Ara Wilson

Ara WilsonAssociate Professor of Women’s Studies and Cultural Anthropology

Wilson’s work contributes to the feminist ethnography of globalization by providing theoretically engaged descriptions of transnational sites and processes. She combines attention to political economy, critical studies of culture, and post-colonial critiques of Eurocentrism. Wilson uses long term fieldwork in Bangkok, Thailand to explore how sexuality, gender and ethnicity are produced and transformed through the modernity of the non-Western world. Currently, she is working to develop ways to analyze gender/sexuality at a global scale, in part by studying such international events as the 1995 Beijing UN Conference on Women or the World Social Forum. This research is part of a current book project, Sexual Latitudes, that considers the implication of globalization as a stage for sexual politics. Wilson also teaches a new course on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights. Wilson has experience with NGOs concerned with women’s rights and sexual rights in Thailand and internationally and has taught courses on women’s human rights.