People

Postdoctoral Fellows

  • Kadji Amin

    Assistant Professor, Queer Studies; Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory
    Stony Brook University

    Ph.D., Duke University, 2009

    Project: Queer Attachments

    Kadji Amin’s research focuses on the disorienting effects of the queer past on Queer Studies. He will complete his book manuscript, tentatively titled Queer Attachments, during his fellowship year at the Humanities... (more)

  • Philip Francis

    Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, Manhattan College

    Ph.D., Harvard University, 2011

    Project: LGBTQ+Evangelical

    Philip Francis explores questions of religion and the body, with attention to the shifting interrelations of aesthetics, gender, and sexuality in the modern West, especially in the context of American Christianity.... (more)

  • Durba Mitra

    Assistant Professor, South Asia, History, Fordham University

    Ph.D., Emory University, 2013

    Project: Sex and The New Science of Society in Colonial India

    Durba Mitra is a historian of modern South Asia. She specializes in its social and intellectual history, as well as histories of sexuality and the history of science and medicine. At the Forum, she will be focusing... (more)

  • Sima Shakhsari

    Assistant Professor, Women's & Gender Studies, Wellesley College

    Ph.D., Stanford University, 2010

    Project: Shuttling Between Bodies and Borders: Iranian Transgender Refugees, Human Rights, and the Politics of Life and Death

    Sima Shakhsari’s research broadly focuses on sexuality and diaspora in the Middle East. Currently, they are conducting fieldwork research and writing about the politics of life and death in relation to the Iranian... (more)

  • Zeb Tortorici

    Assistant Professor of Spanish & Portuguese, New York University

    Ph.D., UCLA, 2010

    Project: Visceral Archives: Sex, Colonialism, and the ‘Sins Against Nature’ in New Spain (1530-1821)

    Zeb Tortorici’s research focuses on the intersections of sexuality and archives in colonial Latin America. At the Penn Humanities Forum he will complete his monograph on the "sins against nature" in colonial New... (more)