Our graduate student Jeff Feng has just received the Bailey Award from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for his paper "Eco-queer: queering environmental politics and greening queer politics" presented at the 2019 APSA meeting.

The Bailey Award recognizes the best paper on LGBT issues at the previous year's annual conference. Congratulations and way to go, Jeff!

Abstract of paper:  Whereas the mainstream lesbian and gay movement’s collective identity revolved around such issues like gay marriage and military service, the landscape today is different. We know relatively little about the ramifications of new agenda setting efforts and the politicization of queerness in environmental spaces. This research explores the efforts of eco-queer activists and queer-identified activists in the environmental movement to unpack the ways in which linking together disparate movements, through discursive narratives, agenda setting, or identity constructions, articulates a new sexual politics. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists and field notes from informal gatherings in the Bay Area, I present a range of perspectives on queering the environmental movement and analyze how and when queer identities are mobilized on the individual, organizational, and movement levels. I argue that eco-queer and environmental justice activists and organizations challenge what counts as “queer” or “environmental” and act as bridges between the environmental and queer movements, but vary in their ideological commitments, with some uncritically adopting the strategies and tactics of the mainstream LGBTQ movement. These gradations of queering, mainstream vs. radical, complicate the development of a strong, intersectional coalitional politics.