M.W. Wright C.V. 1
Melissa W. Wright
Professor
Department of Geography
Department of Women’s Studies
The Pennsylvania State University
302 Walker Bldg.
State College, PA 16802 mww11@psu.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Education
Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Engineering . College of Engineering, The Johns
Hopkins University, 1997.
A.B., Social Studies , magna cum laude , certificate in Latin American Studies, specialization in
Mexican Studies. Harvard-Radcliffe College, Harvard University, 1987.
Research areas: Mexico, the Mexico/U.S. borderlands, Latin America. Supplementary research conducted in southern China.
Faculty Appointments
Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geography and Department of
Women’s Studies, 2011-present.
Associate Professor, 2005-2011
Assistant Professor, 2000-2005
Assistant Professor , The University of Georgia, Department of Geography and Program in
Women’s Studies, 1998-2000.
Administrative Appointments
Director, Latina/o Studies Minor, The Pennsylvania State University, 2008-2011.
Visiting Appointments
Invited Professor, The Horacio Flores de la Peña Chair, The Autonomous Metropolitan
University-Xochimilco Campus, Mexico City, August 2013-August 2014.
Visiting Scholar in the Department of Human Geography, The Goethe-Institute, The University of Frankfurt-au Main, May –July 2010.
Visiting Scholar as part of a Fulbright-García Robles award at The Universidad Autónoma de
Ciudad Juárez, Institute of Social Sciences, Chihuahua, Mexico, 2006-2007.
Visiting Scholar at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Institute of Social Sciences,
Chihuahua, Mexico 1996-98.

M.W. Wright C.V. 2
Visiting Fellow at the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, The University of Texas at
El Paso, 1995-1997.
Refereed Books
2006 Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York and London:
Routledge.
Refereed Edited Books
2010 Castree, N. ; Chatterton, P.; Heynen, N.; Larner, W.; Wright, M.W. The Point Is To
Change It: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis.
Wiley-Blackwell.
2002 Herod, A. and Wright, M.W. : Geographies of Power: Placing Scale . Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Articles and Book Chapters in Refereed Publications
2014 “ The Gender, Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Gentrification, assassination and forgetting in Mexico: a feminist Marxist tale” in Gender, Place and
Culture 21)1: 1-16.
2013 “ Feminicidio, Narcoviolencia and Gentrification: The Feminist Fight in Ciudad Juárez.”
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31 (5): 830-845.
2013 “Feminism, Urban Knowledge and the Killing of Politics.” In Rethinking Feminist
Interventions into the Urban, L. Peake and M. Rieker, eds. New York: Routledge.
2012. “Witnessing, Femicide, and a Politics of the Familiar.” In The Global and the Intimate ¸
G. Pratt and V. Rosner, eds. New York: Columbia University Press: 267-288.
2012. “Wars of Interpretations. Antipode 44: 564–580.
2011 “Necropolitics, Narcopolitics and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-US
Border.”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36: 707-731.
2011 “National Security versus Public Safety: Femicide, Drug Wars and the Mexican State.” In
Accumulating Insecurity: A New Politics of Containment.
S. Feldman, G. Menon and C.
Geisler, editors. Athens: The University of Georgia Press: 285-297.
2010 “Feminism and a Feeling of Justice.” Progress in Human Geography 34: 818-827
2010 "Bridging the gap -- Feminist, Queer, and the Geographical Imaginary. " Progress in
Human Geography 34 (2010): 56-66.

M.W. Wright C.V. 3
2009 "Justice and the Geographies of Moral Protest: Reflections from Mexico." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27: 216 – 233.
2009 “Gender and Geography: Knowledge and Activism across the Intimately Global,”
Progress in Human Geography, 33: 379-386.
2008 “El Lucro, La Democracia y la Mujer Pública: Haciendo las Conexiones,”(“Profit,
Democracy and Public Women: Making the Connections”). In Bordeando La Violencia
Contra Las Mujeres en la Frontera Norte de México, S. Tabuenca and J. Monárrez, editors . Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 49-81.
2008 “Craven Emotional Warriors.” Antipode 40, 376-382.
Reprint: 2008 in Practising Public Scholarship,
Blackwell, 29-35.
K. Mitchell, editor. Oxford: Basil
2007 “Urban Geography Plenary Lecture-- Femicide, Mother-activism and the Geography of
Protest in Northern Mexico.” Urban Geography 28, 401-425.
Reprint: Forthcoming, 2010. Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade and La Frontera.
A. Gaspar de Alba and G. Guzmán, editors. Austin: The University of Texas Press.
2006 “Differences That Matter.” In The David Harvey Reader, N. Castree and D. Gregory, editors.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
2006 “Field Note: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, 94-97.
2005 “The Paradox of Protests: The Mujeres de Negro of Northern Mexico.” Gender, Place and Culture 12, 277-292 .
Reprint: 2010. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas . R.L. Fregoso and C.
Bejarano, editors. Durham: Duke University Press, 312-330.
2004 “The Private Parts of Public Value: The Regulation of Women Workers in China’s Exportprocessing Zones.” In Going Public: Feminism and the Shifting Private Sphere, J. W. Scott and
D. Keates, editors . Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 99-122.
2004 “From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women’s Worth and Ciudad Juárez Modernity.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, 369-386.
2003
“Factory Daughters and Chinese Modernity: A Case from Dongguan.”
Geoforum 34, 291-301.
2001 "Desire and the Prosthetics of Supervision: A Case of Maquiladora Flexibility." Cultural
Anthropology 16, 354-373
2001
“Asian Spies, American Motors and Speculations on the Space-Time of Value.”
Environment and Planning: A 33, 2175-2188.
2001 “A Manifesto Against Femicide.” Antipode 33, 550-566 .

M.W. Wright C.V. 4
Reprint: 2001 in Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalism, P. Waterman and J. Wills, editors. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 246-262.
1999 "The Politics of Relocation: Gender, Nationality and Value in the Maquiladoras." Environment and Planning A 31, 1601-1617.
Reprint: 2003 in Reading Economic Geography, editors. Basil Blackwell, 151-166.
T. Barnes, J. Peck, E. Sheppard, A. Tickell,
Reprint: 2002 in Border Ethnographies: The Limits of Border Theory, P. Vila, editor.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 23-45.
1999 “The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women and Maquiladoras.” Public Culture 11, 453-474 .
Reprint: 2007 in Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader,
Segura and P. Zavella, editors. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
D.
Reprint: 2001 in Millennial Capitalism , J. and J. Comaroff, editors. Duke University,
125-146.
1998 “Maquiladora Mestizas and a Feminist Border Politics: Revisiting Anzaldúa.” Hypatia: A
Journal of Feminist Philosophy 13, 114-131.
Reprint: 1999 in Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and
Feminist World, U. Narayan and S. Harding, editors .
Bloomington: Indiana University, 208-225.
1997 "Crossing the Factory Frontier: Gender, Place and Power in a Mexican Maquiladora .
" Antipode:
A Journal of Radical Geography 29, 278-302.
1997 "El rostro de la Invisibilidad: La mujer desaparecida de las nuevas maquilas” (The Look of
Invisibility: The Disappeared Woman from the New Maquilas) Ciudades 32, 59-63.
Editorials in Refereed Publications
2010
“Introduction: The Point is to Change It,” Castree, N. ; Chatterton, P.; Heynen, N.;
Larner, W.; Wright, M.W. Antipode 41: 1–9.
Reprint: 2010 in The Point is to Change It. Castree, N. ; Chatterton, P.; Heynen, N.;
Larner, W.; Wright, M.W. , editors. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
2009 “The Power of Numbers.” Castree, N. and Wright, M.W., Antipode 41, 1-9.
2008 “In the Name of Democracy.” Antipode 40, 200-204.
2005
“Home Truths.” Castree, N. and Wright, M.W.
Antipode 37, 1-8
2002 "The Scalar Politics of Translation." Geoforum 33, 413-414.
2001
“Theorizing Space and Time.” Herod, A. and Wright, M.W.
Environment and Planning:
A 33, 2089-2093.