Ara A Wilson, Associate Professor and Director of the Study of Sexualities

Contact Info:

Office Location:	210 B East Duke Building
Office Phone:	(919) 684-9179
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2009):

• SXL 115S.01, STUDY OF SEXUALITIES

  Carr 136, TuTh 01:15 PM-02:30 PM

• WOMENST 161.01, MONEY, SEX, POWER Synopsis

  Biddle 101, TuTh 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

• PhD The Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY) 1997
• BA Vassar College 1984

Specialties:

Globalization
Sexuality
Asia

Research Interests: gender + sexuality in global modernity; transnational feminism (NGOs + anti-globalization); urban Southeast Asia and transnational zones; cultural logics of global capital

Current projects: Sexual Latitudes: The Erotic Politics of Globalization (book),

Market Shrines in Bangkok,

Medical Tourism

My work contributes to the feminist ethnography of globalization by providing theoretically engaged descriptions of transnational sites and processes. My approach combines attention to political economy, critical studies of culture, and post-colonial critiques of Eurocentrism. I use long term fieldwork in Bangkok, Thailand to explore how sexuality, gender and ethnicity are produced and transformed through the modernity of the non-Western world. I am working to develop ways to analyze gender/sexuality at a global scale, in part by studying such international events as the 1995 Beijing UN Conference on Women or the World Social Forum. This research is part of a current book project, Sexual Latitudes, that considers the implication of globalization as a stage for sexual politics. I am also in the early phases of a project on medical tourism to Thailand.

Areas of Interest:

Globalization + Transnationalism
UN, NGO, Human Rights, Sexual Rights, Women's Rights
Cultural Political Economy
Gender + Sexuality
Feminist, Queer, Postcolonial Theory

Curriculum Vitae

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in The Global City (2004), University of California [html] .
2. A. Wilson, Queering Asia, Intersections no. 14 (2006) [html] .
3. Feminism in the Space of the World Social Forum, special issue on the World Social Forum, Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 8 no. 3 (April, 2007) [htm] .