Core Department Faculty Member

Dr. Brooks is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology, teaches courses in comparative and historical sociology, globalization and postcolonial social formations. She is currently finishing a book on transnational organizing in the garment industry with a focus on Dhaka , San Salvador and New York City.

Dr. Brooks is interested in relations of gender, race, class, labor practices and nation-state formations, with a focus on South Asia, Central America and the United States. Her research explores areas of critical political economy, globalization, social movements, feminist theory, comparative sociology, nationalism, urban geographies and post-colonialism, with close attention to epistemology. In her dissertation, she examined three transnationally-organized protest movements for workers' rights in the global garment industry: (1) against poor working conditions in export-processing zones in El Salvador; (2) against the use of child labor in the Bangladesh garment industry; and (3) against immigrant sweatshops in New York City. Her work focuses on the relationship between protest organizers and the mostly women workers they represent, as part of the everyday manifestations of globalized production practices. She is currently working on a book that looks at transnational labor organizing, women's work and relations of globalization and empire.

Dr. Brooks's recent and forthcoming publications include "Transnational Protest, Production and Women's Labor: The politics of sweatshops and the global garment industry," forthcoming in The Journal of International Labor and Working Class History, 2001; "Bangladesh's Garment Industry, Child Labor and Urban Sustainability," forthcoming in Saskia Sassen, ed., The Encyclopedia of Urban Sustainability, (UNESCO: 2001); "Globalized Chinese Capital in Central America," with Amy Freedman, in Asian Pacific Perspectives, May 2001; "Campañas transnacionales de protesta y la nueva división internacional de trabajo: Cuestiones de género en el sector maquila," in Apuntes de Investigación, November 2000; and "After the Wars: Cross-Border Organizing in Central America" with Winifred Tate in NACLA: Report on the Americas, Special Issue on Labor, January/February 1999. Her future projects include an examination of consumption practices and discourses of empire, gender and agrobusiness in Central America and South Asia and a critical study of Romanies and discursive formations of "gypsiness." Professor Brooks has a joint appointment with the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.