HWS News
2 October 2024 Born This Way By Annabel Ramsay '25
Author, Professor and LGBTQ Public Fellow Joanna Wuest will visit campus Oct. 24.
Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University Joanna Wuest will present a talk titled “Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement” at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24 in the Geneva Room of the Warren Hunting Smith Library.
Wuest is also a Public Fellow in LGBTQ Rights at the Public Religion Research Institute, and an accomplished author. She published Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement in 2023. Her popular writing has also appeared in outlets including The Nation, Boston Review, and Dissent, and her academic work has appeared in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Social Science & Medicine, and Law & Social Inquiry.
Wuest’s talk will delve into differing public and political opinions surrounding LGBTQ biological narratives. Born This Way explores the search for the biological origins of homosexuality and explores its implications for the future of the queer rights movement. The book “bridges past fights against pathological accounts of queer desire and searches for a ‘gay gene’ with ongoing scientific and political conversations about what it means to be a man or a woman, gay or straight, cis or trans.” Born This Way also explores how medical professionals have furthered LGBTQ civil rights, and what difficulties biological histories present queer advocates today.
The event is hosted by HWS’ Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice Department, in collaboration with the Politics, Sociology, American Studies, Writing and Rhetoric, and Public Health Departments.
