Vivyan Adair founded, directed and has analyzed (in press) the ACCESS Project, a pilot program that assisted disadvantaged parents in their efforts to earn college degrees. Her research interests are studying comparative feminist theories of race, class, sexuality and gender, with a focus on representations of women on welfare and the impact of welfare reform, education, law and public policy. Adair wrote From Good Ma to Welfare Queen, A Genealogy of the Poor Woman in American Literature, Photography and Culture, and was co-editor of Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty; and the Promise of Education in America. She has written numerous book chapters and articles that have appeared in Harvard Educational Review; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Feminist Studies and elsewhere. Adair earned a doctorate from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Class theory; women's studies and feminist theory; law, public policy and welfare; 19th- and 20th-century American literature; critical race theory; theories of sexuality; literary and critical theory