Ara Wilson

Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

External address:

117 East Duke Bldg., 90760, Durham, NC 27708

Phone:

(919) 684-9179

Email:

ara.wilson@duke.edu

Office Hours:

Generally by appointment; I also try to respond promptly to work emails during the semester.

Overview

My work makes analytical and empirical contributions to the feminist study of globalization and to what I call queer political economy (QPE). Combining Science & Technology Studies (STS) approaches with materialist theories, I remain invested in empirical esearch, particularly ethnographically informed depictions of life under global capitalism. This direction also involved reflection on analytical categories and frameworks, such as intimacy, infrastructure, or gender. I have conducted long-term fieldwork in Bangkok, Thailand and short-term research on other transnational spaces, like NGO conferences.

I have taught a range of undergraduate courses in Gender Studies and regularly teach Money/Sex/Power and Nature/Nurture-Sex/Gender. At the graduate level, I have taught seminars on transnational feminist theory; research design; infrastructure; sexuality; and political economic approaches.

Education & Training

Ph.D., City University of New York 1997
M.Phil., City University of New York 1992
B.A., Vassar College 1984

Intellectual Community Planning Grants: Counting Justice. Duke University. 2016

Faculty Manuscript Workship. Mellon- Franklin Humanities Institute. April 2012

Faculty Recognition. Duke LGBT Center, Lavender Graduation. April 2008

Wilson, A. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in The Global City. University of California, 2004.

Wilson, A. "Urban Sexualities." Wiley Blackwell Companion to Urban Anthropology. Ed. D Nonini. Wiley Blackwell, 2014.

Wilson, A. "Intimacy: A Useful Concept for Global Analysis." The global and the intimate : feminism in our time. Ed. G Pratt and V Rosner. New York: Columbia University Press, January 1, 2012. 31-56.

Wilson, A. "NGOs as Erotic Sites." Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance. Ed. A Lind. Routledge, January 2010.

Wilson, A. "Medical Tourism in Bangkok." Asian Biotech. Ed. A Ong and N Chen. Duke UP, 2010.

Wilson, A. "Plural Economies and Gendered Resistance in Bangkok." On the Edges of Development: Cultural Interventions. Ed. J Foran, K-K Bhavnani, P Kurian, and D Munshi. Routledge, November 2008.

Wilson, A. "Feminism: International and Global Institutions." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford University Press, 2008. (Chapter)

Wilson, A. "Diasporic Agents and Trans-Asian Flows in the Making of Asian Modernity: The Case of Thailand." Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Ed. JM Hobson and L Seabrooke. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, November 15, 2007. 160-176.

Wilson, A. "Thailand and Sex Tourism." The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Wilson, A. "Bangkok, the Bubble City." Wounded Cities: Destruction and Reconstruction in a Globalized World. 2003.

Wilson, A. "The Transnational Geography of Sexual Rights." Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights. Ed. M Bradley and P Petro. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. 251-265.