Finn Enke

Position title: Professor of Gender & Women's Studies, and History

Phone: (608) 263-2334

Address:
3301 Sterling Hall

I specialize in history of sexuality and gender with a focus on queer theory and trans*, queer and feminist social movements in the 20th century United States. My work is also animated by queer crip studies, critical race and indigeneity studies, graphic art and comics studies.

Gender-related Courses:

History 275: Topics in LGBTQ+ Histories
GWS 280: Borderlands and Embodiment
GWS 340: Topics in LGBTQI Sexualities and Genders
GWS 342: Transgender Studies
History/GWS 346: Trans/Gender in Historical Perspective
History 500: Queer Before and After Stonewall
History/GWS 519: Settler Colonial Intimacies and Critique
GWS 642: Advanced Seminar in LGBT Studies (LGBT Studies Capstone)
GWS 938: History of Sexuality (Queer History, Queer Theory)

Selected Publications:

Books:

Finn Enke. Transfeminist Perspectives in and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Temple University Press, 2012.

Finn Enke. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. Duke University Press, 2007.

Selected Articles:

“Cisgender.” The Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective, eds, Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. NYU Press, 2021.

“Cisgender as a Term.” Goldberg, Abbie, and Genny Beemyn, eds. Sage Encyclopedia of Transgender Studies, 2021.

“Stuck in the Paradigm with You: Transfeminist Reflections on History and the Spaces of Contradiction.” Abigail Stewart and Sarah Fenstermaker, Gender, Considered: Feminist Reflections Across the U.S. Social Sciences. (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)

“What Is a Body, Anyway?” in Kevin Manders and Liz, eds. Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices (North Atlantic Books, 2019)

“You’d Be Home: Meditations on Trans Ecologies” Afterward to Douglas Vakoch, Trans Ecologies: A Reader (Routledge, 2019)

“Collective Memory and the Transfeminist 1970s: Toward a Less Plausible History” Transgender Studies Quarterly. Jan/Feb, 2018.

“Transgender History and Otherwise Approaches to Queer Embodiment” Don Romesburg, ed, History of Queer America. Routledge University Press, 2018.

“Digital Transgender Archive, Journal of American History, 104:1 (2017) 315–316.

“Transfeminist Perspectives on History and Pedagogy” Process: OAH Blog for American Historians, September 1, 2016.

“Bathroom Bills and White Supremacy” En/Gender, April 2, 2016

“Stick Figures and Little Bits: Toward a Non-binary Pedagogy” Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel and Sarah Tobias, eds., Trans* Studies: Beyond Hetero/Homo Normativites. Rutgers University Press, 2016.

“Translation” in Transgender Studies Quarterly 1:1/2 (Winter, 2014)

“I Am a ‘Situation Like This’: Names, Pronouns, and Learning from Chelsea Manning” in North Philly Notes, September 4, 2013

“Introduction: Transfeminist Perspectives” in Transfeminist Perspectives In and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Temple University Press, 2012, p. 1-20

“The Education of Little Cis: Cisgender and the Discipline of Opposing Bodies” in Transfeminist Perspectives: In and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Temple University Press, 2012, p. 60-77.

“’Unlikely Sex Change Capitals of the World:’ Trinidad, USA and Tehran, Iran as Twin Yardsticks of Homonormative Liberalism” co-authored with Elizabeth Bucar, Feminist Studies, Summer 2011.

Published Art and Graphic Work

“Man in the Mirror” (watercolor), cover image, South Atlantic Quarterly, April 2021.

“But I love My Earrings,” “Dys Easement,” “Dyschronologic,” “Dystopographic” (ink), South Atlantic Quarterly special issue on Crip Temporalities, 2021.

“Octopus” (watercolor and ink), in Chelsea Thompto, ed., Trans Actions: What I Say When I Say What I Shouldn’t” forthcoming.

“Listen” (watercolor and ink) in Keifer-Boyd., Hoeptner Poling, Pérez Miles, et al (Eds.). National Art Education Association Women’s Caucus Lobby Activism: Feminism(s) + art education. Taylor & Francis & National Art Education Association, 2020.

“Clownfish History” (ink and watercolor). Romesburg, History of Queer America (Routledge, 2017).

“Finn” (pastel and pencil). Collaboration with Riva Lehrer, 2015.

“One-Eyed Dog” (ink and watercolor). Transgender Studies Quarterly 3:1 (Feb. 2016)

Enke, F. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. Duke University Press, 2007.

In Finding the Movement, Finn Enke reveals that diverse women’s engagement with public spaces gave rise to and profoundly shaped second-wave feminism. Focusing on women’s activism in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during the 1960s and 1970s, Enke describes how women across race and class created a massive groundswell of feminist activism by directly intervening in the urban landscape. They secured illicit meeting spaces and gained access to public athletic fields. They fought to open bars to women and abolish gendered dress codes and prohibitions against lesbian congregation. They created alternative spaces, such as coffeehouses, where women could socialize and organize. They opened women-oriented bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, and they took it upon themselves to establish women’s shelters, health clinics, and credit unions in order to support women’s bodily autonomy.
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Enke (Editor), F. Transfeminist Perspectives in and Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Temple University Press, 2013.

An argument for bringing transgender studies into women’s studies departments and an exploration of the impact of trans issues in various aspects of higher education
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