Jayne Swift earns Ph.D. in Feminist Studies
Jayne Swift (’10), a member of the Master of Arts in Cultural Studies’ inaugural cohort, graduated with her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies in August 2019. Swift’s dissertation, Lusty Ladies: Sex Work and Sex-Positive Politics, 1970-2013, analyzes the history and politics of sex-positivity through a cultural history of sex worker social movements in the late 20th-century United States. Drawing on the Lusty Lady theater (a recently closed, legal commercial sex franchise that was located in Seattle and San Francisco), Lusty Ladies demonstrates that sex-positivity was a critical part of labor organizing by sex workers. A public-facing scholar, Swift has worked as a producer for the non-profit podcast Sexing History and is one of the organizers of the Minneapolis chapter of the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project. Learn more about her scholarship.
In the words of Kari Lerum, Swift's Cultural Studies capstone advisor: "Jayne's intellectual work in the M.A. in Cultural Studies was exciting to witness as a precursor to her dissertation. Now with her Ph.D. fresh in hand, Jayne's research has already made a contribution to the field of sexuality studies and specifically, sex work studies."