Psychological Studies
Intersex International

Monday 8 December 2-3:30 EST

On Intersex Joy

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Introduction: Celeste Orr & Casey Burkholder

Speakers

Christopher Breu

Tori Dudys
Fabián Giménez Gatto
Cary Gabriel Costello

Sean Saifa Wall

Casey Burkholder (she/her) is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Social Justice in Youth and Child Studies and an Associate Professor at Concordia University and the director of the JOYLab: the Queer & Joyful Worldmaking Lab. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance & activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production, queer joy, and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with 2SLGBTQ+ youth, adults, elders and teachers. She is the co-founder of the Fredericton Feminist Film Collective, and is the PI of Pride/Swell+ and SexualityNB.

Celeste E. Orr (they/them) is an Associate Professor in Sociology, the Wendy J. Robbin Professor in Gender & Women's Studies, and the Director of the Gender & Women's Studies Program at the University of New Brunswick. Orr’s research broadly concerns intersex studies, disability studies, and queer studies. Orr is the author of Cripping Intersex (UBC Press 2022), which was awarded a 2024 Canada Prize from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Cripping Intersex investigates how intersex and interphobia intersect with disability and ableism. Orr and Casey Burkholder are the co-editors of a forthcoming special issue for Feminist Theory titled, "On Intersex Joy."

Christopher Breu (he/they) is Professor of English at Illinois State University, where he teaches classes in contemporary literature and culture, cultural and critical theory, and gender and sexuality. He is author of In Defense of Sex: Nonbinary Embodiment and Desire (Fordham, 2025); Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics (Minnesota, 2014), Hard-Boiled Masculinities (Minnesota, 2005), and co-editor of Noir Affect (Fordham, 2020). He is currently working on a new monograph entitled The Infrastructural Unconscious: Atavism, Prometheanism, Mapping, Mutation.

Cary Gabriel Costello (ze or he) is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of LGBTQ+ Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Costello's research and teaching focus on sex/gender/sexuality, the embodiment of intersectional identity, and the regulation of these phenomena via medicine, law, and technology. Costello is intersex by birth, a gestational father, and married to an intersex woman who transitioned from the inappropriate sex assigned her at birth, as he did as well. You can find Costello’s public educational blogs at https://intersexroadshow.blogspot.com, https://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/, and https://asociologicaleye.blogspot.com.

Fabián Giménez Gatto (he/they) holds a PhD in Philosophy. Professor at the Faculty of Arts at the Autonomous University of Querétaro (México), where he is responsible of the “Anthropology of the Body and Visual Culture” Academic Research Group, professor of the Master's Program in Gender Studies, and coordinator of a permanent seminar on critical intersex studies (Seminario Intersex). Since 2022, he has collaborated on the Brújula Intersexual project, coordinated by Laura Inter. He currently coordinates, together with Mauro Cabral, the project Critical Studies of Intersexuality in Latin America (Estudios Críticos de la Intersexualidad en Latinoamérica).

Sean Saifa Wall (he/him/his) is a Black queer intersex activist and rising scholar. Born and raised in the Bronx, Saifa attended Williams College and received his PhD as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Huddersfield in England. He is co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, an initiative by intersex people of colour to challenge medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children and young adults and is now collaborating on another initiative emerging from IJP, Strategy Lab for Intersex Movements or SLIM. In addition to his work and activism, Saifa is a loving dad to his dog, Justice.

Tori Dudys (she/her) is a recent graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Feminist and Gender Studies Master’s program. Dudys researches sexuality and sexual health education with a specific focus on pleasure activism, stigma, shame, and STI education.

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