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

Mobile Duck: Wireless for War?

by Laura Sjoberg | 6 October, 2010 |

I am going to try to keep this short, because the function to split the page is not available in this browser ...what browser, you ask? Safari for IPad, I'll tell you.I've decided to make this my first IPad post in part because I was itching to try it, but also because it seemed fitting for it's subject matter...a talk that Peter W. Singer gave at ISA-West in Los Angeles on September 25 on his book,Wired for War. So I thought I would write about Wired for War wirelessly. Funny, right? Maybe I should keep my day job. Maybe.Ok, my thought about this talk and the book is relatively...

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The Local is Global

by Laura Sjoberg | 12 September, 2010 |

For those of you who do not know, I live in Gainesville, Florida, a college town in Northeast Florida with lots of wonderful things - like a great bunch of colleagues, a great bunch of graduate students, weather to write home about, and a (frequently) rocking football team. It is (largely) a fairly politically progressive place, but there's still good country music - a great home to mix my Southern roots and lefty-academic tendencies. It is also, however, the place where the "Qu'ran burning" almost happened, and (thankfully) didn't. But that didn't stop it from causing deaths all the way...

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I wonder if he’s got facebook?

by Laura Sjoberg | 23 August, 2010 |

A former Israeli soldier posted pictures on facebook of herself with Palestinian prisoners who were tied up and blindfolded. In a photo album called "The Army ...The Most Beautiful Time of My Life," Eden Abergil posted these pictures and responded to friends' comments. One is particularly striking: a facebook friend of Abergil's commented that she looked sexy in the pictures. Abergil responded: Yeah I know lol honey. What a day it was. Look how he completes my picture. I wonder if he’s got Facebook!I wonder if he's got a facebook. I wonder if he's got a facebook. Really? Certainly, problems...

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The Oceanic Conference on International Studies (and Finally, Some Thoughts on Feminist Method)

by Laura Sjoberg | 8 July, 2010 |

I spent the last week at the Oceanic Conference for International Studies (OCIS) in Auckland, New Zealand, a conference that was something of a luxury for me in that I had no leadership responsibilities, and got to be in a beautiful city I'd never been to literally on the other side of the world. While zorbing and bungee jumping would normally be the highlight of such a trip, actually, the Conference was. I didn't know what to expect at first; after all, this was a regional conference far outside of my region - would there be any work of interest to me? I was pleasantly surprised on a number...

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RIP, Home

by Laura Sjoberg | 8 June, 2010 |

I don't have a lot to say intellectually about the BP oil spill... others can do that perhaps more coherently. But between Hurricane Ivan and the oil washing up, the town I grew up in ...well, is a very different place. There's a sense of decenteredness that comes with that, and I got to thinking ...maybe that's just a small little piece of what a lot of people in conflict zones and disaster areas feel every day. Maybe. So even in the decenteredness ... I'm pretty lucky.

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“Disappearing” Intersex, Trans, and Genderqueer Persons

by Laura Sjoberg | 29 May, 2010 |

Though it has been in the works for a while, in recent months the TSA has implemented its "Secure Flight" program, where it assumes responsibility for those on "Don't Fly" and "Extra Search" lists. The catch? It does so by asking passengers for extra information when they book their tickets. You might have noticed this on airplane ticket purchases in recent months - you are asked for three pieces of information: your name, your birthday, and your "gender" (by which the TSA actually means sex). You can enter your name and your birthday, but then you have to select your "gender" from a...

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Young men who don’t have anyone to screw blow themselves up?

by Laura Sjoberg | 10 May, 2010 |

While I am generally respectful of the journal International Security's clear effort to publish more gender-related work, Bradley Thayer and Valerie Hudson, in "Sex and the Shaheed" have managed to write about gender while missing the conceptual foundations and research insights of decades of work in feminism, gender, and IR. This article ranges from factually partial at best and inaccurate at worst. It focuses on male suicide terrorists when a significant percentage of suicide terrorists are women. It treats the Middle East as if it were a "real" region and homogenous in respect to...

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Reading Andrea Dworkin to Write Feminist IR?

by Laura Sjoberg | 18 April, 2010 |

"I wasn't raped until I was almost ten which is pretty good it seems when I ask around because many have been touched but are afraid to say .... I couldn't tell how many hands he had and people from earth only had two ... You get asked if anything happened and you say well yes he put his hand here and he rubbed me ...and he scared me ...you say the almost-ten-year-old version of f*ck you something happened alright the f*ck he put his hands in my legs and rubbed me all over ...and they say, just so long as nothing happened" (Andrea Dworkin, Mercy, p.11)My first feminist mentors were in the...

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Smashing as Feminist Practice?

by Laura Sjoberg | 5 April, 2010 |

All of five minutes after I posted thoughts from a conference I am currently at , a "response" (in scare quotes because that's a charitable characterization) was posted on American Power called "13 year-old smashes post-colonial feminism". My response here comes little slower (because I value intellectual conversation, and am trying to participate in it both at the conference and in this discussion), but I thought it was important to talk about some of these issues. As I have to wade through the gender-exploitative pictures on the blog to read the text, I think I'll start at the end and work...

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The Ethics of State Involvement in Women’s Health

by Laura Sjoberg | 5 April, 2010 |

I have been fortunate to be a part of a number of interesting conversations over the last few weeks, and am currently attending the conference linked above, hosted by the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, the University of Southern California Global Health Institute, and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Conversations are centering around global norms and international agreements on women's health, health aid, human trafficking, economic empowerment, violence and war, and medicine distribution. These conversations are extremely...

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