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Please Welcome Campus Progress’ Spring 2011 Staff Writers!
Please take a moment to get to know the new names in our class of spring 2011 staff writers. They’ll be joining the work of those staying on from last semester: Catherine A. Traywick, Mikhail Zinshteyn, and Simeon Talley.
Courtney Young is a Manhattan-based popular culture and political writer. She is especially interested in issues of religion, race, gender, color and sex within popular culture. She received her B.A. in English with a minor in Management from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 2002. She got her M.A. degree in 2004 from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She’s written for publications such as The Grio, The Nation, the Huffington Post, Popmatters, and Ms. Magazine. In 2009, she was selected by the Women’s Media Center as a recipient of the Progressive Women’s Voices Media Fellowship. Her twitter handle is @Cocacy.
Micah Uetricht will be covering labor and immigration. He’s originally from Michigan, currently living in Chicago, and is a Midwesterner through and through. He studied sociology, black world studies, and women's and gender studies at Loyola University Chicago, and was involved in labor and anti-racism organizing until he graduated in 2009. His first foray into journalism was through an editorial internship for In These Times magazine. After graduating, he did two stints as an organizing intern with Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers union. In between, he studied immigration and social movements in Mexico with the Mexico Solidarity Network for four months, where he managed to do some reporting for In These Times. He’s currently a staff writer for GapersBlock, a Chicago online magazine, and still contributes regularly to In These Times and their labor blog Working In These Times. He’s also written for Yes! magazine, Alternet, Truthout, the Indypendent, and Labor Notes. He works 9 to 5 as a legal assistant for a tenants' rights law firm, and is an organizer with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign.
Jessica Mowles will be covering LGBT issues, especially relating to gender, race, class, and nationality. She’s currently a Brooklynite, though she calls southern Virginia and rural New Mexico home. If you've ever read or watched Friday Night Lights, that's where she grew up. (No, really.) Since then, she’s worked hard to expand her horizons, ultimately living on four continents and graduating from Macalester College in 2008 with degrees in Political Science and Geography. She’s served in education non-profit roles for the last few years and in 2010 was named an Emerging Leader in Public Service by NYU. She’s passionate about queer intersectional feminism, human rights/social justice education, farmers' markets, naps, and butter. Lots of butter. Find her on Twitter @jessmowles.
George Warner will be covering the jobs and economy beat. He just graduated Brown University this past December and feels at home in Providence, although he is originally from the suburbs of Boston. At Brown, he studied science and society, writing papers about things like how botanical gardens and botany helped establish nationalism in the early American republic. By mid-January, he’ll be in Washington, D.C., working as an Atlantic Media fellow for Government Executive. Last summer, he interned at The Nation and at Brown he wrote for The College Hill Independent, mostly writing and editing the Metro section. Outside of writing, he really enjoys are playing basketball and soccer, and farming. Two summers ago, he helped start a small CSA outside of Providence that is still growing (in terms of both food and members). He spent the holidays with his extended family in Miami and dreads the returning to the Northeast with its cold weather and lack of good Cuban coffee.
Kara Cusolito will be covering the food, agriculture, and environment beat. She studied journalism at Ithaca College in upstate New York and graduated in 2008. Following stints on farms in Hawaii, Australia, and Cape Cod, Mass., she moved back to the Ithaca area about a year ago. Since then, she and her partner have been building up a farm property just outside of town. They have loads of veggies, infant fruit orchards, about 20 laying hens and ducks, and two honeybee hives. They brew hard cider and she just learned how to make soap. She also works at an espresso place, which fuels her caffeine addiction for free!
Ryan Brown, despite whatever that name may suggest to you, is a woman. Actually, she kind of enjoys having a gender-bending name, especially since her writing tends to focus on women's issues and it sometimes really throws people off! In any case, she’ll be covering women, higher education, and the intersections of the two for Campus Progress. She is a senior at Duke University, where she’s studying history and secretly hoping college never ends. She’s a writer and editor for her college newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, and she’s also written for Salon, The Denver Post, and North Carolina Public Radio. In her non-writing life she enjoy reading novels, watching bad television, and traveling. She spent 4 months last year living in Dakar, Senegal and would love to go back again when she graduates. She's on Twitter @ryanbrown89.
Nicolas Mendoza is a senior at Wesleyan University majoring in the college of social studies. He’ll be writing about politics, and in his spare time he likes to wonk out over economic and foreign policy and political science. He’s also a big film geek. He was born in the States (Baltimore) but grew up in Santiago, Chile. He interned at The American Prospect over the summer and hopes to have an equally great time writing for Campus Progress! His Twitter is @nicmend.
Interested in applying to join the staff writer program for the summer session? Applications are due April 20.
Kay Steiger is the editor of CampusProgress.org.
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