In just their second year on Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s faculty, K. Allison Hammer’s deep commitment to advancing diversity, gender equity and inclusion both in the classroom and the community is making a positive difference.
Since arriving at SIU Carbondale in August 2023, Hammer, the university’s 2025 Excellence Award Emerging Leader recipient, is reinvigorating the women, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) program with innovative and relevant curriculum in line “with the more contemporary and pressing issues” in today’s society, Sandy Pensoneau-Conway, an assistant professor and graduate coordinator in the School of Communication Studies, wrote in her nomination letter.
The award is given to faculty and staff within their first 10 years at SIU Carbondale who show “commitment to diversity and inclusive excellence through demonstrated leadership, vision, or actions for those they serve on campus and in the Southern Illinois community.”
“I was so proud that my colleagues and members of this community felt that my work at SIU Carbondale deserved this level of recognition,” Hammer said. “However, truly, leadership is a team effort, and I could not be an effective leader without their collaboration and mutual support.”
Hammer’s “innovative research and teaching in feminist, queer and trans studies, as well as critical media studies, have significantly advanced academic knowledge and provided practical solutions to material problems,” Pensoneau-Conway wrote.
While updating curriculum isn’t necessarily unique, Pensoneau-Conwayadded that the issues they are integrating into the WGSS programs “are ones that are becoming increasingly scrutinized due to differing views on gender, legislative and policy changes, academic freedom and free speech, and public and student reactions.”
“However, Dr. Hammer believes in the power of the classroom as an important and brave space to hold sensitive conversations, address current events, and create positive change,” Pensoneau-Conway said. Hammer’s 2023 monograph, “Masculinity in Transition,” “is a testament to their willingness to tackle vulnerable (and increasingly dangerous) topics on published pages. This is so meaningful that SIU is a space that welcomes all. Their scholarly reputation is gaining international recognition.”
In mentoring and guiding students in a quest to achieve their professional goals, Hammer has brought local, national and international speakers to campus; serves as faculty adviser for “Deliberately Queer,” a refereed annual published electronic graduate student journal, and participates in the Honors Program Advisory Council, Pensoneau-Conway wrote. Hammer’s scholarly reputation is also gaining international recognition with recent keynote presentations in Portugal and Germany.
Hammer received a doctorate in English literature with an advanced certificate in women’s and gender studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before coming to SIU, they taught at Vanderbilt University in the gender and sexuality studies department where they launched the first courses in transgender studies and critical masculinities studies.
In being an effective teacher, Hammer said “really listening to students and their experiences has always been of utmost importance to me, because each generation’s struggles are unique and require new approaches.”
“I get to know each of my students so that I can respond to their individual challenges and encourage their strengths. I make updates to my syllabi constantly, and I’ve never taught the same exact material in the same way twice,” they said. “The moment we are living through, the federal assault on gender studies, ethnic studies, and Africana and Black studies, means that I am responsible for teaching my students to identify and fight against misinformation and disinformation, and to protect their intellectual curiosity.”
Get to know K. ALLISON HAMMER
Name: K. Allison Hammer
Department and job title: assistant professor and coordinator, women, gender and sexuality studies, School of Africana and Multicultural Studies
Years at SIU Carbondale: 2
Give us the elevator pitch for your job:
I coordinate all aspects of the women, gender and sexuality studies program, including the undergraduate minor and the graduate certificate. I teach required upper-division classes using cutting-edge, historically contextualized scholarship from the fields of feminist theory, queer and trans studies, and critical disability studies. I do this work as part of the mission of the School of Africana and Multicultural Studies, a vital center for social justice pedagogy and academic activism at SIU Carbondale.
What is your favorite part of the job?
I serve the students, and in every institution for which I’ve worked, the students are always my primary focus. The energy I receive from teaching is the fuel for my research, scholarship, creative work and service to the profession.
Why did you choose SIU?
I wanted to find a home in a diverse research university that provides quality education to under-resourced populations. I chose SIU specifically because of its small class sizes, rural location and mission to become a leading intellectual center in Southern Illinois, a region that has suffered economically under neoliberalism, which focuses excessively on free markets and privatization. SIU Carbondale provides opportunities to students who might otherwise not have the chance to receive a high-quality education.
My favorite activity away from work is …
When I’m not at work, I am playing in my home art studio. In a former life, I was a practicing visual artist, and I actually call myself a scholar-artist. It’s not unusual to see me carrying a bag of art supplies around campus. I get so much joy out of being creative, and I love watching others recover that joy.
If you could presently live in a different era, such as the 1950s or 1970s or even a different time period of history, when would it be and why?
I have a secret fascination with disco culture, and so I’d like to experience the 1970s and go to Studio 54. I’d also like to be a part of the cultural revolutions of the late 1960s and 1970s, especially the Stonewall uprising of summer 1969 and the moment when self-identified drag queen and transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson threw the shot glass at the mirror behind the bar at the Stonewall Inn, otherwise known as “The shot glass heard ’round the world.” We now understand that this is the symbolic act that kicked off the LGBTQ+ liberation movement.
