Tommaso M. Milani

Professional Bio

Tommaso M. Milani is

George C. and Jane G. Greer Professor of Applied Linguistics, Jewish Studies, African Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He identifies as a critical discourse analyst who is interested in investigating the role played by meaning-making resources (language, visuality, the body) in the production, negotiation and contestation of gender and sexual identities. A considerable amount of his research is concerned with unveiling how seemingly well-meaning initiatives, which purportedly aim at LGBTQ+ empowerment, are underpinned by highly problematic classist, sexist and racist logics. Theoretically, he is influenced by intersectionality, queer theory and more recently southern/decolonial epistemologies. He has published extensively in leading international journals; he has also edited two books, Language and Masculinities: Performances, Intersections and Dislocations (Routledge 2015) and Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality (Equinox 2017), as well as many special issues of journals. From 2014 until 2019 he was co-editor (with Professor Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard) of the journal Gender and Language, the only journal in linguistics that takes overtly feminist, queer and trans perspectives. He sits on the editorial board of many journals, including Feminist Theory, Journal of Homosexuality and Journal of Language and Sexuality.