rdi.emory.edu - Race and Difference Initiative

Studies in Sexualities takes as its focus the multiple ways in which sexuality is experienced, conceptualized, and theorized. It supports and is supported by the activities of the Office of LGBT Life and the superb resources of the Emory libraries. Like Women’s Studies, which takes gender as its crucial experiential and analytic category, Studies in Sexualities examines sexuality, recognizing that it always is inflected with and shaped by its intersections with categories of race, class, and gender, as well as geography and history. Such inquiries draw upon feminist analysis as well as the contributions of lesbian, gay, transgender and transexual studies as well as queer theory (an enterprise sometimes abbreviated as LBGQT). Hence, Studies in Sexualities is a multidisciplinary enterprise drawing upon a faculty with expertise in a range of humanistic, social scientific, health sciences and religious disciplines, among others. Through the Department of Women’s Studies it offers with regularity an introductory course in Studies in Sexualities that highlights the many methods and objects of inquiry in the field, with special emphasis on the resources available at Emory. In addition to course offerings that vary from semester to semester, it also sponsors ongoing lecture series, colloquia, and seminars. In Fall 2007, the main event was a day-long Foucault Workshop that drew on Emory faculty and graduate student presentations from a range of departments, including Comparative Literature, English, ILA, Religion, and Women’s Studies. In Spring 2008, a series of speakers offered lectures, seminars and workshops with a focus on questions of race and sexuality. In 2008-09, we launch a series on “Other Americas” that will take as its focus aspects of sexuality in non-mainstream American venues, in the fall, emphasizing Native American and Latino cultural sites, in the spring African American, African and Asian diasporic locales.