Advisor: Professor Alexander Byrd

Using oral history interviews my research centers on Black women’s experiences in Texas jails and prisons. My dissertation manuscript demonstrates how incarcerated women in the late 20th century U.S. used everyday strategies of resistance to foster human dignity and a sense of self within the carceral system. I consider building kinship networks, pursuing educational or work opportunities, and engaging in religious or faith-based practices as strategies of resistance as they contradict the goals of the carceral system. Examining these strategies helps us understand how women build the capacity for abolitionist resistance needed to divest in the carceral system. This project aims to inform not only our understanding of the history of mass incarceration but contemporary activism around carceral reform and abolition.

To gain teaching experience Nina has taken on a handful of teaching and assisting opportunities during her time at Rice. During the fall 2022 semester, she taught SWGS 101: Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality. In the spring of 2022, she served as a teaching assistant to Professor Ussama Makdisi for HUMA: Who is a Terrorist? And, in the fall of 2021, she co-instructed HIST 351: U.S. History Since 1945 with Professor Nathan Citino. These experiences have allowed Nina to sharpen her lecturing skills and experiment with different pedagogical approaches to class discussion.

Nina is involved in various leadership and intellectual communities at Rice University. As the Graduate Student Professional Development Liaison she organizes workshops, lectures, and roundtables for graduate students in the Department of History. She is a discussant in two reading labs, Black Radical Traditions and Reading the Margins, with the Center for African and African American Studies.
 

Publications:

• “Behind the Mask with Lee Coffee: Individual Experiences at MD Anderson in 2020,” Virtual (forthcoming spring 2022)
• Review of Chase, Robert T., We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews (2020). https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55588                                                                                                                                                                                   
• “New Issue: JSH May 2020,” Virtual (2020). https://www.thesha.org/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&year=2020&month=05&day=25&id=19:new-issue-jsh-may-2020                                                                                                         
• Claude and Zernona Black Digital Exhibit, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX (2018). https://history.coateslibrary.com/exhibits/show/exhibit/nationalactivism