Projects and Research Initiatives
Through our projects, we engage in original research, fieldwork and critical textual analyses designed to produce fundamental new knowledge and insights into contemporary debates in feminist, queer and sex theory. Students, faculty, staff and researchers collaborate with us to strengthen the understanding of gender and sexuality’s role across multiple disciplines and to produce ideas for future exploration.
Each project features its own events, workshops and seminars, which continue to bring together those with common interests who help further our mission of shaping the thought of gender and sexuality within the University and in the public as well.
Current Projects
- The Age of Global Politics – This new initiative takes as its departure point the 2011-12 Sawyer Seminar.
- Artists' Salon – A new initiative that seeks to showcase artists creating innovative work focusing—in diverse ways, and in diverse media--on gender and sexuality.
- Closeted in the Quadrangles– This new project will focus on the lives of LGBTQ alumni, faculty, and staff at the University of Chicago from the early twentieth century through the present.
- Feminist Theory – This project is devoted to a critical rethinking of the foundational texts in the development of feminist thought; the 2011-12 year will focus on the work of Catharine MacKinnon.
- LGBTQ Studies Project – An integral part of the Center, the LGBTQ Studies Project organizes research and conferences and helps provide dissertation-year fellowships to graduate students.
- Sexualities in Africa and the African Diaspora – This project aims to broaden research on the history of sexuality in Africa and African diasporas in the Americas and Europe with critical attention to events that forward new epistemological and methodological models of research.
- Social Media Project – The Center’s Social Media Project studies the locations and practices of gender and sexuality in new media and social media.
- Women in Science – Through this project the Center brings together a committee of women faculty from the Biological, Physical and Social Sciences Division, along with Mary Harvey from the Provost’s office, to share their work and interests and build community.
- Experience of Women– This project, undertaken by both faculty and students, was designed to collect, record, and present a major history of the role and experience of women at the University of Chicago.