Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality
College of Arts and Sciences
Kaila Story is an assistant professor in UofL’s departments of women’s and gender studies and of Pan-African studies.
Her research examines the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality. She also is interested in exploring connections between the performance of identity and racialized body politics for African Diasporan women and men. Her previous work looked at the projected image of the black feminine body by examining four separate but related “Venus” figures through cultural imagery, popular media and discourse.
Her work has been published in the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences and Culture, a Journal of Pan-African Studies special edition and in the anthology “Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop and Feminism.”
Story has created and teaches courses about black lesbian lives and an introduction to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer studies. She also teaches courses in Pan-African studies and gender and public dialogue.
She earned her doctorate in African American studies, graduate certificate in women’s studies and her master’s degree in African American studies at Temple University. Her bachelor’s degree in women’s studies is from DePaul University, where she also received the bell hooks Academic Achievement Award. She was a graduate fellow of Temple’s Institute for Race and Social Thought.