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, trans and queer theories, and American cultural production from the late nineteenth century to the present. 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. For the 2025–2026 academic year they are a Doctoral Fellow at the Wolf Humanities Center, where they are working on a project on trans autobiography, literary paratext, and the "truth" of medical transition.  

Austin’s writing appears or is forthcoming in 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 dissertation project tracks the emergence of the modern concept of "bad sex" through its historical interfacing with institutions of literary education (i.e. eugenic high school curricula, elite universities, HBCUs, feminist conferences) across the long twentieth-century United States. Offering a historical explanation for the present coincidence of culture narratives of decline surrounding both the “end of the English major” and the “sex recession,” the project traces how sex and reading both came to be thought of as “disciplines” whose pleasures could be deepened through educations in judgment—as well as what the political and aesthetic faults of that disciplinarity. 

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

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