Janet Jakobsen | |
---|---|
Alma mater | Emory University |
Occupation | Professor |
Employer | Barnard College |
Notable work | Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerancewith Ann Pellegrini The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics |
Title | Claire Tow Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies |
Partner | Christina Crosby |
Janet R. Jakobsen is a scholar of gender and sexuality. She is the Claire Tow Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College and is the author of several books focusing on gender and sexuality. [1]
Jakobsen attended Dartmouth College for her undergraduate studies, where she received her A.B. in philosophy and economics. She received her M.A. at Claremont School of Theology. Jakobsen received her doctorate from Emory University in the Graduate School of Religion. [2]
She worked as a policy analyst and organizer in Washington, D.C. and taught at both Wesleyan University and Harvard University and before starting at Barnard. [1] She is the Claire Tow Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. She served as the Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) for 15 years. She has also been Barnard's Dean for Faculty Diversity and Development. [2]
During her time at BCRW, Jakobsen started the web journal Scholar & Feminist Online. Currently, Jakobsen serves as a principal investigator for the Gender Justice and Neoliberal Transformations Working Group, sponsored by BCRW. [2]
Jakobsen's partner was the Wesleyan professor of English and professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies Christina Crosby, [3] until Crosby's death in 2021. Crosby writes about their life together after Crosby's paralyzing bike accident in her memoir, A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain. [4]
Jakobsen's most recent book, published in 2020 by New York University Press, covers how gender and sexuality repeatedly appear at the center of America political issues. Jakobsen analyzes sexual politics in the first televised presidential debate, the AIDS crisis, the 2010s health care reform issues, #MeToo and more.
The Sex Obsession was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies. [5]