Gender and Women's Studies

Siobhan Somerville

Siobhan Somerville is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Gender & Women's Studies Program. Somerville's expertise includes feminist theory, queer studies, and American literature. She has written extensively on the intersection of race and sexuality in U.S. literature and history, and is currently studying immigration law and U.S. citizenship.

Education

1994      Ph.D., Yale University, English

1990      M.Phil., Yale University, English

1990      M.A., Yale University, English

1984      B.A., with highest distinction, University of Virginia, English and Classics

 

Academic Employment

2005-06          Interim Director, Gender and Women's Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Fall 2002 -       Associate Professor, Department of English/Gender and Women's Studies Program (joint appointment), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2000-2002        Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies (joint appointment), Purdue University

1994-2000        Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies (joint appointment), Purdue University

Spring 1998       Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Duke University

1993-94            Dissertation Scholar, Women's Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Publications

Books

Queering the Color Line:  Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2000).

Edited Volumes

Editor, “Queer Fictions of Race,” special issue of Modern Fiction Studies 48.4 (December 2002).

Co-editor, with Judith Roof, "Recent Lesbian Theory," special issue of Concerns (Journal of the Women's Caucus of the Modern Language Association), 27.3-4 (Winter 2000).

Articles

“Notes Toward a Queer History of Naturalization.”  American Quarterly 57.3 (2005):  659-675.

“Queer Loving.” GLQ:  A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11.3 (2005):  355-370.

"Sexual Aliens and the Racialized State: A Queer Reading of the 1952 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act," Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings, edited by Eithne Luibhéid and Lionel Cantú.  Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

"The Queer Career of Jim Crow:  Racial and Sexual Transformation in Early Cinema," in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, edited by Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra.  Durham, NC:   Duke University Press, 2002.

"'The Prettiest Specimen of Boyhood':  Cross-gender and Racial Disguise in Pauline E. Hopkins's Winona."  In Skin Deep, Spirit Strong:  The Black Female Body in American Culture:  Critical Essays, edited by Kimberly Wallace-Sanders.  Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press, 2002.

“Queer Alienage: The Racial and Sexual Logic of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act,” Working Paper Series, Bowling Green State University, September, 2002.

"Domestic Renovations:  The Marriage Plot, the Lodging House and Lesbian Desire in Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces."  In Burning Down the House:  Recycling the Domestic, edited by Rosemary Marangoly George, 232-256.  Boulder, Colorado: Westview/Harper Collins, 1998.

"Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body."  Journal of the History of Sexuality 5.2 (1994):  243-66.

Courses Taught

Writing About Literature:  Queer Reading, Queer Writing; American Modernist Literature, 1914-1945; Women Writers in the U.S.; American Narratives of Passing; Sexuality and Cinema; Intro to Gender and Women's Studies in the Humanities

 

Graduate Courses

Feminist Theory in the Humanities; Seminar in Literary Theory: Queer Theory