Women's Studies Department Faculty

JANET JAKOBSEN

Full Professor and
Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women

Research and Teachings Interests:

Professor Jakobsen teaches feminist and queer theories, sexuality studies, theories of women’s activism, and a course on religion, gender, and violence. Professor Jakobsen’s research interests include: feminist and queer ethics; religion, gender, and sexuality in American public life; social movements and feminist alliance politics; and global issues of economics and violence. She is currently working on a book project, The Value of Ethics: Sex, Secularism and Social Movements in a Global Economy. Before entering the academy, she was a policy analyst and lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

Publications:

Books

Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence, edited with Elizabeth Castelli. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance, with Ann Pellegrini. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Paperback Edition, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance, with a new forward by the authors. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1998.

Articles

“Queer Is? Queer Does?: Normativity and Resistance,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 4.4 (1998): 511-36.

“Different Differences: Theory and the Practice of Women’s Studies,” in
Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, ed. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Agatha Beins. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, Forthcoming.

“Is Secularism Less Violent than Religion?” in Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Janet R. Jakobsen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

“Sex and Freedom,” with Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, in Regulating Sex, ed. Elizabeth Bernstein and Laurie Schaffner. New York: Routledge Press, Forthcoming.

“Queers are Like Jews Aren’t They?: Analogy and Alliance in Theory and Politics,” in Queer Theory and the Jewish Question, ed. Daniel Boyarin, et. al. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 64-89. Revised version of “Queer Is? Queer Does?” GLQ 4.4 (1998): 511-36.

“Can Homosexuals End Western Civilization as We Know It?: Family Values in a Global Economy,” in Queer Globalization/Local Homosexualities, ed. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin Manalansan. New York: New York University Press, 2002, 49-70.

"'He has Wronged America and Women': Bill Clinton's Sexual Conservatism," Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest, ed. Lisa Duggan and Lauren Berlant. New York: New York University 2001, 291-314.

"Family Values and Working Alliances: The Question of Hate and Public Policy," in Welfare Policy: Feminist Critiques, ed. Elizabeth Bounds, Pamela Brubaker, and Mary Hobgood. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1999, 109-32.
 

Women's Studies Teaching:

Feminist Theories

Introduction to Women and Religion

Religion and Sexuality

Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Studies

Queer Theories

Theoretical Issues in the Study of Women and Religion

Activist Interests:

Desiring Change, an intersectional organizing project with Amber Hollibaugh and Surina Khan that brings together issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality