The Villanova Law Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation Welcomes Inaugural Visiting Research Fellow
Villanova Law’s Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE Institute) is proud to welcome Christine Stark as the inaugural visiting research fellow. Stark is an award-winning writer, artist and survivor with Anishinaabe and Cherokee ancestry.
In this new role with the CSE Institute, Stark will be researching historical and contemporary information about the organized rape, murder and physical violence against Indigenous women. This research is a crucial component in understanding the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) crisis, finding justice for these victims and healing of Indigenous families and communities in Canada and the United States.
“I am thrilled to welcome Chris to the CSE Institute as our first visiting research fellow,” commented Shea Rhodes ’97, director of the CSE Institute. “When the CSE Institute was founded eight years ago, it was part of our vision to invite scholars to conduct their research at Villanova Law. Chris is a dear friend and colleague, as well as a personal inspiration for me, and I can think of no better person to spearhead this initiative.”
Stark’s most recent novel, Carnival Lights, won the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards. Her first novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her essays, poems, academic writing and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications. She is a co-editor of Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography and a co-author of the ground-breaking research “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” “Strategies to Restore Justice for Trafficked Native Women,” which includes primary research she conducted with Native women survivors of prostitution and trafficking on the ships in Duluth, MN, is in The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking. Stark is a co-author of “Evidence of Survivor, Agency, and Researcher Collaboration: An Example of an Emerging Model of Survivor Wellbeing,” and her writing has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. In 2012 she was named a “Changemaker” by the Women’s Press. In 2019 she received the International Social Justice Citizen Award from the International Leadership Institute. She has taught college-level writing and humanities courses for 20 years and worked as a Two-Spirit program director at Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center.
Stark was a member of the Minnesota MMIW Task Force. She is currently working on three books and consults with a variety of local and national organizations. She received her BA from the University of Wisconsin and has earned an MFA in writing and a master’s in social work.
