Sexuality, and American literature in the Department of Literature, Composition, Media, and Communications. She also serves as the Director of the Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work is politically, pedagogically, and philosophically informed by anti-racist feminist goals and agendas that are both intersectional and interdisciplinary.

She earned her M.A. in Women’s Studies from The University of Alabama (2009) and her Ph.D. in English Literature with a graduate concentration in Women's and Gender Studies from Louisiana State University (2014).

She’s been awarded library and research grants from Cornell University, Duke University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Cantrell is the author of essays and reviews appearing in Feminist Formations, the Journal of Lesbian Studies, Study the South, Notches, the Journal Homosexuality, This Book is An Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics (UIP Press, 2015), and The Bohemian South: Creating Countercultures, from Poe to Punk (UNC Press, 2017). In 2015, she co-edited Out of the Closet, Into the Archive: Researching Sexual Histories, published by the Queer Politics and Cultures series at SUNY Press. With a foreword by Ann Cvetkovich, Out of the Closet, Into the Archives is a 2016 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Best LGBT Anthology.

Iced coffee-sipper, scone-baker, cat-lover, crawfish-peeler, festival-goer, book-reader, and garden-grower, Jaime knows what it means to miss New Orleans." Welcome aboard, Dr. Cantrell!