Simon D. Elin Fisher

Biography

I am a doctoral candidate in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a contract lecturer in the History Department at Ryerson University (Toronto, Ontario). My work on African American gender non-conforming civil rights and feminist activist Pauli Murray has been published in Journal of African American History, Transgender Studies Quarterly, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, and on the podcast BackStory. My research focuses on the intersectional histories of sexuality, gender, race, and social movements in the 20th-century United States. I live in Toronto, Ontario, with my partner and kiddo.

M.A., University of Chicago
B.A., DePaul University

• Gender and Women’s History

• “Welcomed to the Spectacle: Looking at the Working Class, the Self-acting Machines, and the Indian Court at the Great Exhibition of 1851”

• “Queer Intimacies, Nonviolence, and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement”

• Fisher, Simon D. Elin. “Pauli Murray,” in SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies. SAGE Publishing, 2021.
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin. Contributor. “Fighting Jane Crow: The Multifaceted Life and Legacy of Pauli Murray.” Backstory. 2020 Mar 20. https://www.backstoryradio.org/shows/pauli-murray/
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin. “Challenging Dissemblance in Pauli Murray Historiography, Sketching a History of the Trans New Negro,” Journal of African American History, 104.2 (2019).
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin, Ido Katri, and Rasheedah Phillips, eds., Somatechnics – Trans Temporalities [special issue], 7.1 (2017).
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin, Ido Katri, and Rasheedah Phillips, “Introduction: Trans Temporalities,” Somatechnics – Trans Temporalities [special issue], 7.1 (2017).
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin. Review of The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice, by Patricia Bell Scott, QED, 3.3 (2017).
• Fisher, Simon D. Elin. “Pauli Murray’s Peter Panic: Perspectives from the Margins of Race and Gender in Jim Crow America,” Transgender Studies Quarterly, 3.1 (2016).
• Fisher, Simon. Review of Our Minds on Freedom: Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana, 1924-1967, by Shannon Frystak, The Coordinating Council for Women in History Newsletter, 46.2 (May 2015): 12-13.
• Johnson, S., C. Hommerding, S. Fisher, and J. Lanner-Cusin, “Queer Wests: A Historiographical Conversation.” Western History Association Newsletter, Spring 2013.

• Vilas Conference Travel Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellowship, Finalist
• Vilas Research Travel Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• George L. Mosse Graduate Fellowship in LGBT History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• History Department Pre-dissertator Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Department Dissertator Research Travel Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social Science Research Council
• LGBT Campus Center Fund, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Organization of American Historians 2014-present
• Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality 2015-present
• Canadian Committee on Women’s History 2015-present

• HIS 854 – African American History (2019)
  Ryerson University (Adjunct Professor)
• Writing Skills Initiative (2015-present)
  Ryerson University, Faculty of Community Service
• JUS 362 – LGBT Issues and Politics (2011)
  Northeastern Illinois University (Adjunct Professor)
• ENG 098 “Foundational Writing” 2010-2011
  Chicago City Colleges – Daley College (Adjunct Professor)
• 25 Years of U.S. Feminism (2009)
  Chicago Freedom School (Instructor)