Research

My research comes out of the intersection between queer and feminist theory and, since 1994, I have published three monographs - Lesbian Utopics (Routledge, 1994); Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York UP, 1998) and Inconsequence: Lesbian Representation and the Logic of Sexual Sequence (Cornell UP, 2002) - as well as a number of essays in this area. Since 2003, I am co-editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press). I am also an editorial or advisory board member of three other international peer-reviewed journals in feminist and sexuality studies—Australian Feminist Studies (Routledge), Feminist Theory (Sage and University of Leeds) and Genders (http://www.genders.org/).

My current research project is “Orgasmology,” a cultural history of the unique compactions of cultural meaning that have accrued to orgasm as well as the wide repertory of narratives that have taken orgasm as their figural vehicle across the twentieth century. In 2004, I was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Strategic Research Development Award (2005-2006) to advance this research. Also as part of this work, I am currently a member of a collaborative UoA team funded with a Marsden Fund Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand to work on a collaborative three-year project “Acts and Identities: Toward a New Cultural History of Sex” (2007-2009).

I am also a novelist and have published three novels in alternation with my scholarly monographs. My latest novel, Slow Water, is a work of historical fiction about an Antipodean same-sex sexual scandal and won major literary awards in both Australia and New Zealand: the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.