Rebekah Sheldon

Rebekah Sheldon is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington with an affiliate appointment in Gender Studies. She actively engages in teaching, research, and community-building initiatives across the university and Bloomington community. Sheldon directs the Cultural Studies program and co-curates the Culture Nights lecture series at The Bishop Bar, creating spaces for critical public conversation beyond traditional academic settings.

Her educational background includes a Ph.D. from the City University of New York, Graduate Center (2010) and a B.A. from Rutgers University (2002).

Sheldon's research focuses on feminist, queer, and trans science fiction studies alongside occult studies. Her work explores how speculative fiction engages with ecological anxiety, posthumanism, and the future. She investigates the intersections of magic, scholarship, and critical theory, arguing for scholarship itself as a form of magical practice. Her research examines how marginalized communities use speculative forms to reimagine futures under conditions of crisis, with particular attention to gender, sexuality, and ecological transformation.

Sheldon's publications demonstrate consistent engagement with how speculative fiction helps process contemporary crises, particularly ecological anxiety and social transformation. Her work moves across literary theory, cultural studies, and critical theory to examine the political and philosophical dimensions of science fiction and related genres, revealing how these forms help us reimagine possibilities for the future.

• Co-founded the Science Fiction Research Collective in 2014
• Created and curates Culture Nights lecture series since 2022
• Director of Cultural Studies program at Indiana University

Sheldon directs the Cultural Studies program and has organized numerous speaker series including Planetary Futures, Queer Methods, and Occult Natures. These initiatives reflect her commitment to creating interdisciplinary spaces where critical theory meets public engagement, fostering dialogue between academic scholarship and community concerns through accessible public programming.