Scott Lauria Morgensen

Email:
scott.morgensen@queensu.ca

On Leave July 1, 2012-June 30, 2013

Scott L. Morgensen is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies. He received his PhD in Anthropology and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz (2001). Morgensen works at the intersections of queer, feminist, Indigenous, critical race, and settler-colonial studies. He is the author of Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and co-editor of Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2011). In 2010-12, he is elected Co-Chair of the Association for Queer Anthropology (American Anthropological Association) and Co-Director of the Studies in National and International Development Colloquium at Queen’s.

Morgensen’s research examines white-supremacist settler colonisation, gender, and sexuality, in settler states and in global power relations. His ethnographic and historical research examines how racism and settler colonialism structure LGBTQ politics in the United States and Canada; and, how citizenship in these settler states is defined by racialization, sexualization, and colonisation. He conducts this work in responsible relationship to Indigenous Two-Spirit and HIV/AIDS organizers, with whom he continues to collaborate in writing on settler colonialism and global health. His newest writing is examining the ontology of white-supremacist settler colonisation in the Americas, by engaging feminist, queer, and trans interventions in Indigenous, Black, postcolonial, and global studies. He also is investigating histories of cisgender queer men in women’s studies, as a basis for interpreting conflictual ties among queer, trans, and feminist studies today.

Currently Morgensen administers a SSHRC-funded study, “Racism and Settler Colonialism in Canadian LGBTQ Communities,” which will document understandings of and responses to racism and settler colonialism among LGBTQ people in Canada. This study responds to the effects of Indigenous Two-Spirit and queer Palestinian organizing, which have centred questions of Palestinian solidarity and of Indigenous solidarity – and, at times, their interrelationship – in contemporary Canadian politics.

Research opportunities are available to students in the Gender Studies MA Program. Contact the Gender Studies Department for program and application information.

Morgensen advises graduate research in the Gender Studies MA Program and the Cultural Studies PhD and MA program in his areas of interest, with current foci in settler-colonial, Indigenous, and transnational queer studies and in the critical study of global health.

Recent Publications 

Books 

Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 

Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature. Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley, Scott Lauria Morgensen, Ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011. 

Special Journal Issue

Karangatai: Calling Out Gender and Sexuality in Settler Societies. Michelle Erai and Scott L. Morgensen, Ed. Settler Colonial Studies 2(2) (2012).[ PDF ]

Journal Articles

Queer Settler Colonialism in Canada and Israel: Articulating Two-Spirit and Queer Palestinian Critiques. InKarangatai: Calling Out Gender and Sexuality in Settler Societies, Michelle Erai and Scott L. Morgensen, Ed. Special Issue: Settler Colonial Studies 2(2) (2012). [PDF ]

Introduction: Theorizing Gender, Sexuality, and Settler Colonialism. InKarangatai: Calling Out Gender and Sexuality in Settler Societies, Michelle Erai and Scott L. Morgensen, Ed. Special Issue: Settler Colonial Studies 2(2) (2012). [PDF]

The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now. In A Global Phenomenon. Inaugural Issue:Settler Colonial Studies 1(1): 52-76 (2011). [PDF]

Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities. In Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity, Daniel Heath Justice, Mark Rifkin, Bethany Schneider, Ed.. Special Issue: GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies16 (1-2): 105-131 (2010). 

Arrival at Home: Radical Faerie Configurations of Sexuality and Place. GLQ 15(1): 67-96 (2009). 

Indigenous AIDS Organizing and the Anthropology of Activist Knowledge. In Practice What You Teach: Activist Anthropology at Sites of Cross-Talk and Cross-Fire,Anna L. Anderson-Lazo, ed. Special Issue: New Proposals: A Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 2(2): 45-60 (2009). [PDF]

Activist Media in Native AIDS Organizing: Theorizing the Colonial Conditions of AIDS. American Indian Culture and Research Journal32(1): 35-56 (2008). 

Book Chapters

Identity (Politics). In Locating Women’s Studies: Theorizing Critical Concepts for a 21^st Century Field,Catherine Orr, Ann Braithwaite, Diane Lichtenstein, Ed. New York: Routledge (2012).

Unsettling Queer Politics: What Can Non-Natives Learn from Two-Spirit Organizing? Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature. Q. Driskill et al, ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (2011).

The Revolution is for Everyone: Imagining an Emancipatory Future through Queer Indigenous Critical Theories (co-authored with Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley). Queer Indigenous Studies. Q. Driskill et al, ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (2011). 

Introduction (co-authored with Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley). Queer Indigenous Studies. Q. Driskill et al, ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (2011). 

Back and Forth to the Land: Negotiating Rural and Urban Sexuality Among the Radical Faeries. Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World.Ellen Lewin, William L. Leap, ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, pp. 143-163 (2009).

Journal Articles / Book Chapters Forthcoming

Destabilizing the Settler Academy: The Activist Effects of Indigenous Methodologies. American Quarterly 64:4 (2012 forthcoming).

Reflection: Feminist Intimacies and Critical Ethnography. In Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America, Christa Craven, Dána-Ain Davis, ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2013 forthcoming).

The Representability and Responsibility of Cisgender Queer Men in Women’s Studies. In Men and Masculinities in Women’s Studies, Daniel Farr, Ed. Special Issue: Women’s Studies42:1 (2013 forthcoming).

Reprinted Essays

Activist Media in Indigenous AIDS Organizing: Theorizing the Colonial Conditions of HIV/AIDS. In Comparative Indigeneities in the Americas, Bianet Castellanos, Lourdes Gutierrez, Arturo Aldama, Ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (2012).

Popular Press Essays

Taking Responsibility Together. RFD#148, Winter (2011).

Unsettling Settler Desires. Unsettling Ourselves: Reflections and Resources for Deconstructing Colonial Mentality. Unsettling Minnesota Collective, ed. Minneapolis, pp. 156-157 (2009). [PDF]

Book Reviews  

Sovereignty, the Queer Condition. When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty, Mark Rifkin (Oxford, 2011). GLQ 18:2-3: 416-18 (2012).

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, Joyce Green, ed. (Zed, 2007); Native Americans and the Christian Right, Andrea Smith (Duke, 2008); Native Men Remade, Ty P. Kawika Tengan (Duke, 2008); Mapping the Americas,Shari Huhndorf (Cornell, 2009). Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36(3): 766-776 (2011). 

Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country, Brian Joseph Gilley, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2006. American Ethnologist 35(2): 2077-2080 (2008).

Ethnography’s Queer Timing. A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia,Tom Boellstorff (Duke, 2007). GLQ14:4, 663-666 (2008).