Jayne Swift
Doctoral Candidate in Feminist Studies.
My dissertation, “Lusty Ladies: Sex Work and Sex-Positive Politics, 1970-2013” offers a cultural history of sex worker social movements in the late-20th century United States. Using the Lusty Lady theater (a historically-significant and recently closed legal commercial sex franchise), I argue that people in the sex trade have challenged their social marginalization and criminalization, and made their employment legible as work, through authoring discourses of “sex-positive” feminism. My dissertation research has been supported by several competitive fellowships, including the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies and the University of Minnesota’s Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
My additional research interests include histories of gender and sexuality, critical sexuality and GLBTQ studies, labor studies, and oral history
Educational Background
- B.A.: Women's Studies, University of Iowa, 2004 -
- M.A.: Women's Studies, University of Iowa, 2006 -
- M.A.: Cultural Studies, University of Washington, 2010 -
Specialties
- cultural studies
- U. S. social history
- queer/sexuality studies
- oral history
- Commercial Sex Cultures & Obscenity
- Queer and Feminist Theory
- History of Sexuality
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Labor studies