Scholar Jennifer Tyburczy will deliver a talk on her book “Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) on Thursday, March 24, at 5 p.m. in Life Sciences Building 001. A reception and book signing will follow.

The talk is free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Garage.

In “Sex Museums,” Tyburczy takes a hard look at museums as sites of civic struggles over how sex relates to public space, genealogies of taste and beauty and performances of sexual identity. She analyzes how museums have historically approached the collection and display of the material culture of sex, which poses complex moral, political and logistical dilemmas for the Western museum. She also imagines queer curatorship for exhibiting diverse sexualities in the 21st century.

Tyburczy is an assistant professor of feminist studies and director of the LGBTQ minor at the University of California Santa Barbara. In addition to her work as a teacher and a writer, she is also a performance artist and curator. Based on her research for “Sex Museums,” she curated the 2015 exhibition “Irreverent: A Celebration of Censorship” for the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, for which she was awarded the 2016 Allan Bérubé Prize.

Tyburczy’s talk is co-sponsored by the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, School of Design, graduate program in museum studies, and School of Art; the College of Arts and Sciences’ LGBT studies program and Department of Women's and Gender Studies; and the LGBT Resource Center.

For more information about the talk, contact the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at 315-443-2308.