Scott L. Morgensen

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PhD: Anthropology (Women’s Studies), University of California, Santa Cruz

MA: Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

BA: Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Areas of Research / Publication

Queer studies; anthropology of sexuality/gender, race, and colonialisms; queer and feminist ethnography; feminist and queer/trans pedagogies; community-based and activist research methods.

Research Interests

I am an interdisciplinary queer ethnographer publishing in the fields of queer and feminist anthropology, at their junctures with Indigenous studies, race and ethnic studies, and American studies. I am a past president of the Association for Queer Anthropology (2010–12). At Queen’s University, I co-founded and co-organize the Queen’s Feminist Ethnography Network, which formed in 2017 to connect and support Queen’s faculty, postgraduate, and student researchers who study and practice feminist ethnography and related methods. In the Department of Gender Studies, I served for six years as Graduate Chair (2012; 2015–19) during which time I supported the development and launch of the Gender Studies PhD Program.

My scholarship examines the intertwined intellectual formations of anthropology, ethnography, and queer and feminist politics. My current research examines histories of queer and feminist anthropology and of the ethnography of sexuality/gender through the lens of interdisciplinary theories of modernity in gender studies. My first body of work contributed to anthropology, gender studies, and Indigenous studies, and to the emerging fields of queer Indigenous studies and Indigenous masculinity studies. My book Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) was published in the First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies book series and received the 2012 Ruth Benedict Prize – Honorable Mention from the Association for Queer Anthropology. Essays drawn from the book appear in journals and collections in queer studies, feminist studies, Indigenous studies, and anthropology.

I also publish essays and guest-edited issues on studies of sexuality/gender, race, and colonialism in such fields as American studies, Canadian studies, MENA and Palestine studies, and interdisciplinary studies of settler colonialism. I write on pedagogy in the fields of women’s and gender studies, queer studies, trans studies, and Indigenous studies.

Currently, I sit on the editorial board of American Ethnologist. I have served on the Board of Managing Editors of American Quarterly (2019–2023) and on the editorial board of Critical Ethnic Studies (2016–2019) and from 2014–2017 I was co-Editor of Journal of Critical Race Inquiry.

Selected Publications / Works in Progress

Queer and Feminist Ethnography in Gender Studies: Interdisciplinary Methods Transforming Anthropology. Handbook on the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality. Svati Shah and Erica Williams, ed. (in progress)

Intimate Methods: Reflections on racial and colonial legacies within sexual social science. Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, and Departures, p. 77-96. Margot Weiss, ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.

Heteronormativity. Feminist Keywords Podcast with Kyla Wazana Tompkins, interviewer. Feminist Keywords, 2024.

Accountable Reasoning. Comment: “The Indian’s White Man: Indigenous knowledge, mutual understanding, and the politics of Indigenous reason” by Grant Arndt. Current Anthropology 63(1): 22-23 (2022).

Heteronormativity. Keywords in Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective (ed.), p. 111-114. New York: New York University Press, 2021.

Encountering Indeterminacy: Colonial contexts and queer imagining. Cultural Anthropology 31(4): 608-617 (2016).

Conditions of Critique: Responding to indigenous resurgence within gender studies. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3 (1-2): 192-201 (2016).

A Politics Not Yet Known: Imagining relationality within solidarity. American Quarterly 67 (2): 309-315 (2015).

Cutting to the Roots of Colonial Masculinity. Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, and Regenerations, Rob Innes and Kim Anderson (ed.), p. 38-61. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015.

Graduate Supervision

At Queen’s, I supervise PhD students in the Gender Studies and Cultural Studies graduate programs and Gender Studies MA students in the following research areas:

• queer/trans studies
• politics of sexuality/gender, race, and nation
• Indigenous studies
• colonial studies
• studies of HIV/AIDS (histories, cultures, politics)
• masculinity studies
• ethnography, community-based research, and activist research

Selected Supervised Theses / Dissertations (online access)

Michelle Tam (MA 2018, Gender Studies)
MA Thesis:  Queer (and) Chinese: On Be(long)ing in Diaspora and Coming out of Queer Liberalism 

Brett Willes (MA 2017, Gender Studies)
MA Thesis: Drag, Demons and Dirt: Centering Indigenous Thought in Critiques of Prairie Queer Settler Colonialism

Monique Harvison (MA 2016, Gender Studies)
MA Thesis: White Gatekeeping and the Promise of Shelter: Confronting Colonial Logics within Women’s Anti-Violence Services

Natasha Stirrett (MA 2015, Gender Studies)
MA Thesis: Revisiting the Sixties Scoop: Relationality, Kinship and Honoring Indigenous Stories

Dana Wesley (MA 2015, Gender Studies)
MA Thesis: Reimagining Two-Spirit Community: Critically Centering Narratives by Urban Two-Spirit Youth

A.W. Lee (PhD 2015, Cultural Studies) (co-supervised with Kip Pegley)
PhD Dissertation:  Performing ManChyna: Unmapping Promissory Exaltation, Multicultural Eugenics and the New Whiteness

Karl Hardy (PhD 2015, Cultural Studies)
PhD Dissertation:  Unsettling Hope: Settler Colonialism and Utopianism