Koda Sokol

Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies

Education

  • Ph.D. University of California Santa Cruz
  • M.Ed. Harvard University
  • B.A. Brown University

Areas of Expertise

  • Trans studies
  • Affect theory
  • Subjecthood and power

Background

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2025-2027 term, and I am excited to be teaching courses on gender theory, trans studies, queer crip studies, and anticolonial feminist theory. 

As a teacher, I love to support students in confidently theorizing their own experiences of gendered subjecthood and identifying themselves within landscapes of power and (in)justice. In the classroom, this means putting critical social theory in conversation with students' personal knowledges to collectively wrestle with complex questions about social change. 

In my research, I apply an intersectional feminist lens to study transness, emotions, and identity. Focusing on how people feel and what we long for, my research analyzes what affectively tethers us to violent norms and structures, and by consequence, how we might work towards untethering and living otherwise. 

My dissertation, for example, examines the central role that victimhood plays in contemporary US trans politics through three case studies: the online subculture of xenogender communities, the right-wing panic about trans contagion, and trans Jewish organizing in the anti-Zionist movement. 

I have also written about dance as a metaphorical framework for gender transition, the transness of racialized swamp ecologies, intra-trans desire and contagion, and queer and trans youth of color organizing.