Austin Svedjan (any pronouns) is a Doctoral Candidate and Fontaine Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where they study sexuality studies, queer theory, and 20/21st century American cultural production. They hold a BA in English from the University of Houston and an MA in English with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Louisiana State University.

Austin’s writing appears or is forthcoming in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, ASAP/J, among others. Along with John Paul Ricco, they are the editor of the recent special issue of Postmodern Culture on the “Afterlives of the Antisocial.” They were recently interviewed about the special issue on the podcast Gender Jawn.

Their current project traces the concept of  "bad sex" across popular literary objects like the sex manual, the prizewinning novel, and the feminist manifesto in the long twentieth-century as it intersects with adjacent discourses of eugenics, aesthetic education, and sexual liberation. 

Austin coordinates Gen/Sex, the Department of English's Gender and Sexuality Working Group.

In tandem with their academic work, Austin is a Studio Printmaker at the Common Press, the University of Pennsylvania’s typography studio.