Roderick Ferguson

Roderick Ferguson holds the William Robertson Coe Professorship in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and is Professor of American Studies and Black Studies at Yale University, where he chairs the WGSS department within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His work critically interrogates intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and institutional power, particularly in university contexts and social movements.

His research centers on women of color feminism, queer of color critique, critical university studies, and social theory, examining how minority differences are managed through pedagogical and institutional frameworks. This includes analyzing cultural politics and the depoliticization of identity within academic and activist spaces.

Ferguson’s publications reveal consistent thematic evolution from foundational queer of color theory in Aberrations in Black (2004) toward contemporary analyses of student activism in We Demand (2017) and neoliberal critiques in One-Dimensional Queer (2019). His scholarship bridges African American studies, gender studies, and critical university studies through interdisciplinary lenses.