News

In the Spring of 2023, the newly founded Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Student Union hit the ground running with a tabling event on the Bryan Center plaza. The students behind the Union’s first initiative aimed to survey the Duke community about their GSF-related interests. To do so, they set up a poster board in the plaza on a busy day and asked passers-by, primarily other students, what GSF topics most interested them. Over the course of a few hours, the poster board accumulated post-it notes with a wide variety… read more about GSF Students Form a Union! »

Dr. Anna Storti’s Intro to Asian American and Diaspora Studies course shared an Instagram post to promote the class and share some of what they are learning. “Hi! We are the Spring 2024 class of Intro to Asian American and Diaspora Studies. Welcome to our AADStagram😎 We are taught by the amazing Dr. Anna Storti aka we are Storti’s Scholars. In Duke’s centennial year, we are proud to be one of the first official cohorts of AADS students in Duke’s history. The AADS program has been made possible through decades of tireless… read more about Dr. Anna Storti's Students Create a Class Instagram »

Kimberly Lamm recently published the article “The Fascinance of the Maternal Gaze: Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s Woodshock” in the collection Fashion and Motherhood: Image, Material, Identity, edited by Laura Snelgrove. The article analyses the film Woodshock (2017), the first full-length feature film directed by Kate and Laura Mulleavy, sisters and self-taught designers of the fashion line Rodarte. The designs of the Mulleavy sisters are known for their unabashed adoration of femininity, and Lamm argues that Woodshock--a wild… read more about Professor Kimberly Lamm Published in "Fashion and Motherhood" »

Edith London, In Flight, 1995. Mixed media, 13 x 16 inches (33 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Museum purchase and partial gift of Lee Hansley Gallery; 1997.25.1. Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art “It’s fulfilling to have a collaborative public outcome born from a course,” Saskia Ziolkowski, associate professor in Romance Studies, admits. She’s referencing Mapping Jewish Modernism, an exhibit currently on view through August at the Rubenstein… read more about Charting the Landscape of Jewish Modernism »

Henschel leads an editing workshop. (John West/Trinity Communications) Lauren Henschel is flipping the script on traditional evaluation methods. As co-leader of an interdisciplinary Trinity initiative that gives students in certain courses the option to create a video project for their final as opposed to a written paper, she’s introducing students to new skills as directors, interviewers and producers. An Associate in Research in the Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies… read more about A Movie Script Ending: Bringing Film Into the Classroom »

The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) is a fantasy-documentary film directed by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae. The film narrates the story of Park In-sun, a former sex worker in the United States military camp-town in South Korea. This paper closely analyzes four key scenes from the film – interview, field visit, revenge, and recalcitrance – to present two arguments. Read Full Article HERE read more about Performing recalcitrance: film The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) beyond social death of sexual violence in the United States military camp-town, South Korea »

Sarah Quesada, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Romance Studies and Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies is the recipient of a 2023 Honorable Mention for a First Book from The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) for The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature, published by Cambridge University Press.     The award committee stated: "Sarah M. Quesada’s The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature is a… read more about Sarah Quesada Receives MLA 2023 Honorable Mention for First Book »

On Wednesday, Nov. 8th, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies held the Annual Queer Theory Lecture, held in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009). Sedgwick was a professor of English at Duke for much of her career. In her time in Durham, she published Epistemology of the Closet in 1990 and Tendencies in 1993. Sedgwick’s legacy as a founding scholar in the field of queer theory has shaped Duke GSF as a leading center for sexuality studies. The… read more about Annual Queer Theory Lecture with Lynne Huffer »

FOOT FETISH Ron DeSantis’s Weird Boots and the Cruel Campiness of the GOP Primary A drag analysis of “bootgate” Fellas, is it gay to be obsessed with another man’s feet? Once upon a time, the Republican base would have frowned at it, for sure. But over the past several months, Governor Ron DeSantis’s footwear has increasingly become an object of lurid attention on the internet. Stoked by DeSantis’s Trumpist foes, as well as by Donald Trump himself and his social media team, internet commenters… read more about Gabriel Rosenberg's article in The New Republic - A drag analysis of "bootgate" »

The second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies addresses the complexities and inherent paradoxes within the expansive knowledge project known as Women’s and Gender Studies for audiences both inside and adjacent to the field. Each of the volume’s chapters identifies and critically examines a key term that circulates in this field, exploring how the term has come to be understood and mobilized within its everyday narratives and practices. In constructing provocative genealogies for their terms… read more about Kimberly Lamm's Chapter "The Gaze" written in the collection titled "Rethinking Women's and Gender Studies" »

On Wednesday, October 4th, Duke GSF hosted Professor Kadji Amin from Emory University’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for a presentation in the East Duke Parlors as a part of this year’s research theme, “histories of the transgender present.” In her introduction, Professor of Literature Robyn Wiegman referred to Amin’s visit as “a much-anticipated queer homecoming,” as Amin received his PhD from Duke in Romance Studies and received the GSF certificate in Feminist Studies. Professor Amin, currently on… read more about Kadji Amin Presents "The Respectability Politics of Gender Identity" »

Video of the book talk Greggor Mattson gave at Duke University sponsored by Duke Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department. Gay bars have been closing by the hundreds. Jolted by the closing of his favorite local watering hole in Cleveland, Ohio, Greggor Mattson embarked on a journey to 300 gay bars in 39 states to paint a much more complex picture of the cultural significance of these spaces, inside the “big four” gay cities, but also beyond them. read more about Book Talk "Who Needs Gay Bars?" by Greggor Mattson »

GSF is excited to offer three new courses this upcoming spring semester. To highlight these never-before-seen opportunities, the course professors sat down to share why and how they believe these courses will interest you. These interviews are intended to provide not just a description of the class, but a glimpse into each professor’s motivations for creating their course, as well as their hopes for the Spring. GSF 290S Feminist Podcasting – Rachel Gelfand When you created this course what was your… read more about Announcing three new course offerings! »

On Thursday, September 21st, GSF kicked off a new series, “Gender Studies Then,” which will mark two anniversaries: the roughly half-century since the start of the field of Women’s Studies and the 40th anniversary of Duke’s program. The event, “A 1970s Salon,” invited a dozen faculty from several departments to a conversation about feminist texts from “the long 1970s” that held meaning for them in some way. The speakers explained their affiliations to their chosen texts: while in some cases, the piece was a formative spark… read more about First in the Gender Studies Then Series - 70's Salon: A Conversation with Faculty »

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) revealed its allocation of $41.3 million in grants, benefiting 280 humanities projects throughout the nation. Two Trinity College of Arts and Science Faculty are recipients of the grant. Jocelyn Olcott Jocelyn Olcott’s project focuses on the value of care. (John West/Trinity Communications)  Jocelyn Olcott, Professor of History; International Comparative Studies; and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, was… read more about Two Trinity Faculty Awarded Grants from National Endowment for Humanities »

Zavier Nunn is the postdoctoral associate for the 2023-2024 annual theme 'Histories of the Transgender Present' in the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department at Duke University. His PhD dissertation provides an everyday history of trans feminine life in Weimar and Nazi Germany, which de-idealizes the European medico-legal codification of trans identity. Here he also argues that trans women's liminal position within Nazi society reveal state persecution practices concerned with race, labour value, and (sexual)… read more about Welcome to this Year's Postdoctorial Associate, Zavier Nunn, PhD »

What do we consider ordinary? Is it the mundane everydayness of black life or the extraordinary violence of black death? Is it the repetition and accumulation of rhythm or the fragmented complexity of time? How do the choreographies of care, in the forms of mothering, protest, spatial politics, and the use of language, whether performed, illegible, archived, or forgotten, contribute to the ordinary? How do people and the archives of their lives create space and opportunities to consider ordinary forms of loss and… read more about Insights from the Second Annual Black Feminist Theory Summer Institute »

Kimberly Lamm recently edited a special issue of Public Art Dialogue titled "Outside Voices: Art, Visibility, and the Gender of Public Speech." In “Outside Voices,” Lamm gathers the work of artists and scholars who explore how language has been deployed as a visual material that speaks to the gendered inequities of the public sphere. The artists featured in “Outside Voices'—Sofia Sánchez, Mira Schor, and Eva Rosenfeld—contribute to a tradition in which artists aligned with 1970s feminism took up language-based… read more about Kimberly Lamm edited "Outside Voices," a special issue of Public Art Dialogue »

Duke Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies is proud to announce that Anna Storti has been named an Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor.  Storti, who joined the department in 2021, studies aesthetic and affective relations between race, empire, violence, and pleasure, specializing in art and culture across the Asian diaspora. The Mellon Fellowship for Assistant Professors is awarded annually to junior faculty members who study the history of Western, Near Eastern, and Far Eastern civilizations, with… read more about Anna Storti Named Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor »

The Department of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies will hold the second annual Black Feminist Theory Summer Institute from July 31 to August 4, 2023. This year's theme, “On the Ordinary,” highlights a desire to think about how Blackness is tethered to the spectacular, and GSF chair Jennifer C. Nash wants to bring together a group of scholars who are thinking about the ordinary and the quotidian in myriad ways.  “I’m excited to have the institute be a place where people who have come as students come… read more about Black Feminist Summer Institute Takes On What It Means To Be Ordinary »