Affiliated Faculty

• Martine Antle, Professor of Romance Studies, works in twentieth-century French studies and has published on several vanguard lesbian artists (Claude Cahun, Hanna Hoch) and contemporary authors (Herve Guibert). Most of her courses on literature and European cinema address issues of race, gender, and sexual identities. Please contact Dr. Antle for current courses being taught and visit her website for more information. In 1997, she co-organized the second US conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies in French Studies and co-edited with Dominique Fisher the proceedings of the conference in 2002 (The Rhetoric of the Other: Lesbian and Gay Strategies of Resistance in French and Francophone Contexts, 2002).
  
  
• Yaakov S. Ariel, Professor of Religious Studies, teaches about contemporary American religion. He considers issues of sexuality and gender to be crucial to the understanding of religious groups and their position within the larger society. His most recent book is the award-winning Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880-2000 (University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Dr. Ariel teaches a course entitled "Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Judaism."
  
  
• Karen M. Booth, Associate Professor of Women's Studies with a background in sociology, teaches courses on sexuality in global and imperial contexts as well as introduction to women’s studies and feminist theory. Karen's recent book Local Women, Global Science: Fighting AIDS in Kenya (Indiana University Press, 2004) focuses on constructions and deployments of ideas about “African” sexuality and gender in campaigns to stop the spread of HIV. She has also written about AIDS politics and breast cancer in the US. She is currently writing a cultural history of the drug AZT. Karen serves on the Provost’s LGBTQ Advisory Board and teaches the core courses WMST 101 (Intro to WMST), WMST 388 (Int’l Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Health), and WMST 410 (Comparative Queer Politics) as well as a graduate course on sexuality, human rights, and postcolonial bodies.

• Richard Cante is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Studies. He earned his BA from Northwestern University, MA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and PhD from The School of Cinematic Arts at The University of Southern California. His research and teaching reflect his broad interests in relations between contemporary media industries, culture & society, history, and assorted lineages of critical-theoretical thought from across disciplines--especially those involving identity, difference, relationality, and form. Dr. Cante teaches the Sexuality Studies core courses Comm 545 and Comm 549, as well as an undergraduate class on Freud and various related graduate seminars. He is the author of Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture, to be published by Ashgate in 2008.
  

• Erin G. Carlston, Associate Professor of English, received her Ph.D. (1995) in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford, and her A.B. (1985) in English from Harvard. In 1999 she joined the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English, where she teaches a wide range of courses in twentieth century literature. Professor Carlston's research concentrates on the intersections of comparative modernisms, sexuality studies, and Jewish studies. She is the author of /Thinking Fascism/ (1998), which examines the relationship of 1930s women intellectuals to fascism, and has also written articles on Marcel Proust, Paul Celan, Mary Renault, and Audre Lorde, among others. Her current book-in-progress,/ Double Agents/, considers literary responses to several major espionage scandals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries involving gay men, Jews, and/or Communists. Dr. Carlston serves on the Provost’s LGBTQ Advisory Board and teaches the core courses ENGL 287 and ENGL 384.
  
  
• Pamela Conover, Professor of Political Science, was educated at Emory University, B.A. (1973) and the University of Minnesota, Ph.D. (1979). Before coming to UNC in 1984, Professor Conover taught for six years at the University of Kentucky. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of Political Behavior, Political Psychology, and Sexuality Studies. Professor Conover teaches courses dealing with political psychology, women and politics, and the politics of sexuality. In the past, Professor Conover's research has concerned the nature of political thinking, and the politics of identity and citizenship. Articles dealing with these topics have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, and Western Political Quarterly. She also coauthored the book Feminism and the New Right (1983). Her current research is focused on the politics of identity and the same-sex marriage debates, and the nature of citizenship and political culture. Professor Conover was founder and director of the Sexuality Studies Program and Chair of the Provost’s LGBTQ Advisory Board. She teaches the core course “The Politics of Sexuality.”
  
  
• María DeGuzmán, Associate Professor of English and Director of Latina/o Studies, has her B.A. in American Literature and Hispanic Studies from Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is the author of the book Spain's Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire published by the University of Minnesota Press, August 2005. She has also published articles and essays on the work, including the queer production, of numerous Latina/o writers. Currently, she is writing a second book that dovetails with Queer Theory and Studies concerning Latina/o aesthetics of night. She teaches “Queer Latina/o Literature, Performance” and “Visual Art and Queer Latina/o Photography and Literature.” Moreover, she is a conceptual photographer who creates photo-text work as Camera Query both solo and in collaboration with colleagues and friends. An extensive website illustrates the work of Camera Query and includes many GLBTQ electronic resources. To visit the website go to: http://www.cameraquery.com.
  
  
• John Kasson, Professor of History, was educated at Harvard (A.B. 1966) and Yale (Ph.D. in American Studies, 1971). He has been teaching at the University of North Carolina since 1971. He is a cultural historian, a field that encompasses a rich variety of materials, both "high" and "low," as well as disciplines ranging from literature and the visual arts to psychology and anthropology. He teaches a number of courses in history for undergraduates and graduate students, including a seminar -- "Bodies on Display: Perspectives on the Body in American Culture" -- a lecture course on the popular arts and American culture, and a seminar on childhood in America. He also regularly teaches undergraduate courses In the Curriculum in American Studies, in which he holds a joint appointment. His most recent book is Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001).
  
  
• Sherryl Kleinman, Professor of Sociology has been teaching at UNC since 1980. She teaches courses in race, class, gender, and sexuality, qualitative methods, and writing. She is the author of Equals before God: Seminarians as Humanistic Professionals (University of Chicago Press, 1984), Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization (University of Chicago Press, 1996), Feminist Fieldwork Analysis (Sage, 2007), and the co-author of Emotions and Fieldwork (with Martha Copp; Sage, 1993). In addition to scholarly writing, she has published memoirs, essays, poetry, and a lot of letters to the editor. Originally from Montreal, Quebec, she still thinks of herself as an urbanite.
  
  
• Shayne A. Legassie is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature. His research interests include medieval and early modern European literature; travel narrative; and gender and sexuality studies. He is currently at work on a book manuscript called "Differently Centered Worlds: The Traveler's Body in Late Medieval European Narrative," and articles on Chrétien de Troyes, Jane Austen, and the development of forensic procedure in medieval murder investigations. Prof. Legassie’s courses include "Horror! (Film, Literature, Theory)" and “The Erotic Middle Ages.”


• Evyatar Marienberg, the E.J. and Sara Evans Assistant Professor of Jewish History and Culture, is a historian of religions, having a particular focus on the study of beliefs and practices of lay Jews and Christians from various periods. Dr. Marienberg studied for several years at Yeshivat Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati of Ein-Tzurim in Israel. Later he studied Catholic theology at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and religious studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sorbonne. His doctoral dissertation (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2002) was devoted to the conceptualization of menstruation in Jewish and Christian cultures, with a particular interest in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Dr. Marienberg is working now on a study of traditional Jewish guides to marital sexuality ("Jewish Kama Sutras," as some might put it).


• Della Pollock, Professor of Communication Studies, specializes in the areas of Performance and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Telling Bodies Performing Birth: Everyday Narratives of Childbirth (Columbia University Press, 1999), and editor of Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) and Remembering: Oral History Performance (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005). She has recently served as an associate editor on Internationalizing Cultural Studies (eds. Erni and Abbas, Blackwell, 2004) and The Performance Studies Handbook (eds. Hamera and Madison, Sage, 2005). She is co-editor of the international journal, Cultural Studies.
  
  
• Ruth Salvaggio, Professor of English, joined the faculty of UNC in 2005. She works in the areas of Feminist and Critical Theory, 18th-Century Studies, and Poetics. Her authored books include The Sounds of Feminist Theory (SUNY, 1999), Enlightened Absence: Neoclassical Configurations of the Feminine (Illinois, 1988), Dryden’s Dualities (Victoria, 1983), and a monograph on Octavia Butler (1985). She co-edited with the Folger Collective on Early Women Writers the anthology Women Critics, 1660-1820 (Indiana, 1995). After receiving her PhD from Rice University, Professor Salvaggio taught at several academic institutions. She served as Director of Graduate Studies in the interdisciplinary American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico, and as Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Purdue University. She has also taught at SUNY Binghamton, Virginia Tech, and the University of Oregon, and has served as President of the Women’s Caucus of the Modern Language Association. Her current book project concerns questions of ecology and poetics. She serves on the Provost’s LGBTQ Advisory Board.
  
  
• Elin O'Hara Slavick is Professor of Art. She teaches Conceptual Photography, Collaborative Visual Projects, Drawing, Mixed Media and Body Imaging. Slavick received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in poetry, photography and art history from Sarah Lawrence College. Having grown up with a radical Catholic activist father who gave her a camera when she was eight years old and a German mother who encouraged her to draw, slavick traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States many times as a child - visiting churches, museums, typical tourist destinations, alternative historical sites, and family. Perhaps these trips began her visual explorations and manifestations of the complicated and critical relationship between the individual and the world, between the local and the global, the personal and political. slavick has exhibited her work in Hong Kong, Canada, France, Italy, Scotland, England, Cuba, the Netherlands and across the United States. A determined feminist, educator and activist, slavick hopes to see the transformation of global capitalism into some more equitable and democratic form before she dies.
  
  
• Randall Styers, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, was educated
  at Duke University (A.B., 1980; Ph.D. 1997). He also has degrees from
  Yale Divinity School (1984) and Yale Law School (1984). Styers'
  research and teaching focus on religion in modern Western culture,
  including critical approaches to the study of religion, religion and
  gender, religion and law, critical social theory, and supernaturalism in
  contemporary culture. He is the author of Making Magic: Religion,
  Magic, and Science in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2004).
  
  
• John H. Sweet, Assitant Professor of History, received his Ph.D and M.A. at Princeton University. His research focuses on the relationship between colonialism and the emergence of American society and culture during and after the Revolution. His two books are Bodies Politic and Envisioning an English Empire. He is now working on a study of dreams, visions, apparitions, trances, and other out-of-body experiences in Early America and a biography of Venture Smith, author of the first American slave narrative. Professor Sweet teaches the core course on the history of sexuality in the United States.
  
  
• Silvia Tomaskova, Associate Professor. Dr. Tomášková was trained as an anthropological archaeologist and her professional interests combine an inquiry into the materials of the prehistoric past with a concern for present social contexts in which archaeology and other sciences operate. She specializes in early prehistory of Europe and the old world in general, moving between anthropology, archaeology, history, social studies of science, and gender studies. Dr. Tomášková's current research project traces the emergence of the "shaman" as a standard figure in anthropological archaeology. Beginning with 17th and 18th century travel reports from Siberia as a part of a colonizing effort by the Russian Empire, her book Traveling Spirits: The History of Shamans and the Prehistory of Gender addresses the portrayal of shamans as a universal, masculine category in anthropology and prehistoric archaeology. The work is under contract with the University of California Press. At UNC-Chapel Hill Dr. Tomášková works to improve the climate for women scientists in various science departments through the Women in Science group, and by bringing distinguished women scientists to campus in an annual public lecture series. Dr. Tomášková has a joint appointment in the Anthropology Department and in Women's Studies, and teaches courses in both units.
  
  
• Wendy Weber teaches undergraduate literature courses in the English department. Her English 22Q/WMST 22Q course focuses specifically on gay and lesbian literature and the cultural diversity it represents. In that and other courses, she explores the ways in which gender and sexuality constrain and define characters’, authors’, and individuals’ identities. Her research interests revolve around the interchange among 20th century literature, theology, and gender and queer studies.
  
  

Sexuality Studies Advisory Board, 2009-2010

•    Dr. Neel Ahuja
•    Dr. Michele Berger
•    Dr. Karen Booth (fall only)
•    Dr. Erin Carlston (Director)
•    Dr. Cary Levine
•    Dr. Randall Styers (spring only)
•    Dr. Silvia Tomaskova


Student members:
Matthew Karkutt
Kimberly Fisher
Sean Kiernan

Off-Campus Resources

Stephanie Dykes: Trans community/trans visibility in the South. Ms. Dykes is a MTF transsexual living in North Carolina who does marketing research in the financial services industry. stephanie_new@hotmail.com

Ron Hudson: Living with HIV/AIDS, drug development, HIV prevention. Mr. Hudson, UNC class of ‘81, is the founder of the International Carnival of Pozitivities (ICP), “a blog carnival for people living with HIV/AIDS, their families, friends, allies and caregivers around the world.” ron.hudson@verizon.net; 919-309-4777

Ken Sherrill: Political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of LGBT people, marriage initiatives and the LGBT vote. Dr. Sherrill received his Ph.D. in Political Science at UNC and now teaches at Hunter College in New York. Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu