Patrizia Gentile

Full Professor

• PhD (History), Queen’s University; MA (Carleton University), Canadian Studies; BA (History/Political Science) McGill University
• Email Patrizia Gentile

Research Interests

History of Sexuality; Queer History; Critical Sexuality Studies; Queer Theory; Critical Security and Surveillance Studies; archives; history of the body and nation (beauty contests); history of sport (focus on boxing); history of leather and kink communities

Cross-appointments (0-100%): Department of History; Department of Sociology; School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies; Department of Law and Legal Studies

Bio

Patrizia Gentile (she/her) is a Professor in the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation (FIST) and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) teaching in the Sexuality Studies (FIST) and Human Rights & Social Justice programs (IIS). Professor Gentile’s research is co-author of The Canadian War on Queer: National Security as Sexual Regulation (2010) with Dr. Gary Kinsman and the author of the Queen of the Maple Leaf: Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity (2020) which was nominated for the Canadian Historical Association Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize 2021. She is co-editor of two anthologies, We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles (2016) and ) Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History (2014) that feature chapters on sexuality, gender, nation, and bodies. Her current projects include a history of boxing, race, and sexuality in Canada, a digital archive hosting posters and pamphlets of the Ottawa-based Beaver Boxing Club, and a history of the leather and kink communities in Canada (1930s to 1990).

Selected Publications:

1. Patrizia Gentile. (forthcoming). “Rethinking inclusion and erasure of the leather and drag communities in the Canadian gay and lesbian movement during the 1970s,” in Bloombury Handbook of the History of World Sexualities, eds. Nina Kushner and Nicole von Germeten (London: Bloomsbury Press).
2. Patrizia Gentile. (forthcoming). “Ma vafanculo!: Killjoys, Epistemologies, and Writing Cultural History,” in Feminist Provocateur: Franca Iacovetta ed. by C. Carstairs et al. (University of Toronto Press) 
3. Patrizia Gentle. (2022). “Tears and Tiaras: Affect, Beauty Pageants, and Protest,” in Feeling Feminism: Activism, Affect, and Canada’s Second Wave, eds. Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, and Catherine Gidney, 120-138. (Vancouver: UBC Press).
4. Patrizia Gentile. (2020).  Queen of the Maple Leaf: Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity (UBC Press).
5. Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L.Pauline Rankin, eds. (2016) We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles.(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
6. Patrizia Gentile and Gary Kinsman. (2015). “National Security, Homonationalism, and the Making of the Neo-Liberal Queer,” in Queer Kaleidoscopes: Disturbing Canadian Homonationalisms, eds. OmiSoore H. Dryden & Suzanne Lenon, (Vancouver: UBC Press)
7. Patrizia Gentile and Jane Nicholas, eds. (2014) Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press)
8. Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile. (2010) The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).

Academic/Community Service

1. Co-coordinator (with Steven Maynard), Canadian Committee of the History of Sexuality (Canadian Historical Association professional committee)
2. Chair, Canadian Committee of Women’s and Gender History (Canadian Historical Association professional committee)