Hamilton Gazetteer / Entities / Margo Okazawa-Rey

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person

Overview

Margo Okazawa-Rey is a scholar of Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, and intersectional social justice who has had two distinct periods of affiliation with Hamilton College. She first appears in the 2000–01 catalog as Jane Watson Irwin Chair in Women’s Studies (hired 1999), holding a B.A. from Capital University, an M.S.S. from Boston University, and an Ed.D. from Harvard University. The corpus shows no catalog entries for the years 2001–02 through 2014–15, suggesting she left Hamilton after her initial appointment. She reappears in the 2015–16 catalog as the Elihu Root Peace Fund Visiting Professor of Women’s Studies, indicating a return in a visiting capacity, and continues to appear through the 2024–25 catalog teaching courses in Africana Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies.

In her second affiliation Okazawa-Rey taught courses on intersectionality, race, gender, community mobilization, and transformative leadership. Her recurring course, “Students Leading the Change for Racial and Gender Justice” (AFRST/WMGST 289), included a required field study at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. She also taught “Leadership for Social Change” (AFRST/COLEG 341) and courses on women, politics, and the African diaspora.

Relevance to Research

Okazawa-Rey’s two stints at Hamilton illuminate the college’s evolving commitments to Women’s Studies and Africana Studies programming across the early twenty-first century. Her Jane Watson Irwin Chair appointment (2000–01) represents an endowed visiting-chair position in Women’s Studies, while her later Elihu Root Peace Fund Visiting Professorship is a separate named visiting appointment. Her work connects to Hamilton’s broader curricular history in race, diversity, and gender studies.

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