Cedar Lensing-Sharp,

Lensing-Sharp’s research investigates comparative queer and trans literatures in German and French, focusing on scientific, literary, and autobiographical texts from the 19th and 20th centuries. Their work explores queer and trans modes of desiring and self-fashioning through aesthetic and literary expression. Lensing-Sharp aims to put feminist theory, queer theory, and trans studies in conversation when we read narratives of gender non-conformity, with particular interest in expanding ways of reading of queer and trans lives before 19th-century sexology.

Fields of interest include women’s writing/écriture feminine, queer theory, reparative reading, lesbian literature, German and French literatures, reimagining literary canons, trans life writing and literature, sexology, queer and trans approaches to the Weimar era, translation theory and practice, and film.

Lensing-Sharp’s book manuscript, tentatively titled Erotic Epistemologies: Knowledge Production in Lesbian Novels Against Sexology, investigates the production of knowledge about female homosexuality in German and French sexological case studies and lesbian novels at the turn of the 20th century. The book argues that both sexologists and lesbian authors mobilized a blend of narrative stylization and empirical argumentation to shape both expert and popular notions of lesbian sexuality and gender.

Summer Institute on Evidence-Based Teaching, UCLA (July 2026)

Preparing Future Faculty: Designing Courses Through the Lens of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), UC Berkeley (Spring 2024)

Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times Award, UC Berkeley (2020-21)