Gregory Mitchell
Williams College, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Faculty Member
- Anthropology and Sexuality, Sex Work, Prostitution & Trafficking, Gender and Sexuality, Anthropology of Tourism, Brazilian Studies, and 16 moreLanguage and Sexuality, Intercultural Communication, Male Prostitution, Cultural Studies, Ethnographic Methods, Brazilian Political Economy, Brazilian Culture, Brazilian Foreign policy, Performance Ethnography, Brazilian History, Gender, Ethnography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Queer Theory, Sexuality, and Masculinitiesedit
- BIOGRAPHY Gregory is Chair and Associate Professor at Williams College in Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. He is... moreBIOGRAPHY
Gregory is Chair and Associate Professor at Williams College in Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. He is also affiliate faculty in the Department of Anthropology & Sociology. Previously, he was a senior visiting scholar serving as the ACLS Burkhardt Fellow in Gender & Sexuality Studies at Princeton University as well as a Bellagio Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation. He studies sex work, race, and discourses of sex trafficking as well as the effects of public policy approaches. At present, he is conducting research funded by the National Science Foundation to examine how states incentivize particular narratives and performances of nationalism in their attempts to police female sex workers, especially during global sporting events. His first book, Tourist Attractions: Performing Masculinity & Race in Brazil's Sexual Economy, is an ethnography of men who sell sex in several cities in Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
His second book, "Panics without Borders: Fallacious Spectacles, Global Sporting Events, and the Production of Sex Trafficking" (University of California Press, 2022 through its New Sexual Worlds Series.) It examines police violence against female sex workers during periods preceding mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics. In particular, it explores the overlapping interests of evangelical Christian groups, radical feminist organizations, neoliberal business developers, and corrupt state security apparatuses. This book uses ethnography, including interviews with sex workers, politicians, activists, policy makers, and intelligence officials to examine nationalistic spectacles deployed during such events.
His research has been published in GLQ, American Ethnologist, SAQ, Brasiliana: A Journal of Brazilian Studies, PLURAL (Universidade de São Paulo-Sociology), The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and The Wagadu Journal of Transnational Feminist Studies, as well as in many edited volumes in Brazil and the United States. Recent and upcoming lecture venues include Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, McGill University, Oberlin College, Amherst College, University of Denver, UC-Santa Barbara, UT-Austin, University of Wyoming, Rice University, Northwestern University, and Cambridge University.
He holds his PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, from which he also received a PhD Certificate and served as a Mellon Fellow in Gender Studies. While there, he also received the Presidential Fellowship and membership in the Society of Fellows, that university's highest honor for doctoral researchers. He also holds a masters in social science (focusing on Cultural Anthropology) from the University of Chicago. He also holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Illinois State University.
Gregory has received awards from the NSF, ACLS, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and three times from American Anthropological Association. He also received the Lila Heston Award for Performance Studies and an award for outstanding graduate research from the National Professional Association of Communication Arts & Sciences. In 2010, he was inducted into the prestigious Faculty Honor Roll for excellence in teaching at Northwestern. At Williams, students awarded him a 2015 Faculty Accessibility Award. Current and past courses include Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, Foundations in Sexuality Studies, Performing Masculinity, Queer of Color Critique, Sexual Economies, Gay Male Subcultures, Queer Linguistics, and Queer Ethnographic Writing. Prior to entering the academy, he worked in public policy development for the Chicago Board of Education and also in domestic and family violence intervention services.edit - E. Patrick Johnson (Chair), Don Kulick, Mary Weismantel, Ramón Rivera-Servera, Soyini Madisonedit
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“A Camel Walks into a Brothel, Or: Passing Anxieties in Brazil’s Sexual Economies.” Sex: Ethnographic Encounters. Eds. Richard Joseph Martin and Dieter Haller. Bloomsbury Press. 2018.
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(Email author for English version.)
Research Interests:
40.000 Garotas Desaparecidas: Espetáculo Falacioso, Políticas Sexuais Fora da Ordem e Violência Policial no Rio de Janeiro/40,000 Missing Girls: Fallacious Spectacle, Unruly Sexual Politics, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro. (Portuguese Version. Email gcm1@williams.edu for English version.)more
Brasiliana: Journal of Brazilian Studies. Vol 4. No 2. 2016. 372-410.
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GLQ. 22.3. 2016.
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University of Chicago Press (2016)
Padrinhos gringos: turismo sexual, parentesco queer e as famílias do futuro. Gênero, sexo, amor e dinheiro: mobilidades transnacionais envolvendo o Brasil. Eds. Adriana Piscitelli, Glaucia de Oliveira Assis, e José Miguel Nieto Olivar. Coleção Encontros. Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero. UNICAMP 2012.more