April Herndon
After completing her PhD at Michigan State University, Dr. Herndon taught Science and Technology Studies in Michigan State’s Lyman Briggs School of Science. She then went on to teach Women’s Studies and Biology classes at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.
In 2005, Dr. Herndon left academia to spend a year as the Director of Programming for the Intersex Society of North America. Although that work was rewarding, she missed teaching and campus life and decided it was time to come back to academia. In Fall 2006, Dr. Herndon joined WSU.
Dr. Herndon specializes in Contemporary American Literature but has a broad range of teaching and scholarly interests.
Most of her scholarly work focuses on representations of fatness in a wide array of texts, such as medical narratives, literature, and public policy. Dr. Herndon’s published work on fatness is interdisciplinary and intersectional and specifically seeks to better explain the ways fatphobia manifests in the lives of people who are already marginalized by race, class, gender, and disability.