Grant Authors

Kim Cunningham

Dr. Kim Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York (SUNY) Fashion Institute of Technology. Cunningham is an out trans nonbinary scholar and activist who studies the relationship between social oppression and collective trauma, drawing from queer theory and feminist methodologies.

Professor Cunningham is currently designing courses for and creating a new LGBTQ Studies Minor Program at FIT, including a course called "LGBTQ in Society: A Global Perspective."

Before coming to FIT, Cunningham taught at Wesleyan University as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and proudly taught through Wesleyan's Center for Prison Education at York Correctional Institute, a women's prison in Connecticut.

Both Cunningham's research and teaching center on an understanding of the emotional trauma of social oppression, and the possibilities of its transformation.

Sandra Markus

Sandra Markus is a Professor in the Fashion Design Department at FIT. She received her MFA in Costume Design and History from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Additionally, she received an Ed.M. in Instructional Technology and Media from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has presented and published articles on the Maker Movement, focusing on gender equity and diversity.

Professor Markus co-developed and co-teaches the first experimental, interdisciplinary course offered at FIT, Digital Literacy for Designers, offered to all students in the School of Art and Design. She developed and initiated the Digital Spa, an annual Summer Institute for faculty in the School of Art and Design. The spa supports a collaborative peer-to-peer learning environment where faculty explore emerging technologies. She is the recipient of the 2013 President’s Award for Faculty Excellence at FIT.

She is working towards completing her doctoral degree at Teachers College, Columbia University in the department of Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design. Her area of research focuses on the intersection of new media, craftivism and gender.

Katelyn Burton Prager

Dr. Katelyn Burton Prager is an Assistant Professor within the English and Communication Studies department at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY). Burton specializes in digital rhetoric, feminist studies, digital pedagogy, and food rhetoric.

During her doctoral work, Burton completed a dissertation delving into the relationship between feminism and the handmade, specifically in the realm of the domestic arts such as cooking. Her dissertation work explored the food blog as a site and community where that creativity is made public, providing food bloggers with agency and, in some cases, generating income for work that would otherwise be invisible. In this way, the food blog becomes a site of empowerment.

Post-dissertation she is interested in exploring women’s ways of making in other venues and the potential that making has to empower and also to create change. She is also currently working on research that delves into identity creation and management in online spaces.

Melissa Tombro

Dr. Melissa Tombro is an Associate Professor of writing and literature in the English and Communication Studies Department at FIT. She received her PhD in English from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where her research focused on the use of qualitative inquiry and personal writing in the English classroom.

Dr. Tombro is the author of Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom published through Open SUNY Textbooks. Her creative writing has appeared in Litro, Eclectica, StepAway Magazine, and Crack the Spine.

She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for her work at FIT in a wide range of courses from Creative Nonfiction to Theatre Arts. In 2015 she created the Women and Gender Studies minor at FIT and serves as its coordinator.

Outside of FIT she runs volunteer writing workshops for at-risk and underserved populations through the New York Writers Coalition. In her writing, teaching and volunteer work, she encourages other writers to use self-reflection and community engagement as a way to create meaningful, informed, and inspiring prose.