Amanda Lock Swarr

Professor, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies

Contact Information

aswarr@uw.edu

PDL B110

Office Hours

By appointment

Accepting new graduate students

Fields of Interest

African Decolonial Feminist Theory Gender Medicine Queer Studies Race and Ethnicity Sexuality Transgender Studies Transnational

Biography

Ph.D. in Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota

M.A. in Anthropology, University of Minnesota

B.A. in Women's Studies, Bucknell University

Professor Swarr’s work is concerned with queer, trans, and intersex studies, medical inequities, and feminist politics in South Africa and the U.S. Swarr is the author of Sex in Transition: Remaking Gender and Race in South Africa (SUNY, 2012), an analysis of how the boundaries of sex and gender were policed under South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation and during the transition to democracy. This book was awarded the Sylvia Rivera Prize in Transgender Studies from CLAGS and Honorable Mentions from the Association for Queer Anthropology and from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sexuality. She co-edited the book Critical Feminist Transnational Praxis (with Richa Nagar, SUNY, 2010), an anthology engaged with North/South feminist collaborations and power through the lens of praxis—the juncture of theory and practice. She also co-edited "The Intersex Issue," a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (with Michelle Wolff and David Rubin, 2022). Swarr’s latest book, Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine (Duke, 2023), explores how histories of colonialism and scientific racism shape contemporary intersex medicine, focusing on African intersex activists' challenges to dominant representations and violence. This book received the Bonnie and Vern Bullough Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the Professional Book Award from the Diverse Sexualities Research and Education Institute, and Honorable Mentions for the Best Book Prize from the African Studies Association and the Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Sexualities. It can be accessed for free here.

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