Jennifer Christine Nash

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  A candid image of Jennifer Nash looking out of a window

Jennifer Christine Nash(born 1980)is theJean Fox O'BarrProfessor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies atDuke Universitywithin its Trinity College of Arts and Sciencesand Director of the Black Feminist Theory Summer Institute.In 2016, Nash arrived atNorthwestern University,where she worked as an Associate Professor of African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studiesbefore joining Duke University in 2020. Her research interests includeBlack feminist theory,feminist legal theory,Black sexual politics, black motherhood, black maternal health, race and law,andintersectionality.

Education

Nash earned her PhD inAfrican American StudiesatHarvard University,her JD atHarvard Law School,and an AB in women's studies at Harvard College.

Career

Nash is critical of approaches tointersectionalitythat demand either uncritical, unqualified support or outright rejection, calling instead for a critical engagement with the discursive formations produced under the heading of intersectionality. In particular, Nash has identified and problematized an emerging posture of territoriality and defensiveness characterizing some intersectionality discourses. This territorial posture objects to a critical regime created by and for Black women being "appropriated" for the struggles of other marginalized groups. Professor Nash sees this posture as a reiteration of a regime of territoriality, which threatens to make intersectionality into property to be defended and guarded despite black feminism's longstanding anticaptivity orientation, and the tradition's deep critiques of how logics of property enshrine boundaries and ensure that value is communicated exclusively through ownership.

Selected publications

• How We Write Now: Living With Black Feminist Theory.Duke University Press,2024.
• Birthing Black Mothers.Duke University Press,2021.
• Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality.Duke University Press,2018.
• The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography.Duke University Press,2014.

Edited publications

• Gender: Love.Macmillan Reference, 2016.
• The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities.Routledge, 2023. Co-editor with Samantha Pinto
• Black Feminism on the Edge.Duke University Press, 2023. Co-editor with Samantha Pinto.

Awards

• Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize. Awarded toThe Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornographyby the GL/Q Caucus in theModern Language Association.
• Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize. Awarded toBlack Feminism Reimagined After Intersectionalityby theNational Women's Studies Association.
• Honorable mention for Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize. Awarded toBirthing Black Mothersby theNational Women's Studies Association.

External links

• Faculty profile at duke.edu