Sheila Cavanagh

Sheila Cavanagh
Cavanagh in March 2014

Sheila Cavanagh is an associate professor of sociology and former chair of the Sexuality Studies Program at York University. Cavanagh is currently chair of the Canadian Sexuality Studies Association and co-editor (along with Malena Gustavson) of the Somatechnics journal. Her research is in the area of gender and sexuality with a concentration on queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theories. Cavanagh is editing a special issue on transgender and psychoanalysis in Transgender Studies Quarterly and completing her third book monograph titled Transgender and the Other Sexual Difference: Bracha L. Ettinger and Jacques Lacan. She co-edited a collection with Angela Failler and Rachel A. J. Hurst titled Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (2013) published by Palgrave Macmillan. Her first sole-authored book titled Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies (2007) was given honorable mention by the Canadian Women’s Studies Association. Her second sole-authored book titled Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (2010) is a GLBT Indie Book Award finalist and recipient of the CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention (2012). Her performed ethnography titled Queer Bathroom Monologues (QBM) premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival (2011) and was given the Audience Pick Award. The play was professionally staged at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, in June 2014 for WorldPride and has toured at conferences, colleges and universities in Canada and the United States. She has published in a wide range of international journals and given keynotes addresses at conferences in Sweden, Turkey and Canada. Cavanagh teaches an undergraduate course titled Sociology of Gender and a range of graduate courses in sexuality studies, feminist theory and queer theory. She is also interviewed in Rohan Spong's documentaries T is for Teacher (2009) and Queer Science (2008).

Queer Bathroom Stories