The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Awards Review Board, made up of Daniel Belgrad (University of South Florida), Robert F. Carley (Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Texas A&M University, College Station), Andrew Culp (California Institute of the Arts) Sean Johnson Andrews (Vice President, CSA, Columbia College, Chicago), Helen Kapstein (President, CSA, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY), Mark Nunes (Appalachian State University), Charles Thorpe (University of California, San Diego), and Jaafar Aksikas (Past President of the CSA, Columbia College, Chicago), is extremely pleased to award the first annual Cultural Studies Association First Book Prize to Alyson K. Spurgas for her book, Diagnosing Desire.
The First Book Prize recognizes outstanding scholarly work published in the previous year as the first book-length publication by a current member of the association. Books are judged on how well they advance and extend the reach of cultural studies as a field, as a method of inquiry, and as an intellectual/political project. The prize consists of one year’s waived membership and registration fees to the CSA and a certificate.
Spurgas’s elegantly written book, Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (Ohio State University Press) lays out how today’s feminist-identified sex researchers study and manage women with “low desire.” Spurgas makes the case that an arsenal of experimental research, technologies, and methodologies create a “feminized responsive desire framework” for understanding women’s sexuality reproducing it as a complex problem to be solved while, often, ignoring the role of gendered and sexualized forms of trauma. Through sharp textual analysis and in-depth interviews with women with “low desire,” Spurgas argues for a more radical and communal form of care for feminized—and traumatized—populations, in opposition to biopolitical mandates to individualize and neoliberalize forms of self-care. Spurgas’s book expands the cultural studies repertoire of sharp conjunctural analysis specifying the role that neoliberalism, biopolitics, and conceptions of sex, gender and whiteness play in rendering contemporary feminine sexuality.
Alyson K. Spurgas is Assistant Professor of Sociology and also teaches in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Alyson researches, writes, and teaches about the sociology of trauma and the politics of desire from an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist perspective. More about Alyson can be found at: www.alysonkspurgas.com.
The book is available from OSUP HERE. Apply promo code “DIAGNOSING” at checkout for 30% off the paperback + free U.S. shipping. The open access E-BOOK IS AVAILABLE HERE.
The First Book Prize recognizes outstanding scholarly work published in the previous year as the first book-length publication by a current member of the association. Books are judged on how well they advance and extend the reach of cultural studies as a field, as a method of inquiry, and as an intellectual/political project. The prize consists of one year’s waived membership and registration fees to the CSA and a certificate.
Spurgas’s elegantly written book, Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (Ohio State University Press) lays out how today’s feminist-identified sex researchers study and manage women with “low desire.” Spurgas makes the case that an arsenal of experimental research, technologies, and methodologies create a “feminized responsive desire framework” for understanding women’s sexuality reproducing it as a complex problem to be solved while, often, ignoring the role of gendered and sexualized forms of trauma. Through sharp textual analysis and in-depth interviews with women with “low desire,” Spurgas argues for a more radical and communal form of care for feminized—and traumatized—populations, in opposition to biopolitical mandates to individualize and neoliberalize forms of self-care. Spurgas’s book expands the cultural studies repertoire of sharp conjunctural analysis specifying the role that neoliberalism, biopolitics, and conceptions of sex, gender and whiteness play in rendering contemporary feminine sexuality.
Alyson K. Spurgas is Assistant Professor of Sociology and also teaches in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Alyson researches, writes, and teaches about the sociology of trauma and the politics of desire from an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist perspective. More about Alyson can be found at: www.alysonkspurgas.com.
The book is available from OSUP HERE. Apply promo code “DIAGNOSING” at checkout for 30% off the paperback + free U.S. shipping. The open access E-BOOK IS AVAILABLE HERE.
