Sami Schalk
Position title: Professor of Gender & Women's Studies
Dr. Sami Schalk is an associate professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UW-Madison. Her research focuses on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture, especially African American and women’s texts. Dr. Schalk’s first book, Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, was published by Duke University Press in 2018. Dr. Schalk’s work has also appeared in a variety of journals such as Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, Journal of Popular Culture, Girlhood Studies, and African American Review. Dr. Schalk teaches courses on disability studies, black feminism, intersectionality, and literature such as “Gender & Social Justice Literature,” “Gender, Disability & Sexuality,” and “Adaptations of Black Women’s Literature.”
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Schalk, S. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Duke University Press, 2018.In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how black women’s speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds—the intertwinement of the mental and the physical—in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre’s political potential lies in the authors’ creation of bodyminds that transcend reality’s limitations.
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