Jackie Lauer

I am a PhD candidate in History moving within the fields of African American history, the history of gender and sexuality, and political history. My research agenda examines Black queer social organization and political mobilization in the late twentieth century. What fascinates me is how forms of desire, intimacy, and affiliation become culturally rendered into identities that become politicized throughout time. I ask, in what sense is politicization a process that transforms meanings of race, gender, and sexuality. I hope to show that these meanings flow and swerve across a social and political terrain created by the state and overlapping communities in ways that form, sustain, regulate, and travesty coalitional mobilization, especially between Black queer communities and broader Black communities as well as majority-white lesbian and gay organizations.

My work is indebted to ideas and interchanges within queer theory, queer of color critique, whiteness studies, and critical race theory. I remain curious about these fields through my affiliation with the Women's & Gender Studies Graduate Certificate Program and the African American & Diasporic Studies Graduate Certificate Program. I am happy to support prospective students in their questions about our departmental graduate program, these certificate programs, and life in Ann Arbor. Please reach out if you are curious how the University of Michigan might be a good fit for you.

Fields of Interest

• African American history
• Modern American history
• Social and cultural history
• Political and legal history
• Queer & feminist historical methods