Carolyn Dinshaw

Carolyn Dinshaw is senior program officer for Higher Learning.

Before joining Mellon, Carolyn was dean for the humanities at NYU and was named Julius Silver Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English. When she joined NYU, she was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and led the gender and sexuality studies program, developing a new, intersectional curriculum. Carolyn also helped found and was chair of the interdisciplinary department of social and cultural analysis. As a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, she was instrumental in the early development of LGBTQ studies. In her scholarly work, she has broken new ground in medieval studies, feminist and queer studies, and studies of race and religion. Carolyn was founding coeditor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press), the award-winning flagship journal of LGBTQ studies.

She holds an AB from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in English literature from Princeton University.