Becky Thompson | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Scholar, human rights activist, cross-cultural trainer, poet and yoga teacher |
Awards | Winner, Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Book Prize for To Speak in Salt Rockefeller Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Afro-American Studies, Princeton University Gustavus Myers Award for Outstanding Book on Human Rights in North America Creative Justice Chapbook Award for Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A., Sociology with Honors M.A., Sociology PhD, Sociology M.F.A., Creative Writing |
Alma mater | University of California, Santa Cruz Brandeis University University of Southern Maine |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Simmons University China Women’s University University of Colorado Duke University Wesleyan University |
Website | https://beckythompsonyoga.com/ |
Becky Thompson is a US-based scholar,human rights activist,cross-cultural trainer,poet and yoga teacher. She is a professor of sociology in the College of Social Sciences,Policy and Practice at Simmons University. [1] She also teaches yoga at the Dorchester YMCA in Boston. Since 2015 she has worked in Greece as a human rights advocate with people from Syria,Afghanistan,Palestine,Somalia. [2]
Thompson has contributed thought-leadership and scholarship to groups interested in organizational transformation,contemplative practices,trauma,healing and social justice globally. She is the author/editor of twelve books including Teaching with Tenderness, [3] Survivors on the Yoga Mat:Stories for those Healing from Trauma,A Promise and a Way of Life, [4] [5] and Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night and has received the Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize, [6] the Creative Justice Chapbook Poetry Prize and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award on Human Rights. [7]
Thompson has been affiliated with several professional organizations,including the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and the National Women's Studies Association [8] and is a representative of Cetlalic,Tlahuica Center for the Study of Language and Cultural Exchange in Cuernavaca,Mexico. She has taught seminars on social justice,yoga and creative writing in Guangzhou,Dali,and Beijing China and for the International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice in Chiang Mai,Thailand. [9]
After obtaining her bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of California,Santa Cruz in 1982,Thompson enrolled at Brandeis University and received her master's and doctoral degree in sociology in 1986 and 1991,respectively. From 1992 till 1993,she served as a Rockefeller Foundation postdoctoral fellow in African American studies at Princeton University. She earned her MFA in creative writing at Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine in 2021. [1]
Thompson started her academic career with the University of Massachusetts as a lecturer in the department of sociology and department of women's studies from 1987 to 1989. She then held an appointment at the University of Memphis as assistant professor of sociology before joining the Wesleyan University faculty in African American Studies from 1994 to 1996. In 1996 she joined the Simmons College faculty,where she became full professor in 2007. From 1996 to 2005 she also served as adjunct faculty at the Union Institute of Graduate Studies. From 2008 to 2010,she served as a professor of Women's and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Colorado. In her career,Thompson also held visiting appointments at several institutes,including scholar-in-residence at China Women's University in 2018 and Duke University in African American studies in 2002–2003. [1]
Thompson also held several administrative appointments. She served as the coordinator of the Teaching Race,Teaching Gender Speakers Series at Duke University from 2002 till 2003,was the program director for the Women's and Ethnic Studies Program at University of Colorado from 2008 till 2009,and chair of the department of sociology in the College of Arts &Sciences at Simmons College from 2012 till 2014. Between 2020 and 2021,she served as an antiracism consultant at Northeastern University and for Partners for Perinatal Health. [1]
Thompson's scholarly activities emphasize poetry as well as research on educational transformation,social justice and healing. She has authored her books on a variety of topics;with a feminist social justice focus at the nexus of race,gender,religion,nationality,sexuality,and the body. Thompson's first book on poetry was entitled Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night.
Thompson has also authored many scholarly books,including A Hunger So Wide and So Deep, [10] and Survivors on the Yoga Mat,which focus on trauma's impact on embodiment. [11] Her book Teaching with Tenderness:Toward an Embodied Practice follows in the tradition of bell hooks’Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. [12] Naomi Simmons-Thorne reviewed that Thompson's pedagogy of tenderness recognizes "the embodied needs,traumas and inequalities that can mitigate and overwhelm learning" and the book delivers "instruction in such a way as to convey compassion for the lived experiences of students". [3] Thompson has also co-edited anthologies on multiple subjects:poetry by and for refugees,multiracial education,HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora,and racial identity.
Thompson's works have been recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation,the National Endowment for the Humanities,the American Association for University Women,the Ford Foundation,and Political Research Associates. She has also been invited for interviews on radio and other media platforms [13] to present her views regarding her recent publications [14] and her other activities in the field. [15]
Mabelle Massey Segrest,known as Mab Segrest,is an American lesbian feminist,writer,scholar and activist. Segrest is best known for her 1994 autobiographical work Memoir of a Race Traitor, which won the Editor's Choice Lambda Literary Award. Segrest is the former Fuller-Matthai Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Connecticut College.
Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race,class,and gender. She is a distinguished university professor of sociology emerita at the University of Maryland,College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Collins was elected president of the American Sociological Association (ASA),and served in 2009 as the 100th president of the association –the first African-American woman to hold this position.
Carol Anne Tavris is an American social psychologist and feminist. She has devoted her career to writing and lecturing about the contributions of psychological science to the beliefs and practices that guide people's lives,and to criticizing "psychobabble," "biobunk," and pseudoscience. Her many writings have dealt with critical thinking,cognitive dissonance,anger,gender,and other topics in psychology.
Sharon Gannon is a yoga teacher,animal rights advocate,musician,author,dancer and choreographer. Along with David Life,she is the co-founder of the Jivamukti Yoga method.
Ericka Huggins is an American activist,writer,and educator. She is a former leading member of the political organization,Black Panther Party (BPP). She was married to fellow BPP member John Huggins in 1968.
Irma P. McClaurin is an American poet,anthropologist,academic,and leadership consultant. She was the first female president of Shaw University,and is the author or editor of several books on topics including the culture of Belize,black feminism,African-American history,and her own poetry.
For the American former baseball player,see Janet Jacobs.
Multiracial feminist theory refers to scholarship written by women of color (WOC) that became prominent during the second-wave feminist movement. This body of scholarship "does not offer a singular or unified feminism but a body of knowledge situating women and men in multiple systems of domination."
Trauma-sensitive yoga is yoga as exercise,adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. Its goal is to help trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection,to ease their physiological experiences of trauma,to gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies,and to augment their overall well-being. However,a 2019 systematic review found that the studies to date were not sufficiently robustly designed to provide strong evidence of yoga's effectiveness as a therapy;it called for further research.
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes,encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas,physical postures derived from Hatha yoga,devotional and tantra-based practices,and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Selling Yoga:from Counterculture to Pop culture is a 2015 book on the modern practice of yoga as exercise by the scholar of religion Andrea R. Jain.
Suzanne Newcombe researches the modern history of yoga and new and minority religions. She states that she is particularly interested in "the interfaces between religion,health and healing." She is known in particular for her work on yoga for women and yoga in Britain.
Mindful Yoga or Mindfulness Yoga combines Buddhist-style mindfulness practice with yoga as exercise to provide a means of exercise that is also meditative and useful for reducing stress. Buddhism and Hinduism have since ancient times shared many aspects of philosophy and practice including mindfulness,understanding the suffering caused by an erroneous view of reality,and using concentrated and meditative states to address such suffering.
Angela Farmer is a teacher of modern yoga as exercise. She uses a non-lineage style that emphasizes the feminine,free-flowing aspect. She is known also as the creator of the first yoga mat.
Donna Farhi is a yoga teacher and the author of five books on practicing and teaching yoga. She has been described as a yoga "superstar".
Sexual abuse by yoga gurus is the exploitation of the position of trust occupied by a master of any branch of yoga for personal sexual pleasure. Allegations of such abuse have been made against modern yoga gurus such as Bikram Choudhury,Kausthub Desikachar,Yogi Bhajan,Amrit Desai,and K. Pattabhi Jois. There have been some criminal convictions and lawsuits for civil damages.
Positioning Yoga:balancing acts across cultures is a 2005 book of social anthropology by Sarah Strauss about the history of modern yoga as exercise,focusing on the example of Sivananda Yoga.
Yoga in Britain:stretching spirituality and educating Yogis is a 2019 book by Suzanne Newcombe on the history of modern yoga as exercise in Britain in the second half of the 20th century,especially in the period between 1945 and 1980. The book has been warmly received by scholars for its depth of study of the history and sociology of yoga in Britain,and its careful placing of its descriptions in specific contexts of time and place.
Post-lineage yoga,also called non-lineage yoga,is a contemporary form of yoga practised outside any major school or guru's lineage. The term was introduced by the ethnographer and scholar-practitioner Theodora Wildcroft. She stated that with the deaths of the pioneering gurus of modern yoga such as B. K. S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois,yoga teachers,especially women,have been reclaiming their practice through their yoga communities,resisting commercialization as well as lineage.
Yoga is by origin an ancient spiritual practice from India. In the form of yoga as exercise,using postures (asanas) derived from medieval Haṭha yoga,it has become a widespread fitness practice across the western world. Yoga as exercise,along with the use that some make of symbols such as Om ॐ,has been described as cultural appropriation.