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Ara Wilson

Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
117 East Duke Bldg., 90760, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Desiring infrastructure

Journal Article Dialogues in Human Geography · March 1, 2023 Infrastructure has been an object of political action in its form as public good. Kai Bosworth's article, ‘What is “affective infrastructure,”’ views political action as a result of infrastructure, that is, the kind of social infrastructure that fosters th ... Full text Open Access Cite

GENDER BEFORE THE GENDER TURN

Journal Article DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM · 2021 Open Access Cite

Gender Before the Gender Turn

Journal Article Diacritics · January 1, 2021 Full text Cite

Invited Remarks on The Twilight of Cutting

Other Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology (online) · 2019 Invited remarks on Saida Hodžić, The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Women's sports and the forgotten gender

Journal Article Law and Contemporary Problems · January 1, 2017 Cite

The infrastructure of intimacy

Journal Article Signs · December 1, 2016 Featured Publication This essay brings together two different rubrics that are animating recent strands of critical analysis: intimacy and infrastructure. Its point is as simple as calling attention to a telephone wire—or these days, to a cell phone tower: that infrastructures ... Full text Cite

Urban Sexualities

Chapter · 2014 Featured Publication Cite

Sexualities

Chapter · 2014 Cite

Special Issue: Anthropology and the Radical Political Philosophy of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt

Other Focaal · 2012 Essays by John Kelly, Michael Hardt, Aihwa Ong, Anna Tsing, Ara Wilson, Sylvia Yanagisako. ... Cite

National Economy and Bodily Scales: Medical Tourism in Thailand

Journal Article Body and Society · 2011 Featured Publication Cite

Post-fordist desires: The commodity aesthetics of bangkok sex shows

Journal Article Feminist Legal Studies · April 1, 2010 This essay investigates the political economy of sexuality through an interpretation of sex shows for foreigners in Bangkok, Thailand. Reading these performances as both symptoms of, and analytical commentaries on, Western consumer desire, the essay sugges ... Full text Open Access Cite

Medical Tourism Project

Other · 2010 Book project to be based on ethnographic & secondary research. ... Cite

SEX AT THE FORUM: SEXUAL JUSTICE AND THE ALTER-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT

Journal Article Scholar and the Feminist (Barnard) · 2010 Cite

Desiring infrastructure

Journal Article Dialogues in Human Geography · March 1, 2023 Infrastructure has been an object of political action in its form as public good. Kai Bosworth's article, ‘What is “affective infrastructure,”’ views political action as a result of infrastructure, that is, the kind of social infrastructure that fosters th ... Full text Open Access Cite

GENDER BEFORE THE GENDER TURN

Journal Article DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM · 2021 Open Access Cite

Gender Before the Gender Turn

Journal Article Diacritics · January 1, 2021 Full text Cite

Invited Remarks on The Twilight of Cutting

Other Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology (online) · 2019 Invited remarks on Saida Hodžić, The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Women's sports and the forgotten gender

Journal Article Law and Contemporary Problems · January 1, 2017 Cite

The infrastructure of intimacy

Journal Article Signs · December 1, 2016 Featured Publication This essay brings together two different rubrics that are animating recent strands of critical analysis: intimacy and infrastructure. Its point is as simple as calling attention to a telephone wire—or these days, to a cell phone tower: that infrastructures ... Full text Cite

Urban Sexualities

Chapter · 2014 Featured Publication Cite

Sexualities

Chapter · 2014 Cite

Special Issue: Anthropology and the Radical Political Philosophy of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt

Other Focaal · 2012 Essays by John Kelly, Michael Hardt, Aihwa Ong, Anna Tsing, Ara Wilson, Sylvia Yanagisako. ... Cite

National Economy and Bodily Scales: Medical Tourism in Thailand

Journal Article Body and Society · 2011 Featured Publication Cite

Post-fordist desires: The commodity aesthetics of bangkok sex shows

Journal Article Feminist Legal Studies · April 1, 2010 This essay investigates the political economy of sexuality through an interpretation of sex shows for foreigners in Bangkok, Thailand. Reading these performances as both symptoms of, and analytical commentaries on, Western consumer desire, the essay sugges ... Full text Open Access Cite

Medical Tourism Project

Other · 2010 Book project to be based on ethnographic & secondary research. ... Cite

SEX AT THE FORUM: SEXUAL JUSTICE AND THE ALTER-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT

Journal Article Scholar and the Feminist (Barnard) · 2010 Cite

NGOs as Erotic Sites

Chapter · January 2010 Cite

Sexuelle Gerechtigkeit und die globalisierungskritische Bewegung

Journal Article LUXEMBURG — Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke Praxis · 2010 Analysis of how the subject of sexuality was treated at the World Social Forum, across left and feminist discussions. ... Link to item Cite

Thailand and Sex Tourism

Chapter · February 15, 2009 Written and edited by many of the world’s foremost scholars of transnational history, this Dictionary challenges readers to look at the contemporary world in a new light. ... Cite

The sacred geography of Bangkok's markets

Journal Article International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · September 15, 2008 Vernacular shrines pervade the markets of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand and a globalized city in Southeast Asia. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok, this article traces the history of cross-border flows and shifting political economic ... Full text Cite

Feminism: International and Global Institutions and Networks

Chapter · 2008 This encyclopedia captures the experiences of women throughout world history and illuminates how they have influenced and been influenced by these historical, social, and demographic changes. ... Link to item Cite

Diasporic Agents and Trans-Asian Flows in the Making of Asian Modernity: The Case of Thailand

Chapter · November 15, 2007 How do our everyday actions shape and transform the world economy? This volume of original essays argues that current scholarship in international political economy (IPE) is too highly focused on powerful states and large international institutions. The co ... Open Access Cite

Feminism in the space of the world social forum

Journal Article Journal of International Women's Studies · April 2007 Despite clear affinities, the integration of feminism into the World Social Forum remains uneven, in ways reminiscent of well-known histories of women's movements with various lefts. This essay draws on observations of the 2005 WSF at Porto Alegre, Brazil ... Link to item Cite

Queering Asia

Journal Article Intersections · 2006 Link to item Cite

Global Politics and the Feminist Question

Journal Article ebr (electronic book review) · 2006 Link to item Cite

Intra-Asian Circuits and the Problem of Global Queer

Journal Article Conference Archives of the Sexualities, Genders & Rights in Asia 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies · 2005 Link to item Cite

The intimate economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, tycoons, and Avon ladies in the global city

Book · July 19, 2004 Bangkok has been at the frontier of capitalism's drive into the global south for three decades. Rapid development has profoundly altered public and private life in Thailand. In her provocative study of contemporary commerce in Bangkok, Ara Wilson captures ... Cite

Nicole Constable, ROMANCE ON THE GLOBAL STAGE

Journal Article American Anthropologist · 2004 Cite

The Transnational Geography of Sexual Rights

Chapter · 2002 Among the signal developments of the last third of the twentieth century has been the emergence of a new politics of human rights. The transnational circulation of norms, networks, and representations has advanced human rights claims in ways that have resh ... Open Access Cite

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women

Chapter · 2000 In over 900 signed A-Z entries from US and Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and the Middle East, the women who pioneered the field from its inception collaborate with the new scholars who are shaping the future of women's studies to ... ... Cite

The Empire of Direct Sales and the Making of Thai Entrepreneurs

Journal Article Critique of Anthropology · 1999 Cite