The Duck of Minerva

Laura Sjoberg

Laura Sjoberg is British Academy Global Professor of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London and Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. Her research addresses issues of gender and security, with foci on politically violent women, feminist war theorizing, sexuality in global politics, and political methodology. She teaches, consults, and lectures on gender in global politics, and on international security. Her work has been published in more than 50 books and journals in political science, law, gender studies, international relations, and geography.

Recent Posts

The Stupid Things People with a Ph.D. say on Airplanes

by Laura Sjoberg | 10 April, 2013 |

"My main job [as an assistant professor at insert-flyover-university-here] is advising presidential policy on public religious life." I actually heard a Ph.D. tell his neighbor that on an airplane. I know that there might be more worthwhole topics for my first post in months (I haven't been a total slacker, I have been doing some programming), but none is more pressing ... I have made back-to-back trips to conferences (first ISA and then MPSA) this week, and have connected through Atlanta each time, providing me with the rare opportunity to ride the airplane with other political scientists...

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2nd Annual International Feminist Journal of Politics Conference

by Laura Sjoberg | 8 January, 2013 |

The International Feminist Journal of Politics announces its 2nd Annual IFjP Conference, May 17-19, 2013, University of Sussex, Brighton, England: (Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms General Keynote: Lisa Duggan, American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU Queer Film Screening: Circumstance (2011), Introduced by Director Maryam Keshavarz. with Q&A to follow Conference Theme Keynotes: Jon Binnie, Geography, Manchester Metropolitan University, Vivienne Jabri, War Studies, Kings College London; V Spike Peterson, International Relations/Gender Studies, University of...

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The Reading (Half)Year

by Laura Sjoberg | 1 January, 2013 |

I read. Really, I do. In fact, I read alot. But most of the reading I do, I've figured out, is for one of two particular purposes. First, I read to review. The International Feminist Journal of Politics gets about 100 manuscripts a year, and I read about 30 books between the Oxford Series on Gender and IR and the New York University Press series on Gender and Political Violence. I do about 50 reviews per year for other journals and book publishers. I read stuff that my Ph.D. students are working on to make sure they are appropriately situated in the literature. Reading for reviews is largely...

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Liberalism all the way down? …. six hours on a plane with Judith Butler’s Frames of War

by Laura Sjoberg | 30 December, 2012 |

On a plane ride a couple of days ago, I picked up Judith Butler's Frames of War, perhaps a couple of years after I should have. Though there is a lot of the book that I disagreed with, reading it was a transformative experience. It is perhaps particularly relevant to the subject and content of Megan MacKenzie's latest post, given Butler's suggestion that "specific lives cannot be apprehended as injured or lost if they are not first apprehended as living" such that "if certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames,...

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(Another) Ugly Underside of the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

by Laura Sjoberg | 22 December, 2012 |

Today, the Human Rights Campaign celebrated the two-year anniversary of President Obama signing the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," a move that officially allowed lesbians, gays, and bisexuals to serve openly in the United States military. Soon after, I wrote a blog post suggesting that, while the policy was definitely an improvement on a military that forced people to hide their sexual identities, it obscured both the continued dominance of militarized masculinities in the American military and the continued linkage between militarism and full citizenship. In the afterglow of the repeal...

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Occupy APSA? The Queer Rights Version

by Laura Sjoberg | 26 August, 2012 |

If you order from Cafe Press on Amazon, tshirts can get delivered by Tuesday - in time to tell APSA that, even if you're going to the conference, you haven't forgotten that APSA is wrong on this issue. Sorry for the late announcement - my to-do list got a little backed up ...

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Where are the Women? Julian Assange Meets Todd Akin

by Laura Sjoberg | 25 August, 2012 |

The left (and even the semi-left) has been legitimately stewed in the past week or so about Todd Akin's remarks about rape. Akin is apparently under the impression that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape," thus simplifying the whole ugly and complicated abortion-as-a-result-of-rape debate. Others have showed what an asshole this guy is - I have no need to repeat that here. What I liked about the responses to the now-hopefully-unelectable Akin was that women and womanhood became front and center. I read narratives about women who had become pregnant from rape, who had babies and...

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“Having it all” and a (non-essentialist) feminist politics

by Laura Sjoberg | 23 June, 2012 |

Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent Atlantic article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," has stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the last couple of days. Dozens of my Facebook friends have posted and reposted it, and it has prompted many of them to reflect on their personal experiences with womanhood, femininity, parenting, and/or motherhood. Several students have asked me about the article and my opinions on it, and it seems to be stirring up debate and discussion wherever read. To me, that's the mark of a good article - that it inspires contemplation and argument. On top of that,...

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Feminist IR 101, Post #10, Feminist Scholarly Community

by Laura Sjoberg | 9 June, 2011 |

One of my favorite characterization of feminist theorizing is in Sarah Brown's 1988 Millennium article, where she calls feminist work "fundamentally a political act of commitment to understanding the world from a perspective of the socially subjugated" (p.472). From this and other reading in feminist theory and praxis, I've always seen feminism as not just an intellectual interest in gender as a force in global politics, but also as a politics of knowledge, and a politics of scholarship. As a politics of knowledge, to me, it is a commitment to multiple knowledges, perspective,...

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Feminist IR 101, Post #9, Transforming IR

by Laura Sjoberg | 5 June, 2011 |

Twenty years ago, Robert Keohane proclaimed that “feminist standpoint theory provides a particularly promising starting-point for the development of feminist international relations theory.” From the feminist side, Sandra Whitworth declared that “the next stage of international relations theory will not be one that is merely critical, but one which is critical and feminist.” Ann Tickner set upon a project to “de-gender” International Relations as a field.Even then, though, there were differences of opinions: Fred Halliday explained that “it is not as if consideration of gender will alter the...

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