Dr Sophie Lewis
IAS Annual Theme: Gestation
Independent Scholar (visiting at Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
Sophie Lewis is a writer and independent scholar living in Philadelphia as an Anglo-Franco-German transplant. Her marxist-transfeminist essays (including viral analyses of octopus documentaries and other wannabe-heterosexual televisual artifacts), have been published in journals (Paragraph, Signs, Feminist Theory, Dialogues in Human Geography), magazines (n+1, the LRB, Boston Review, Harper’s) and newspapers (the New York Times).
Sophie is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019), hailed by Donna Haraway as “the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for.” Her second book, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, was published by Salvage Editions in 2022. As a member of the faculty of Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, Sophie teaches courses on social theory, queer feminist politics and antiwork philosophy, online and open to all. Previously, Dr. Lewis studied English Literature (BA) and Nature, Society and Environmental Policy (MSc) at Oxford University; Politics (MA) at the New School for Social Research; and Geography (PhD) at Manchester University.
With the “Out of the Woods” writing collective, Lewis co-authored the collection Hope Against Hope: Writings on Ecological Crisis (Common Notions, 2020). As an editor at Blind Field Journal (2017-2021), Sophie helped foster communities of feminist cultural criticism. Now a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research on Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies, Sophie is nevertheless a freelance writer sustained by a Patreon. Currently, she is working on a book for Haymarket on “enemy feminisms.”
During their IAS Fellowship, Dr Lewis is collaborating with Dr Pandora Syperek from Loughborough University London.