Sheila Cavanagh

Sheila Cavanagh
Cavanagh in March 2014

Sheila Cavanagh is an associate professor in Sociology and the Sexuality Studies Coordinator at York University.^[1] She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario. Cavanagh completed her M.A. at the University of Toronto (OISE), and her Ph.D. in sociology at York University.^[1] Her scholarship is in gender and sexuality studies with a concentration on feminist, queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theories.^[1] She has published two sole authored books; one edited collection; thirteen book chapters; thirteen peer-reviewed journal articles; four book reviews, one review essay; and is producing Queer Bathroom Stories at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Cavanagh has held six SSHRC grants and has presented her research at numerous national and international conferences.

Cavanagh is particularly notable for her scholarship on the social regulation of gender and sexuality, trans studies, and queer pedagogy. The significance of her first book, Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies, is highlighted by Professor Kate Krug of Cape Breton University, who notes that it "makes the kind of 'trouble' for the moral panic around female teacher-student sex scandals that Judith Butler's Gender Trouble made for gender."^[2] Sexing the Teacher, which offers an "insightful analysis of female-teacher sex scandals and their treatment in media and public discourse [which] bridges disciplines",^[3] has been given honourable mention by the Canadian Women’s Studies Association for their annual book award.^[4] Cavanagh's most recent book, the groundbreaking Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination, was a 2011 Finalist for the GLBT Next Generation Indie Book Awards. In 2012, Queering Bathrooms received the CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention. Queering Bathrooms "brings to light one of the last remaining forms of discrimination and segregation that goes unquestioned".^[5] Fuse Magazine reviewer Syrus Ware writes that Queering Bathrooms "provides a strong argument for reconsidering the public toilet, making it a must-read for city and urban planners, policy makers, architects and designers. Queering Bathrooms offers important recommendations about the future of bathroom design, suggests areas for future research, and imagines a future in which public toilets are at once luxurious, accessible and welcoming to all human beings".^[6] The Queer Bathroom Monologues, a play based on interviews in the book, written and produced by Cavanagh, was staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival,^[7] from July 6–17, 2011, where it received the Patron’s Pick Award. Cavanagh remounted Queer Bathroom Stories at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of the Buddies Pride program, May 31 to June 15, 2014. Although critics commented upon the need to develop the script dramatically all agreed that the stories were moving and emotionally compelling.^[8]

Cavanagh is also interviewed in Rohan Spong's documentaries T is for Teacher (2009) and Queer Science (2008).

Books

(In Progress) Queer Psychoanalytics: Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (feminine) Sexual Difference.
(2010) Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-1073-6
(2007) Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Given honorable mention by the ‘Canadian Women’s Studies Association’ for their annual book award. ISBN 978-0-7748-1374-7

Edited books

(2013) Co-edited with Angela Failler and Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst. Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapters in books

(2014) “Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Lacanian Mirror: Urinary Segregation and the Bodily Ego” In Psychoanalytic Geographies (Eds.) Paul Kingsbury and Steve Pile. Farnham and Surrey: Ashgate, 323-338.
(2013) “Touching Gender: Abjection and the Hygienic Imagination” In The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (Eds.) Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura. New York: Routledge, 426-442.
(2013) “White Trash: Aileen Wuornos and Queer Productions of Monstrosity” In Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (Eds.) Sheila Cavanagh, Angela Failler and Rachel Hurst. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
(2012) “Sexing the Teacher: Voyeuristic Pleasure in the Amy Gehring Case” In Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies (Eds.) Maureen Fitzgerald and Scott Rayter. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. (Reprint)
Co-authored with Heather Sykes. (2012) “Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the Athens Summer Games” In Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies (Eds.) Maureen Fitzgerald and Scott Rayter. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. (Reprint)
Co-authored with Cara Ellingson and Brenda L. Spencer. (2012) “Subjectivity and Discipline: Women Teachers and Contradictory Norms of Recognition” In Canadian Education: Governing Practices & Producing Subjects (Eds.) Kari Dehli, Brenda Spencer, and James Ryan. Calgary: Detselig Press.
(2011) “Queer Notes on Sex Education in Ontario” In Contemporary Studies in Canadian Curriculum: Principles, Portraits and Practices (Eds.) Darren Stanley and Kelly Young. Calgary: Detselig Press, 237-269.
(2009) “Sex in the Lesbian Teacher’s Closet: The Hybrid Proliferation of Queers in School” In Gender and Education (Eds.) Jo-Anne Dillabough, Julie McLeod and Martin Mills. Routledge: London and New York.
(2005) “Female Teacher Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Ontario, Canada” In History is Hers: Women Educators in Twentieth Century Ontario (Eds.) Rebecca Coulter and Helen Harper. Detselig: Calgary.
(2005) “Nervous Narratives: Female Teacher Maladies in the Twentieth Century” In History is Hers: Women Educators in Twentieth Century Ontario (Eds.) Rebecca Coulter and Helen Harper. Detselig: Calgary.
(1999) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Postwar Period,” in Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader (Eds.) Nuzhat Amin et al. Inanna publications and Education Inc.: Toronto. Reprinted in Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History (Eds.) Mona Gleason and Adele Perry. Oxford University Press.
(1999) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Post-war Period” In Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader (Eds.) Nuzhat Amin et al. Toronto, Inanna publications and Education Inc. (Reprint)

Papers in refereed journals

(Accepted) “Transsexuality as Sinthome: Jacques Lacan, Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (Feminine) Sexual Difference” Studies in Gender and Sexuality.
(2013) “Affect, Performance and Ethnographic Methods in Queer Bathroom Monologues” Text and Performance Quarterly 33(4): 1-22.
(2008) “Sex in the Lesbian Teacher’s Closet: The Hybrid Proliferation of Queers in School.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 29(3): 387-399.
Co-authored with Heather Sykes. (2006). “Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the Athens Summer Games.” Body and Society 12(3): 75-102.
(2006). “Spinsters, Schoolmarms, and Queers: The Unmarried Teacher in Medicine and Psychoanalytic Theory.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 27(4): 421-440.
(2005) “Sexing the Teacher: Voyeuristic Pleasure in the Amy Gehring Case,” Social Text 82, 23 (1): 111-134.
(2005) “Female Teacher Gender and Sexuality in 20th Century Ontario, Canada.” History of Education Quarterly 45(2): 247-273.
(2004) “Upsetting Desires in the Classroom: School Sex Scandals and the Pedagogy of the Femme Fatale.” Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (9):315-332.
(2003) “Teacher Transsexuality: The Illusion of Sexual Difference and the Idea of Adolescent Trauma.“ Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society 6 (3-4): 365-388.
(2003) “The Gender of Professionalism and Occupational Closure: The Management of Tenure Related Disputes by the ‘Federation of Women Teacher’s Associations of Ontario’, 1918-1949.” Gender and Education 15(1): 39-57.
(2001) “From a Belief in Biology as Destiny to an Environmental Perspective of Mental Health: The Impact of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene on Education in Ontario, Canada, 1920-50.” Change: Transformation in Education: A Journal of Theory, Research, Policy and Practice 4(1): 48-62.
(2001) “The Pedagogy of the Pastor: Social Studies Education in Early Twentieth Century Canada.” Canadian Journal of Education 26(4): 405-421.
(1998) “The Heterosexualization of the Ontario Woman Teacher in the Post-war Period.” Canadian Women’s Studies/les cahiers de la femme 18(1): 55-69.

Book reviews

(2013) Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 by Cameron Duder. Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 22, No. 3.
(2012) Author replies to critics in review of Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination in Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 19, No. 4.
(2008) Romance in the Ivory Tower by Paul R. Abramson. Teacher’s College Press.
(1998) Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education by Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre. Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme 17(4): 149.
(1995) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex by Judith Butler. Critical Sociology 21(3): 144-147.

Review essays

(2002) “The Pedagogy of Texts on Transgendered Subjects.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 5(4): 499-506.

Non-refereed media publications

(2011) “Unisex Toilets and the Sex-Elimination Linkage” Gay and Lesbian Review.
(April 5–11, 2007) “No textbook crime: Teacher-teen affairs are unprofessional but not always criminal” Now Magazine, Issue 1315, Volume 26, No. 31.
(March 29, 2007) “Student/teacher relationships: Professional misconduct or sex crime?” Xtra!, No. 585, p. 12.
(1996) “The Prom You Never Had, The Prom You Always Wanted: For Lesbian and Gay Youth.” Siren 1, 3 (August/September): 3-4.

Theatre and performance projects

[In Progress] The Cut (Playwright).
(2014) Queer Bathroom Stories. Professional production in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Pride Program, Toronto, Canada. May 31 - June 15, 200. (Playwright and Producer)
(2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBT Resource Center at Eastern Michigan University, October 17. (Playwright).
(2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBTQA Pride Leadership camp in Nashville, July 17, sponsored by the Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore Maryland. (Playwright)
(2013) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the Emergence Queer Arts Festival, Pride Western, London, February 1, sponsored by the University of Western Ontario. (Playwright and Producer)
(2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the Center for the Arts, Mainstage Theatre, Towson University (TU), Baltimore, Maryland, November 12, sponsored by TU Center for Student Diversity. (Playwright)
(2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography read at the LGBTQA Pride Leadership camp in Nashville, July 17, sponsored by the Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore Maryland. (Playwright)
(2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at George Brown College, Toronto, March 22 (Invited).
(2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at the ‘Walking the Talk: Human Rights in Higher Education’ conference sponsored by the Canadian Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment in Higher Education, Toronto, May 4 (Invited)
(2012) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged at the Canadian Sociological Association annual meeting, SSHRC Congress, as a special event following the President’s reception, Wilfrid Laurier University, May 31. (Playwright and Producer)
(2011) Queer Bathroom Monologues. Performance ethnography (play) staged for an eight-day run at the Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-17th, 2011 (received the Audience Pick Award). (Playwright and Producer)

Theatre reviews

Queer Bathroom Stories

"...lots of humour and even more heart...a profound picture" - The Charlebois Post^[9]
"...professional...stylish...with great choreography and very interesting movement pieces dotting its landscape" - Mooney on Theatre ^[10]
"The material is frequently fascinating...a brief monologue about an Islamic man sitting for hours in a stall looking for some sort of connection is powerful. And a scene about a trans woman autoworker's experiences is horrific" - NOW magazine ^[11]

Awards and distinctions

(2012) CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention for Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.
(2011) Patron’s Pick Award for the Queer Bathroom Monologues (a play written and produced by Sheila Cavanagh), staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-17th.
(2011) Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group, GLBT Indie Book Award Finalist for Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.
(2008) ‘Canadian Women’s Studies Association’ Book Award honourable mention for Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies for their annual book award.

References

External links

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