Laura Cayen
Assistant Professor
Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
BAH (Windsor), MA, PhD (Western)
Office: Lawson Hall 3233
Phone: 519-661-2111 ext 82794
lcayen2@uwo.ca
I hold a BA from the University of Windsor and an MA and PhD in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (formerly Women’s Studies and Feminist Research) from Western. My PhD thesis, “’In the end, it’s your pleasure that’s on the line’: Postfeminist, healthist, and neoliberal discourses in online sexual health information”, was supported by a SSHRC CGS Doctoral Award. In my current research, I collaborate with PI Jessica Polzer to examine how people engage with menstrual and fertility self-tracking apps.
Undergraduate Teaching
Currently on a teaching-intensive appointment with Western, I have taught our department’s Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies course since 2015. This course is the most exciting to teach because it invites students to reflect on their personal (gendered, raced, classed…) location in society and address the issues they think are most in need of activism or change. I am supported by a Fellowship in Teaching Innovation from Western’s Centre for Teaching and Learning for a project developing “screenshot elicitation” as critical pedagogy in a new course called Gendered Blood: Critical Menstrual Studies and won the 2023 Faculty of Arts and Humanities Teaching Excellence Award.
Some of the courses I’ve taught most recently include:
- GSWS 1020 Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies
- GSWS 2273 Sexual Subjects
- GSWS 3440 Gendered Blood: Critical Menstrual Studies
- GSWS 3153 Bad Girls: Sexual Dissidence in Popular Culture
Graduate Teaching and Supervision
My graduate teaching includes our Feminist Methodologies course (GSWS 9464). I supervise Master’s students conducting discourse or other analyses of digital and social media in the areas of health, sexuality, subjectivity, and representation.
I have supervised over 40 new and seasoned Teaching Assistants and am thrilled to lend mentorship, support, and solidarity to TAs and other contract or contingent faculty.
Select Presentations and Publications
Publications
Cayen, L. (In progress). “My actions constituted a possible career risk”: A Culture Jam of Experiential Learning and Performance-Based Funding. Revisions submitted July 2023.
Polzer, J., Sui, A., Ge, K. and Cayen, L. (2022). Empowerment through participatory surveillance? Menstrual and fertility self-tracking apps as postfeminist biopedagogies. In Fellows, J. and Smith, L. (Eds.), Gender, Sex, and Tech! An Intersectional Feminist Guide. Canadian Scholars and Women’s Press.
Potvin, J. and Cayen, L. (2023). Plan International’s Digital Empowerment Campaign: Unlocking Healthy Futures for Girls? Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16(2).
Polzer, J., Cayen, L., and Molinaro, M. (2020). The shifting politics of health in Canada: Papanicolaou (Pap) screening, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, and cervical cancer prevention. In Manon Tremblay & Joanna Everit (Eds.) Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics (pp. 485-506). Palgrave MacMillan.
Cayen, L., Polzer, J., & Knabe, S. (2016). Tween girls, human papillomavirus (HPV) and the deployment of female sexuality in English-speaking Canadian magazines. In Jessica Polzer and Elaine Power (Eds.) Neoliberal Governance and Health: Duties, Risks and Vulnerabilities (pp. 82-107). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Presentations and Panels
Cayen, L., Polzer, J., & Wiley, J. (Nov 2023). 'Not Just Bleeding': Narrative negotiations of empowerment and surveillance among cis and nonbinary menstrual trackers [Conference Presentation]. Society for Social Studies of Science, Honolulu, HI, United States.
Cayen, L. (April 2022). “This will definitely inspire my activism in the future”: A Culture Jam of Experiential Learning. Paper presented at Fostering Partnerships in Pedagogy. 13th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference, University of Waterloo.
Cayen, L. (April 2022). Repunctuate Your Life: Empowerment Through Period-Tracking Apps. Paper presented for Menstruation REDefined, youth-led menstrual equity non-profit. Invited.
Evoy, J., Prest, D., Baada, J., & Snooks, G. (March 2021). In L. Cayen (Chair), Interviews as Feminist Methodology: Graduate Experiences from the Field. Round Table conducted at Western University, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Invited.
Potvin, J. and Cayen, L. (June 2019). Unlocking Digital Futures for Girls: Healthism, Postfeminism and Futurity in Plan International’s Digital Empowerment Campaign. Paper presented by J. Potvin at Women’s and Gender Studies, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Cayen, L. (February 2018). “Adjust your level of mental desire”: Sexual imperatives in online sexual health information. Guest Speaker Series at Lakehead University, Department of Women’s Studies. Invited.
Cayen, L. (May 2017). Queering Sexual Health: Discourses of responsibility for marginalized youth in online sexual health information. Paper presentation at Sexuality Studies Association Conference at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ryerson.
Cayen, L. (May 2016). Risky Pleasures: Feminist critical discourse analysis of online sexual health information. Paper presentation at Moving Forward: Identities, sexting, schooled bodies, and the curriculum that frames us. International Symposium at Western University, Faculty of Education.
