CGS Staff
- Deborah Nelson
Director
- Email: dnelson@uchicago.edu
An associate professor of English, Professor Nelson's main research and teaching interests lie in late 20th-century American literature, gender studies, American ethnic literature, poetry and poetics, autobiography, photography, and Cold War history. Her first book, Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America, examined the discourse of privacy beginning with its emergence as a topic of intense anxiety in the late 1950s. Her next project, provisionally titled Tough Broads, explores the unsentimental, rigorous, and often "heartless" view of pain (to borrow a term from Hannah Arendt) in the work of some of the 20th-century's most prominent women artists and intellectuals. She also teaches Asian American literature, including but not limited to poetry, as well as general introductions to postwar literature, postmodern autobiography, and confessional writing.
Professor Nelson joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1996 and has been a devoted member of the Center since its inception. She has previously served on the Curriculum Committee, as Chair of the Public Sphere Committee, and as Associate Faculty Director.
Read an article in the Chicago Chronicle: "Nelson to succeed West as Director of the Center for Gender Studies." - Stuart Michaels
Assistant Director of Curriculum and Development; Undergraduate Program Chair
- Email: stuartm@uchicago.edu
Stuart got his PhD in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1997 and teaches sections of GNDR 10100 & 10200, the Center's core courses in gender & sexuality studies. In 2005 Stuart was designated the Undergraduate Program Chair. Together with the chair of the Curriculum Committee, Stuart is leading a new initiative to review and develop the Gender Studies curriculum. Stuart managed the large University of Chicago-generated national survey of sexuality in the early 1990s and is a co-author of The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 1994), for which he wrote the chapter on homosexuality. Afterwards, he lived and worked in France for four years, where he pursued comparative research on sexuality and homosexuality in the U.S. and France. His current research is on the relation between quantification and the development of gay identity. Stuart has a long history of involvement in queer politics.
- Gina Olson
Assistant Director for Programming and Administration
- Email: golson@uchicago.edu
Gina has been the Assistant Director for Programming and Administration at the Center for Gender Studies since July 2000. She initiates or plays a key role in organizing most of the Center's conferences, lectures, and other programs while also overseeing the administration and operation of the Center.
She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and minor degrees in Women's Studies and Ethnic and Cultural Studies from Illinois State University in 1991. She also chaired the local affiliate and served on the national steering committee of the Progressive Student Network.
Upon graduation, Gina worked with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) in Chicago, first as an organizer and fundraiser, and later as the Midwest Regional Director from 1993-1995. In addition, she chaired the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Caucus of CISPES, led a women's delegation to El Salvador for the VI Encuentro Centro-Americano de Mujeres, and played a leadership role in the organization's internal anti-oppression work.
Her interest in women's health and HIV prevention brought her to the Chicago Department of Public Health as a public health administrator, where she supervised patient education programs, distribution of safer sex materials, and data systems in the city-wide STD clinics. Later she joined the Midwest development office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international peace and justice organization.
Gina was a co-founder of the local activist group Queer to the Left and co-wrote and co-designed "It's Time to End the Gay Rights Movement as We Know It." Gina has volunteered with Women in the Director's Chair, a media-arts/activist group where she served on the Board of Directors from 1997-2001. She has served on film selection juries for the Chicago International Film Festival and the Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival and has participated in curating events of the Women in the Director's Chair International Film and Video Festival.
Office Assistants
- Melissa Rosenzweig
Events Coordinator
- Email: mrosenzw@uchicago.edu
Anthropology