Sheila Cavanagh

Sheila Cavanagh
Cavanagh in March 2014

Sheila Cavanagh is an associate professor of sociology and former chair of the Sexuality Studies Program at York University.^[1] Cavanagh is currently chair of the Canadian Sexuality Studies Association and co-editor (along with Malena Gustavson) of the Somatechnics journal. ^[2] Her research is in the area of gender and sexuality with a concentration on queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theories. Cavanagh is editing a special issue on transgender and psychoanalysis in Transgender Studies Quarterly and completing her third book monograph titled Transgender and the Other Sexual Difference: Bracha L. Ettinger and Jacques Lacan. She co-edited a collection with Angela Failler and Rachel A. J. Hurst titled Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (2013) published by Palgrave Macmillan.^[3] Her first sole-authored book titled Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies (2007)^[4] was given honorable mention by the Canadian Women’s Studies Association. Her second sole-authored book titled Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (2010)^[5] is a GLBT Indie Book Award finalist and recipient of the CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention (2012). Her performed ethnography titled Queer Bathroom Monologues (QBM) premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival (2011) and was given the Audience Pick Award. The play was professionally staged at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, in June 2014 for WorldPride and has toured at conferences, colleges and universities in Canada and the United States. She has published in a wide range of international journals and given keynotes addresses at conferences in Sweden, Turkey and Canada. Cavanagh teaches an undergraduate course titled Sociology of Gender and a range of graduate courses in sexuality studies, feminist theory and queer theory. She is also interviewed in Rohan Spong's documentaries T is for Teacher (2009) and Queer Science (2008).

Books

• (In Progress) Transgender and the Other Sexual Difference: Bracha L. Ettinger & Jacques Lacan.
• (2010) Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-1073-6
• (2007) Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Given honorable mention by the ‘Canadian Women’s Studies Association’ for their annual book award. ISBN 978-0-7748-1374-7

Edited books

• (2013) Co-edited with Angela Failler and Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst. Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapters in books

• (2014) “Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Lacanian Mirror: Urinary Segregation and the Bodily Ego” In Psychoanalytic Geographies (Eds.) Paul Kingsbury and Steve Pile. Farnham and Surrey: Ashgate, 323-338.
• (2013) “Touching Gender: Abjection and the Hygienic Imagination” In The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (Eds.) Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura. New York: Routledge, 426-442.
• (2013) “White Trash: Aileen Wuornos and Queer Productions of Monstrosity” In Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (Eds.) Sheila Cavanagh, Angela Failler and Rachel Hurst. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• (2012) “Sexing the Teacher: Voyeuristic Pleasure in the Amy Gehring Case” In Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies (Eds.) Maureen Fitzgerald and Scott Rayter. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. (Reprint)
• Co-authored with Heather Sykes. (2012) “Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the Athens Summer Games” In Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies (Eds.) Maureen Fitzgerald and Scott Rayter. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. (Reprint)
• Co-authored with Cara Ellingson and Brenda L. Spencer. (2012) “Subjectivity and Discipline: Women Teachers and Contradictory Norms of Recognition” In Canadian Education: Governing Practices & Producing Subjects (Eds.) Kari Dehli, Brenda Spencer, and James Ryan. Calgary: Detselig Press.
• (2011) “Queer Notes on Sex Education in Ontario” In Contemporary Studies in Canadian Curriculum: Principles, Portraits and Practices (Eds.) Darren Stanley and Kelly Young. Calgary: Detselig Press, 237-269.
• (2009) “Sex in the Lesbian Teacher’s Closet: The Hybrid Proliferation of Queers in School” In Gender and Education (Eds.) Jo-Anne Dillabough, Julie McLeod and Martin Mills. Routledge: London and New York.
• (2005) “Female Teacher Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Ontario, Canada” In History is Hers: Women Educators in Twentieth Century Ontario (Eds.) Rebecca Coulter and Helen Harper. Detselig: Calgary.
• (2005) “Nervous Narratives: Female Teacher Maladies in the Twentieth Century” In History is Hers: Women Educators in Twentieth Century Ontario (Eds.) Rebecca Coulter and Helen Harper. Detselig: Calgary.
• (1999) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Postwar Period,” in Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader (Eds.) Nuzhat Amin et al. Inanna publications and Education Inc.: Toronto. Reprinted in Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History (Eds.) Mona Gleason and Adele Perry. Oxford University Press.
• (1999) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Post-war Period” In Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader (Eds.) Nuzhat Amin et al. Toronto, Inanna publications and Education Inc. (Reprint)

Papers in refereed journals

• (In Press) “Tiresias and Psychoanalysis after Oedipus” European Journal of Psychoanalysis.
• (2016) “Transsexuality as Sinthome: Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (Feminine) Sexual Difference” Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 17(1): 27-44.
• (2013) “Affect, Performance and Ethnographic Methods in Queer Bathroom Monologues” Text and Performance Quarterly 33(4): 1-22.
• (2008) “Sex in the Lesbian Teacher’s Closet: The Hybrid Proliferation of Queers in School.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 29(3): 387-399.
• Co-authored with Heather Sykes. (2006). “Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the Athens Summer Games.” Body and Society 12(3): 75-102.
• (2006). “Spinsters, Schoolmarms, and Queers: The Unmarried Teacher in Medicine and Psychoanalytic Theory.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 27(4): 421-440.
• (2005) “Sexing the Teacher: Voyeuristic Pleasure in the Amy Gehring Case,” Social Text 82, 23 (1): 111-134.
• (2005) “Female Teacher Gender and Sexuality in 20th Century Ontario, Canada.” History of Education Quarterly 45(2): 247-273.
• (2004) “Upsetting Desires in the Classroom: School Sex Scandals and the Pedagogy of the Femme Fatale.” Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (9):315-332.
• (2003) “Teacher Transsexuality: The Illusion of Sexual Difference and the Idea of Adolescent Trauma.“ Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society 6 (3-4): 365-388.
• (2003) “The Gender of Professionalism and Occupational Closure: The Management of Tenure Related Disputes by the ‘Federation of Women Teacher’s Associations of Ontario’, 1918-1949.” Gender and Education 15(1): 39-57.
• (2001) “From a Belief in Biology as Destiny to an Environmental Perspective of Mental Health: The Impact of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene on Education in Ontario, Canada, 1920-50.” Change: Transformation in Education: A Journal of Theory, Research, Policy and Practice 4(1): 48-62.
• (2001) “The Pedagogy of the Pastor: Social Studies Education in Early Twentieth Century Canada.” Canadian Journal of Education 26(4): 405-421.
• (1998) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Post-war Period.” Canadian Women’s Studies/les cahiers de la femme 18(1): 55-69.

Papers in On-line Open Access Format

• (2015) “Transsexuality and Lacanian Psychoanalysis” in The Freudian Legacy Today, (Eds.) Dina Georgis, Sara Matthews and James Penney, The Canadian Network for Culture and Psychoanalysis.

Encyclopedia Entries

• (2015) “Transgender and gender nonconforming youth and school bathrooms” The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies (Eds.) by Abbie E. Goldberg, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Museum Catalogues

• (2015) “Bracha L. Ettinger in Mexico.” Bilingual text to accompany Bracha Ettinger’s Medusa-Eurydice exhibit in Toluca and Guanajuato, Mexico. Galería Polivalente, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Translated into Spanish by Karen Rodriguez. (4 pages).
• (2014) “Invitation into a Spiral Environment: Bracha Ettinger’s Medusa-Eurydice in the Leopoldo Flores Museum (Toluca, Mexico).” Text for the exhibit catalogue, Museo Universitario Leopoldo Flores, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. Toluca, Mexico. Translated into Spanish by Karen Rodriguez. (4 pages).

Book reviews

• (2013) Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 by Cameron Duder. Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 22, No. 3.
• (2012) Author replies to critics in review of Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination in Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 19, No. 4.
• (2008) Romance in the Ivory Tower by Paul R. Abramson. Teacher’s College Press.
• (1998) Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education by Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre. Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme 17(4): 149.
• (1995) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex by Judith Butler. Critical Sociology 21(3): 144-147.

Review essays

• (2002) “The Pedagogy of Texts on Transgendered Subjects.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 5(4): 499-506.

Non-refereed media publications

• (2011) “Unisex Toilets and the Sex-Elimination Linkage” Gay and Lesbian Review.
• (April 5–11, 2007) “No textbook crime: Teacher-teen affairs are unprofessional but not always criminal” Now Magazine, Issue 1315, Volume 26, No. 31.
• (March 29, 2007) “Student/teacher relationships: Professional misconduct or sex crime?” Xtra!, No. 585, p. 12.
• (1996) “The Prom You Never Had, The Prom You Always Wanted: For Lesbian and Gay Youth.” Siren 1, 3 (August/September): 3-4.

Theatre and performance projects

• (In Progress) I, Tiresias [A monologue about gender as told by the ancient Greco-Roman character Tiresias who appears in Antigone and in Oedipus the King by Sophocles; Odyssey by Homer; Metamorphosis by Ovid; The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot; and in Phoenician Woman by Euripides].
• (2015) Queer Bathroom Stories. Reading at the LGBT Leadership Conference, University of Montana. (Playwright).
• (2014) Queer Bathroom Stories. Professional production in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Pride Program, Toronto, Canada. May 31 - June 15, 200. (Playwright and Producer)
• (2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBT Resource Center at Eastern Michigan University, October 17. (Playwright).
• (2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBTQA Pride Leadership camp in Nashville, July 17, sponsored by the Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore Maryland. (Playwright)
• (2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the Emergence Queer Arts Festival, Pride Western, London, February 1, sponsored by the University of Western Ontario. (Playwright and Producer)
• (2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the Center for the Arts, Mainstage Theatre, Towson University (TU), Baltimore, Maryland, November 12, sponsored by TU Center for Student Diversity. (Playwright)
• (2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBTQA Pride Leadership camp in Nashville, July 17, sponsored by the Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore Maryland. (Playwright)
• (2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at George Brown College, Toronto, March 22 (Invited).
• (2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at the ‘Walking the Talk: Human Rights in Higher Education’ conference sponsored by the Canadian Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment in Higher Education, Toronto, May 4 (Invited)
• (2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at the Canadian Sociological Association annual meeting, SSHRC Congress, as a special event following the President’s reception, Wilfrid Laurier University, May 31. (Playwright and Producer)
• (2011) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged for an eight-day run at the Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-17th, 2011 (received the Audience Pick Award). (Playwright and Producer)

Theatre reviews

Queer Bathroom Stories

• "...lots of humour and even more heart...a profound picture" - The Charlebois Post^[6]
• "...professional...stylish...with great choreography and very interesting movement pieces dotting its landscape" - Mooney on Theatre ^[7]
• "The material is frequently fascinating...a brief monologue about an Islamic man sitting for hours in a stall looking for some sort of connection is powerful. And a scene about a trans woman autoworker's experiences is horrific" - NOW magazine ^[8]

Awards and distinctions

• (2012) CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention for Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.
• (2011) Patron’s Pick Award for the Queer Bathroom Monologues (a play written and produced by Sheila Cavanagh), staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-17th.
• (2011) Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group, GLBT Indie Book Award Finalist for Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.
• (2008) ‘Canadian Women’s Studies Association’ Book Award honourable mention for Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies for their annual book award.

References

External links

• Sheila Cavanagh Website
• Queer Bathroom Monologues