Gabriel N. Rosenberg

Dr. Gabriel N. Rosenberg is an Associate Professor at Duke University, jointly appointed in the Department of History and the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies program. His research explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, political economy, and the global food system, with a focus on biopolitical and historical dimensions.

• Ph.D. in History, Brown University (2011)

Rosenberg’s research spans the history of agricultural youth programs like 4-H, the biopolitics of livestock breeding, and eugenic ideologies in food systems. His work often bridges cultural, political, and economic history, interrogating how state governance reshaped rural life through gendered and sexual frameworks.

Recent articles highlight trends in transnational animal mobilities, legal exemptions for industrial animal practices, and state-sponsored agricultural modernization. His 2025 collaboration in Osiris explores the legal and ecological dynamics of human-animal contact, while his 2021 review in Dissent critiques agribusiness’s sustainability claims.

• Agricultural History Society Prize
• Business History Conference Prize
• Yale Agrarian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
• American Philosophical Society François André Michaux Fund Fellowship
• University of Pittsburgh Early Career Fellowship

Rosenberg is currently working on two book projects, Purebred: Making Meat and Eugenics in the Modern United States and Bad Husband: The Sexual Ethics of Agriculture. He has also contributed to interdisciplinary volumes such as Gender: Animals and Queering the Countryside, and engaged in public intellectual work through essays in the Boston Globe and collaborative projects like Duke’s Transgender Studies & The Humanities initiative.