SC Spotlight: Dr. Heather Berg’s Gender Studies Classes and Research on Sex Work Advocacy

By: Sumaya Hussaini ‘22

The Gender Studies Department at USC is an interdisciplinary program that offers an intellectual environment, sense of community, and dynamic course load. The classes emphasize the importance of realizing the intersections gender has with other relations of power including race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and religion. In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to recognize a professor in the Gender Studies Department who has inspired me and taught me so much in less than a year of being at USC. As gender studies minor, I’ve had the privilege of taking classes offered by Dr. Heather Berg, a professor and activist who does research that explores how workers navigate and resist capitalism and gendered oppression. She has a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies and teaches classes about feminist theory, gender and social justice, gender and creative labor, and my personal favorite, unruly women.