Miranda Joseph is an American academic who teaches at the University of Minnesota. She is a cultural theorist and author known for her work linking cultural and economic processes. She has written two books on the topic, Against the Romance of Community and Debt to Society: Accounting for Life Under Capitalism.
Joseph graduated from the University of Pennsylvania [1] and earned a doctorate in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University in 1995. She started her career at the University of Arizona in 1995 as faculty in Gender & Women's Studies. [2] She served as Director for the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies and on the faculty executive committee once it became the Institute for LGBT Studies. [3] As Director, Joseph led the Rockefeller-funded Sex, Race, and Globalization (SRG) Project from 1999 to 2005 to explore “the imbrication of sexuality, gender, and race with economic, political, and information processes across local, regional, national, and transnational scales…[and] to describe and explain the links between exploitative economic practices and structures of sexual, gendered, and racial inequality.” [4] During her tenure at University of Arizona, Joseph served as Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of Gender & Women's Studies and chaired the Strategic and Budget Advisory Committee. [2] [5]
Joseph became the Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at University of Minnesota in 2016 [6] and subsequently chaired the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies from 2017 to 2020. As of 2024 she is a professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. [7]
Joseph theorizes the relationship between cultural and economic processes. Based on her dissertation at Stanford, [2] Joseph's first book Against the Romance of Community explores the supplementary relationship of "community" with capitalism. The book argues that while "community" is invoked as a positive relationship that supposedly exists outside of capitalism, that it in fact is deeply imbricated with capitalism. The book draws on ethnographic research with gay and lesbian theater company Theater Rhinoceros in San Francisco. Her second book, Debt to Society: Accounting for Life Under Capitalism, theorizes accounting practices as they are used to reproduce or transform neoliberal capitalism.
An endowed lecture at the University of Arizona in her name "honors the scholarly and institution-building work of Miranda Joseph, a former UA [Gender and Women's Studies] Professor whose leadership efforts contributed to the creation of the LGBTQ+ Institute." [3]
Joseph is married to Erin L. Durban. [1]
Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women's studies. The term "queer theory" is broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexuality is what is normal. Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of what they consider essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and language in which they are said to be portrayed.
Biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being bisexual. Similarly to homophobia, it refers to hatred and prejudice specifically against those identified or perceived as being in the bisexual community. It can take the form of denial that bisexuality is a genuine sexual orientation, or of negative stereotypes about people who are bisexual. Other forms of biphobia include bisexual erasure. Biphobia may also avert towards other sexualities attracted to multiple genders such as pansexuality or polysexuality, as the idea of being attracted to multiple genders is generally the cause of stigma towards bisexuality.
Non-heterosexual is a word for a sexual orientation or sexual identity that is not heterosexual. The term helps define the "concept of what is the norm and how a particular group is different from that norm". Non-heterosexual is used in feminist and gender studies fields as well as general academic literature to help differentiate between sexual identities chosen, prescribed and simply assumed, with varying understanding of implications of those sexual identities. The term is similar to queer, though less politically charged and more clinical; queer generally refers to being non-normative and non-heterosexual. Some view the term as being contentious and pejorative as it "labels people against the perceived norm of heterosexuality, thus reinforcing heteronormativity". Still, others say non-heterosexual is the only term useful to maintaining coherence in research and suggest it "highlights a shortcoming in our language around sexual identity"; for instance, its use can enable bisexual erasure.
Cultural feminism is a term used to describe a variety of feminism that attempts to revalue and redefine attributes culturally ascribed to femaleness. It is also used to describe theories that commend innate differences between women and men.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.
Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.
Sexual capital or erotic capital or sexual market value is the social power an individual or group accrues as a result of their sexual attractiveness and social charm. It enables social mobility independent of class origin because sexual capital is convertible, and may be useful in acquiring other forms of capital, including social capital and economic capital.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
Judith C. Brown is an American historian and a Professor Emerita of History at Wesleyan University. A specialist on the Italian Renaissance, she is considered a pioneer in the study of the history of sexuality whose work explored the earliest recorded examples of lesbian relationships in European history.
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy was one of the founding feminists of the field of women's studies and is a lesbian historian whose book Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: A History of the Lesbian Community documents the lesbian community of Buffalo, New York, in the decades before Stonewall.
Feminist views on BDSM vary widely from acceptance to rejection. BDSM refers to bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and Sado-Masochism. In order to evaluate its perception, two polarizing frameworks are compared. Some feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia, perceive BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality, while other feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, have stated that they regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence. Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.
Frederick Lee "Fred" Whitam was an American sociologist who studied homosexuality from a cross-cultural perspective. Scholar Paul Vasey described Whitam as "an essentialist during a time of rampant social constructionism."
Roderick Ferguson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory. Among his contributions to queer theory, Ferguson is credited with coining the term Queer of Color Critique, which he defines as "...interrogat[ion] of social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class, with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices. Queer of color analysis is a heterogeneous enterprise made up of women of color feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique." Ferguson is also known for his critique of the modern university and the corporatization of higher education.
Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.
Ann Allen Shockley is an American journalist, editor and author, specialising in themes of interracial lesbian love, especially the plight of black lesbians living under what she views as the "triple oppression" of racism, sexism, and homophobia. She has also encouraged libraries to place special emphasis on Afro-American collections.
Kim TallBear is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science. Holding the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, TallBear has published on DNA testing, race science and Indigenous identities, as well as on polyamory as a decolonization practice.
Evelyn Blackwood is an American anthropologist whose research focuses on gender, sexuality, identity, and kinship. She was awarded the Ruth Benedict Prize in 1999, 2007 and 2011. Blackwood is an emerita professor of anthropology at Purdue University.
Verta Ann Taylor is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with focuses on gender, sexuality, social movements, and women's health.
"Is the Rectum a Grave?" is a 1987 essay by scholar Leo Bersani. It is an early text in queer theory, and provides a non-utopian view of sexuality. The essay was republished in 2009 alongside others by Bersani.
Regina Kunzel is an American author, historian, and academic. She is the Larned Professor of History at Yale. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, she held the Doris Stevens Chair at Princeton University, the Paul R. Frenzel Chair at the University of Minnesota, and the Fairleigh Dickinson Chair at Williams College. Her book Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality received the American Historical Association’s John Boswell Prize, the Modern Language Association’s Alan Bray Memorial Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies.
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