Gender, Sexuality Feminist Studies
Farren Yero is currently a postdoctoral associate in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She is a scholar of Latin America and the Caribbean, specializing in gender studies and the history of race, health, and medicine. Her writing has appeared in The Recipes Project, The Panorama, and Age of Revolutions, and her research has been supported by the ACLS, Fulbright-Hays, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Newberry Library.… read more about GSF Feminist Studies Certificate Alumni Farren Yero awarded the OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship »
In the fall of 2020, the class Women in the Political Process brought together undergraduates from various disciplines interested in analyzing women's role in the political arena in the United States. In light of the centennial of the 19th amendment and the elections to be held in the country in November, this course offered a timely space to think critically about the history of women's suffrage, the challenges that women face in popularly elected positions, and reflect on what we mean when we talk about "women's issues… read more about A Feminist Space in Which Students Became Political Analysts and Filmmakers »
The Duke on Gender Colloquium hosted a virtual panel on “Black Feminism Beyond the Human” on January 29, 2021. Hundreds of guests heard presentations by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (University of Southern California, English) and Patrice D. Douglass (Duke, GSF) on the ways the hegemonic concept of the human depends on and perpetuates interrelated forms of gendered-racial violence. For both Jackson and Douglass, Black feminism is a critical lens for making this violence visible and, ultimately, for interrupting the aesthetics,… read more about Duke on Gender Colloquium - "Black Feminism Beyond the Human" »
The Feminist Theory Workshop (FTW) will be having its 14th annual event throughout the month of March, inviting three scholars from around the country to share their cutting-edge research in the field. Unlike their past workshop events, which were held over the course of two days, it will be spread across three Friday afternoons, each highlighting a different speaker. The Feminist Theory Workshop was founded by the Professor of Programs in Literature and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies and former… read more about 14th Annual Feminist Theory Workshop continues the conversation online »
This month, we present a collection of 10 Duke-authored books detailing the history of Black life in America. While this is not a comprehensive list of all Duke scholarship on Black history, it is intended to be an introduction to the multifaceted work of Duke scholars in public policy, history, documentary studies, religious studies, African and African-American studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, art, art history, and visual studies. These books, along with many others, are available at Duke… read more about 10 Duke-Authored Books on Black History »
The Beginning of the End of Meaningless Work Ten years out from “The Problem With Work,” the theorist Kathi Weeks considers the current labor crisis, “essential” jobs, and post-pandemic futures “When was the last time we really had terms with which or the occasion for questioning the quality of people’s work?” Kathi Weeks, professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, asked when we spoke in December, which, at that point, had been the deadliest month so far of the Covid-19 pandemic,… read more about Kathi Weeks on the Current Labor Crisis, "Essential" Jobs, and Post-Pandemic Futures »
Gabriel Rosenberg, an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies and History, co-authored an article in The New Republic about the meat industry, arguing that "how Americans claim they want to treat animals and how American animals are actually treated are two very different things," as revealed by artifical insemination practices. read more about The Meat Industry’s Bestiality Problem »
![South Africa After the Rainbow [POLICY 360 PODCAST]](/sites/gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/files/styles/news_page_thumbnail/public/externals/0bb5cfea7e72bbaa01c0ffd6782c37fd.jpg?itok=Q9bm4CeL)
When Professor Anne-Maria Makhulu returned to South Africa to start her research in the late 1990s, the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission was just beginning to start its work. She says that while the newly established transparency was important for understanding the workings of the government during apartheid, the commission's function was largely symbolic. "It concretely didn't address the needs of the vast majority of South Africans who had suffered forms of systemic and structural violence, not the… read more about South Africa After the Rainbow [POLICY 360 PODCAST] »
Special Issue: Feminist Analysis of Covid-19 In “Reinventing Socio-Ecological Reproduction, Designing a Feminist Logistics: Perspectives from Italy,” Tania Rispoli and Miriam Tola examine Bergamo, the region in northern Italy hardest hit by the pandemic. They point out how activists there have more forcefully centered the importance of social reproduction and offer examples of “radical care” projects that address basic survival and health needs. read more about GSF Certificate Student, Tania Rispoli's article in the latest Feminist Studies Journal »
The centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, and an election year in which more women than ever were running for political office made this fall an ideal time to study “Women in the Political Process” at Duke. But when undergraduates signed up for the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies course, they didn’t know they would be getting a lesson in documentary filmmaking, too. “As I was putting the finishing touches on the syllabus, Center for Documentary Studies Director Wesley Hogan reached… read more about GSF Projects Showcase Undergraduate Research Through Documentary Filmmaking »
Formally austere but dense with sensation and longing, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s single-channel video Mouth to Mouth (1975) is an eight-minute meditation on the significance of language in Korea’s colonial and diasporic history. Composed of three parts that feature English letters, the vowel graphemes of Han’gŭl (the phonetic script of the Korean alphabet), and an image of a mouth moving in and out of visibility, Mouth to Mouth unfolds into an intensely physical reflection on the Korean… read more about Kimberly Lamm's article Mouth Work: Writing the Voice of the Mother Tongue in the Art of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha »
Big Agriculture’s artificial insemination is abusive. Most states have rewritten old laws to absolve it—but some haven’t. It isn’t spoken of much, but a significant chunk of the Kansas economy depends on pervasive violations of its anti-bestiality laws. In 2010, the Kansas legislature revised the state’s “criminal sodomy” statute—historically vague laws criminalizing multiple forms of nonprocreative sex—to delete language that criminalized consensual gay sex. But it preserved other itemized crimes in the law,… read more about Gabriel Rosenberg on the Meat Industry's Bestiality Problem »
Our courses challenge students to think critically about questions surrounding gender, sexuality and issues impacting women. And for Spring 2021, we will feature a broad range of courses focusing on topics such as Gender and Race in Science, questioning digital innovation through feminism, queer, and gender studies, the body's relation to identity and subjectivity, and more. Below are just a sampling of our offerings this Spring. Selected Spotlighted Courses GSF 89S.01… read more about Spotlighted Spring 2021 Classes »
DURHAM, N.C. – Two Duke University seniors were among 32 recipients selected this weekend for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships. Kendall Jefferys, from Keller, Texas, and Jamal Burns, from Saint Louis, Missouri, were chosen from among 953 applicants at colleges and universities throughout the country. The scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England. Recipients are selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership… read more about Two Duke Seniors Awarded Rhodes Scholarship »
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University senior Amelia Steinbach of Durham, North Carolina, is one of 12 Americans selected this weekend to receive the George J. Mitchell Scholarship for a year of graduate study in Ireland. This year, 453 students applied for the scholarship, named in honor of Sen. George Mitchell’s contributions to the Northern Ireland peace process. Recipients are chosen on the basis of academic distinction, leadership and service. Steinbach, a political science major with minors in Gender, Sexuality &… read more about Duke Senior Awarded George J. Mitchell Scholarship to Study in Ireland »
Gabriel Rosenberg, Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, co-authored an essay at The New Republic arguing that en vogue bioengineering solutions to the climate issues with meat consumption are doomed to fail, and the only real solution is to eat less meat. read more about Instead of Reengineering Cows, Just Eat Less Meat »
Kathy Rudy, Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, wrote an op-ed for Religion News Service arguing that Amy Coney Barrett's Catholicism closely follows the rulings from the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, even though those teachings are at odds with most Americans' beliefs—including pro-life Americans. read more about Barrett’s Faith Views Go Beyond Even Many Pro-life Americans’ Beliefs »
The scholar’s provocative writing illuminates stories that have long gone untold. By Alexis Okeowo October 19, 2020 Blending research and invention, Hartman has created an “argument that challenged the assumptions of history.”Photograph by Ryan Cardoso for The New Yorker On a clear night earlier this year, the writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman was fidgeting in a cab on the way to moma PS1, the contemporary-art center in Queens. The museum was holding an event to celebrate Hartman’s latest… read more about How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life »
The agenda for the October Duke on Gender panel, “Social Movements and Women’s Agency in the 20th Century,” got formulated by graduate students who, over the past few years, have brought up the problem of human agency in history with noteworthy regularity and growing urgency. The crisis we are facing today in the U. S. and the world and, what the students have called, the apparent indispensability of “struggle” to make a difference in this crisis undoubtedly fueled the interest in what social sciences and humanities have to… read more about Duke on Gender Colloquium - "Social Movements and Women's Agency in the 20th Century" »
“I am fundamentally committed to Black feminism as a theoretical and political project,” said Jennifer Nash, who joined the Duke faculty as Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies this year. “That’s where my heart is.” By following that guiding star, Nash has created an acclaimed body of work that includes two award-winning books and a third book coming next year. But her research is also deeply personal. “For me, every project has come out of the experiential,” Nash said. Since her… read more about Unsettling the Romances of Black Feminism »
Duke Graduate School Article - Ph.D. Alumna Captures Soundtract of a City in the Making Joella Bitter was following a couple surveyors around the lush, green western outskirts of Gulu, a growing city in northern Uganda. While the surveyors marked the path of a future road, she was trying to record the songs of some nearby birds for her dissertation. The skittish avians, however, weren’t cooperating, as they scattered whenever she approached. read more about GSF Certificate Alumna, Joella Bitter's album release: Gulu SoundTracks »
In 1964, the most prominent building on East Campus was dedicated as the Baldwin Auditorium in honor of Dean Alice Mary Baldwin, one of the most significant administrators in the history of the university. Initially coming to Trinity College in 1923 as Dean of Women and the first woman to have full faculty status, she became Dean of the new undergraduate college for women in the new university in 1926, a position she held until her retirement in 1947. read more about First Woman To Have Full Faculty Status at Duke University »
GSF Director, Professor Jocelyn Olcott has been named a co-recipient of the Ida Blom-Karen Offen Prize in Transnational Women's and Gender History for her book International Women's Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History (Oxford University Press, 2017). The citation for Jocelyn’s prize reads as follows: This engaging history complicates the standard narrative of the 1975 United Nations International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference in Mexico City. It unpacks some of the… read more about Jocelyn Olcott named Co-recipient of the Ida Blom-Karen Offen Prize »
Jennifer C. Nash, who has just joined the department as the new Jean Fox O’Barr Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, has been selected to deliver a prestigious Langford Lecture this year. Named after former Provost and Divinity School Dean Thomas Langford, the lectureship was established in 2000 to honor Langford’s commitment to the highest university values of scholarship, teaching, collegiality, and promotion of faculty excellence and community. Each year, the Langford Lectureship series afford Duke… read more about GSF's Jennifer Nash to deliver Langford Lecture »
Broadly trained as a scholar of Latin America and the Caribbean, my research and teaching focus on gender studies and the history of public health and medicine. I earned my PhD in history from Duke University this spring (2020), and before that, I obtained my M.A.in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Florida. As a historian of medicine, I study how families navigate healthcare decisions and how racial and gender disparities intersect to create health inequity.… read more about PROFILE: GSF Postdoc Farren Yero »
Florence Howe, a key architect of the women’s studies movement and a founder of the Feminist Press, a literary nonprofit dedicated to promoting social justice and amplifying overlooked voices, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 91. The Feminist Press confirmed her death in a statement. Ms. Howe, who lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, had been in hospice care with Parkinson’s disease, which was diagnosed in 2017. When Ms. Howe began teaching in colleges and universities in the 1950s, women’s studies was… read more about Florence Howe, 'Mother of Women's Studies,' Dies at 91 »
Feminism has never been more widely proclaimed than it is now. But there is no consensus within the movement about what that means or how to move forward. Are these conflicts getting in the way of progress — or paving the way for growth? This CBSN Originals documentary explores the internal culture wars and the greatest obstacles facing the feminist movement today. read more about GSF Jennifer Nash speaking on CBS News Originals "Speaking Frankly | Feminism" »
Dr. Jennifer C. Nash is the Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She earned her PhD in African American Studies at Harvard University and her JD at Harvard Law School. Before joining Duke, Dr. Nash held appointments at George Washington University and Northwestern University. She is the author of The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (awarded the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association) and Black Feminism… read more about Introducing Professor Jennifer Nash »
Contact tracing is a medical practice designated by public health experts to monitor and contain the spread of infectious diseases. In the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been employed both regionally and globally, both traditionally by human tracer and newly by digital mobile applications. With its wide use, debates around contact tracing are also emerging. To what extent could contact tracing be effective? How is contact tracing concerned with control, privacy, and market? For a caring future, where and what are possibilities?… read more about Contact Tracing Between Control and Care »