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Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, on leave for the 2025–2026 academic year

Jay Sosa is a political anthropologist and queer studies scholar working in Brazil and the United States and focusing on sexual governmentality, affect and aesthetics, and science and technology studies. He teaches classes on queer theory, global culture wars, pharmaceutic politics, citizenship and activism, and HIV/AIDS.

His first book, Brazil’s Sex Wars: The Aesthetics of Queer Activism in São Paulo (Texas 2024) is an ethnographic account of LGBT human rights advocacy and social movement activism in the context of increasing partisan debates over sexuality. Interpreting conflicts between advocates and opponents over LGBT+ rights as not just an ideological struggle but an aesthetic one, Brazil’s Sex Wars rethinks a style of politics that seems both utterly familiar and counterintuitive. Jay has also written about street protest, political sexism, and the production of hate crime statistics in Brazil.   

Jay’s second book project, The Idea of Poppers, combines interviews and archival research to tell the story of alkyl nitrite inhalants (poppers) in the U.S. from the 19th to 21st centuries. The book is part social history of a queer commodity and part conceptual inquiry into the agency of chemicals.

Jay is former co-chair of the , former visiting researcher at the , and currently a member of the . 

Jay Sosa headshot

Education

  • PhD, University of Chicago
  • MA, University of Chicago
  • BA, University of Michigan