Peak Academic Absurdity Unlocked

The Trump crusade to punish universities hasn't gone far enough

As first I thought this article from the Journal of Lesbian Studies had to be another hoax in the mold of Alan Sokal’s famous “physics is socially constructed” essay in Social Text, or the more recent Lindsay/Pluckrose/Beghossian hoax articles from a few years back. But no: this is real:

The full article is—would you believe it?—behind a paywall, so you’ll need to fork out $56 to get a complete copy, or subscribe to the Journal of Lesbian Studies. I think I’ll pass, and thus I won’t be able to figure out why the author left AI out of the picture.

Is the author, Chloe Diamond-Lenow, for real? Yes they is. They is/are an assistant professor of gender studies at SUNY/Onoanta, described on the department webpage as follows:

Dr. Diamond-Lenow (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Study. She has a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara, an MSc in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her BA in the Study of Women and Gender from Smith College.

Their research and teaching interests include feminist and queer theory, race and empire, cultural studies, postcolonial animal studies, feminist pedagogy, and embodiment. Her book project in-progress “Boundary Affects: Race, Sex, and Species in U.S. Empire,” analyzes the racialized borders of humanity and animality and frames of heteropatriarchal nationalisms in U.S. militarism during the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the “war on terror,” with particular attention to dogs. Their work has been published in The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect, The Journal of Intercultural Studies, Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies, and is forthcoming in the Global Journal of Animal Law.

She teaches courses including: Feminist Theories; Queer Theory; Women of Color Feminisms; Queer Cinema; Introduction to Queer Studies; Feminist and Queer Theories of the Non/Human; and Gender, Power, and Difference.