Kahan Awarded 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship
April 15, 2020
BATON ROUGE 鈥� Dr. Benjamin Kahan, associate professor in the 海角社区 Department of English and in the Women鈥檚, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program, was awarded a for 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the on April 8, 2020.
Dr. Benjamin Kahan, associate professor in the 海角社区 Department of English and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program
鈥淲e congratulate Dr. Benjamin Kahan on his selection for this prestigious honor. We鈥檙e
proud of his accomplishments and we鈥檙e honored to have him as part of our 海角社区 Family,鈥�
said 海角社区 Interim President Tom Galligan.
From a group of almost 3,000 applicants, Kahan is one of 175 scholars, artists, and writers selected in the Foundation鈥檚 ninety-sixth competition. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, he represents the humanities in the field of literary criticism.
From a group of almost 3,000 applicants, Kahan is one of 175 scholars, artists, and writers selected in the Foundation鈥檚 ninety-sixth competition. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, he represents the humanities in the field of literary criticism.
鈥淭o hold a Guggenheim Fellowship is the stuff of dreams. So many of the queer writers
and artists that I鈥檝e written about and taught - Marianne Moore, James Baldwin, W.
H. Auden are former Fellows. So many of the scholars that built the field of sexuality
studies - Henry Abelove, Valerie Traub, David Halperin, Lauren Berlant - are former
winners. At a time when the humanities and arts are underappreciated and underfunded,
the Guggenheim stands as a cultural bulwark, fostering humanistic inquiry and artistic
creativity. It is an organization that recognizes the life-affirming, sustenance-giving,
enduring value of the humanities. It is a truly humbling honor to be part of this
legacy and to help make it newly vital. But more than that, I hope that this award
will help to solidify and underline the importance of politically activist fields
like sexuality studies and other identity-knowledge fields,鈥� said Kahan.
As part of the competition, Kahan submitted plans for a project on his creative work
that will be the focus of his Guggenheim Fellowship. His book, titled Sexual Aim and Its Misses, begins with a provocation, asking 鈥渋s it possible that historians of sexuality have
failed to recognize half of the system that organizes modern sexuality?鈥� Answering
affirmatively, this book offers a history and theory of 鈥渟exual aim,鈥� arguing that
aim furnishes a constitutive and almost wholly forgotten governing logic of sexuality.
Sigmund Freud coins the term 鈥渟exual aim鈥� to describe 鈥渕odes of gratification鈥� 鈥� the
sexual acts in which one finds pleasure: kissing, copulation, voyeurism, exhibitionism,
sadism, masochism, fetishism, etc. He understands aim as one of two elements that
compose sexual desire with the other element being the 鈥渟exual object,鈥� or the person
from whom attraction emanates. While for Freud desire is composed of object (the person
to whom you are attracted) and aim (what you want to do with/to them), historians
of sexuality have conceptualized our sexual system almost exclusively in terms of
object (organized by the poles of hetero and homosexuality). This book seeks to redress
this omission, contending that while sexual object choice functions as sexuality鈥檚
dominant and public face, sexual aim plays a more private and less prominent role,
but one that is essential to understanding the history of modern sexuality.
鈥淒r. Kahan has amply demonstrated the 鈥榚xceptional capacity for productive scholarship鈥�
that is the criteria for the Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has already received
national and international recognition, and this award will cement his reputation
as one of the nation鈥檚 leading scholars in sexuality studies,鈥� said Dr. Joseph Kronick,
chair of the 海角社区 Department of English. 鈥淥n behalf of my colleagues in the English
Department, I heartily congratulate him for receiving this distinguished honor.鈥�
Prior to joining 海角社区, Kahan held postdoctoral fellowships at Washington University
in St. Louis, Emory University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Sydney,
the National Humanities Center, and the Reed Foundation. He is the author of Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (Duke, 2013) and The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality (Chicago, 2019). He is also the editor of Heinrich Kaan鈥檚 鈥淧sychopathia Sexualis鈥� (1884): A Classic Text in the History of Sexuality (Cornell, 2016), The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature (under contract with Cambridge), and a co-editor of Theory Q, a book series from Duke University Press.
鈥淭his is an outstanding accomplishment for Dr. Kahan, and it speaks to his exceptional
scholarship,鈥� said Troy Blanchard, dean of the College of Humanities & Social Sciences.
鈥淭his is an extraordinary opportunity for Kahan to further his research and expand
on his exemplary career.鈥�
Kahan鈥檚 areas of research interest include the history of sexuality, American literature,
and international modernism.
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Contact Sarah Gaar Keller
海角社区 College of Humanities & Social Sciences
225-578-6906
Ernie Ballard
海角社区 Media Relations
225-578-5684