Laura Ciolkowski

Laura Ciolkowski

Senior Lecturer, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Laura Ciolkowski’s teaching and research interests include gender & sexuality studies, feminist pedagogies, social justice movements, literary and cultural theory, the literature and theory of mass incarceration, and sexual and gender-based violence.  Her work has been published in a range of journals, including: Twentieth Century LiteratureStudies in the NovelGenders;Novel: A Forum on FictionPublic Books; and Victorian Literature and Culture. Her "Rape Culture Syllabus," published inPublic Books, was widely shared and circulated by scholars and activists across the country.  In addition to her scholarly research, Laura is a writer and book critic whose articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker Magazine, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, theInternational Herald Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Laura has taught a wide range of WGSS courses over the last 15+ years as a faculty member at Columbia University, where she was also Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Laura is especially interested in and passionate about prison education and, as a faculty member at the Center for Justice at Columbia, she taught humanities and WGSS courses at Taconic Correctional Facility, a medium security women’s prison in Bedford, NY, in a program for incarcerated students pursuing a college degree.

Laura received her PhD and MA in Literature from Brown University and graduated from Columbia University, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, with a BA in English and Comparative Literature.

Working Group Affiliation

Reframing Gendered Violence