Laurie Essig awarded a Whiting Foundation fellowship

Laurie Essig  (Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project titled “Bury Their Hearts”: The Homosexual as foreign Pollution in Russia. The grant will fund a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, during which Laurie will meet with colleagues, experts, and LGBT and feminist activists to further explore how the figure of the homosexual is being used in nationalist politics and rhetoric as a sign of foreign pollution and disease. This trip will also  provide Laurie with the opportunity reacquaint herself with “all things Russian” including Russian academic culture, in an effort to prepare for doing research in Russia in the future and being able to update her work on sexual citizenship in Russia in order to expand her teaching to include global sexualities.