Department of English

The Gen/Sex Working Group is coordinated and funded by the Department of English. 

The Gender and Sexuality Reading Group (Gen/Sex) provides a regular forum for discussions related to gender, sexuality, feminism, queer theory, and their intersections with other fields. The group convenes several times per semester to discuss readings and provides a space for graduate students and faculty in and outside the Penn community to present works-in-progress. Invited speakers in past years have included Carrie Rentschler, Michael Trask, José Muñoz, Stephen Best, Sharon Marcus, and Jordana Rosenberg. The Gender and Sexuality Reading Group recently helped organize Queer Method, a conference that explored queer studies' inter- and anti-disciplinary impulses and methodological innovations, and asked what the tangible parameters of a queer methodology might be. Queer Method featured talks by Alison Bechdel and a host of scholars in the field.  The Gen/Sex coordinators for the 2021–2022 academic year are Rosed Serrano (rns@sas.upenn.edu) and Liz Rose (lizrose@sas.upenn.edu). Please contact us with any questions or to be added to the listserv.