Carolyn Dinshaw is an American academic and author, who has specialised in issues of gender and sexuality in the medieval context.
She is currently a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English at New York University working in medieval studies and queer theory.
The corpus of her work focuses on the relationship between the present and the medieval past, and in particular the ways that certain aspects of the medieval past continue to resonate in contemporary issues of gender and sexuality, the embodied experience of time, and "ecological thought.
[4] In addition to being a prolific scholar on a variety of topics in queer theory, medieval studies, and ecocriticism, Dishaw is one of the founding Co-Editors of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, was on the advisory board for Exemplaria (2008–13) and currently sits on the editorial board of postmedieval.
She has also been the president of the New Chaucer Society (2010–12), on the Committee for Lesbian and Gay History in the American Historical Association.