WGSS@SBU was absolutely delighted to welcome Dr. Joanna Wuest this past fall. Dr. Wuest joins Stony Brook University as Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is a sociolegal scholar focusing on LGBTQ+ rights, health, and conservatism, and she has been and will be teaching courses on trans studies, feminist histories, and the politics of health and science. 

Dr. Joanna Wuest holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Stony Brook, she served as the Fund for Reunion-Cotsen Fellow in LGBT Studies in the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and as Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which was featured on an episode of Radiolab and received an Honorable Mention for the Society for Social Studies of Science’s 2024 Rachel Carson Prize.

Her other academic work has appeared in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Social Science & Medicine, Law & Social Inquiry, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies as well as various edited volumes. Much of this research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the American Political Science Association. Her public writing has appeared in outlets including the Nation, Boston Review, Psyche, and Dissent, and she has been a Public Fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

We asked Dr. Wuest to tell us more about her recent book, about her research and teaching, and about the other things she’s reading, watching, and doing (or wishes she were doing)!

Tell us about your recent book Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement.

The book is foremostly a history of how scientific and medical expertise has shaped LGBTQ+ civil rights from the 1950s to today’s battles over trans identity and healthcare. It’s a story about the powerful force of scientific ideas concerning what it means to be gay or trans as well as the significant limits of those ideas in the broader struggle for equality.

What are you working on now?

Since writing Born This Way, legal battles over gender-affirming care’s safety and efficacy have become the stuff of national politics. So, I’ve been writing a lot about those scientific disputes, paying close attention to how conservatives have adroitly wielded language about “medical uncertainty” to great effect despite the fact that major domestic and international medical associations defend gender-affirming care practices for youth and adults.

I’ve also been writing a book tentatively titled Church Against State: How Religious Liberty Turned Against Social Welfare & Civil Rights, which observes how many religious liberty legal organizations and their dark money donors have found clever ways to simultaneously undermine LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights and the “administrative state.”

What are your favorite classes to teach?

For a few years, I’ve been teaching a course called “Identity, Science, & Difference,” which I plan to teach at Stony Brook next year under the course title, “Gender & Health.” I love interrogating received notions of “truth” or “just-so” stories about human beings and then exploring how science, law, and social movements have shaped and contested those various renderings of difference. It’s very rewarding to get STEM students thinking about history of science and bioethical questions as well as encouraging humanities-inclined students to spend some time reading scientific studies that have structured the social world.

Is there a particular book that has had a huge influence on your research and/or teaching?

Too many, but Richard Lewontin’s Biology as Ideology brought me to the world of critical science studies. It’s a great book to teach too, because—despite his technical training as an evolutionary biologist—Lewontin was committed to public communication.

What is your favorite television series right now?

I’m obsessed with this very absurdist show called On Cinema at the Cinema. It’s not a television series, but I recently revisited Suzy Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill, which is fantastic.

Is there a skill you’ve always wanted to learn?

Any kind of sketching or pencil-based art. That or rock climbing!

E-books, hard copies, or audio books?

Definitely hard copies. I tell students that I am not immune to the distraction economy!