Alix Olson

Dr. Olson is an assistant professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the co-director of Emory's Studies in Sexualities program. Olson holds a PhD in Political Science and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of MA, Amherst. Olson's research interests include contemporary social and political thought; feminist, queer, and anti-racist politics; and the history of social movements. Dr. Olson's book The End of Resistance, an intellectual genealogy of four decades of resistance under neoliberalism, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (Jan., 2024). Olson is currently at work on two projects. The Promise(s) of Resilience: Governance and Resistance in Complex Times (Columbia University Press) offers a critical examination of the rise and circulation of the concept of “resilience” within 21^stCentury political life.  Mad Max, Fury Road: Feminist Apocolypse (Bloomsbury Publishing) is an experimental manuscript, combining film analysis, poetry, and contemporary political theory. Dr. Olson has published articles in Contemporary Political Theory, New Political Science, Wagadu: Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies and contributed book chapters to a range of scholarly collections. She has received the “Christian Bay Award” for the paper presented at APSA that “best exemplifies the goal of New Political Science: making the study of politics relevant to the struggle for a better world.”  Dr. Olson has served as program chair for the American Political Science Association's (APSA) New Political Science division and is currently co-chair of the National Women's Studies Association's (NWSA) Reproductive Justice interest group. At Umass Amherst, Dr. Olson received the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award and, more recently, she received Oxford College Mizell Award for teaching-service and Emory University's "Women of Excellence" Teaching Award (2022). Dr. Olson has participated in the Emory Arts and Social Justice Fellowship, a number of CFDE Teaching Fellowship programs, and is the recipient of an Allen Grant (Oxford) and the 2023-2024 University Research Committee grant (Emory). At Oxford, Dr. Olson is faculty advisor for ReVision Intersectional Feminists. 

Prior to Olson's academic life, she toured internationally for over a decade as a spoken word artist, regularly appearing in media outlets like HBO's Def Poetry Jam, Air America (with Rachel Maddow), and NPR. She was the recipient of OutMusic's Artist of the Year, the DC Rape Crisis Center's "Visionary Award," and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.  Olson has published widely within popular media including in Ms. and Curve Magazines, co-authored Burning Down The House (Soft Skull Press, 2002), and is editor of the spoken word anthology Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (Seal Press, 2007) which bell hooks calls an anthology “to resurrect you.”  Her poems have been featured in over a dozen anthologies and scholarly journals, including Women's Studies Quarterly (forthcoming, 2024), and on Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q.  Olson has produced three spoken word albums and poetry books, and the award-winning documentary film Left Lane: On The Road With Alix Olson. Dr. Olson has lectured and taught social justice, art and politics, and writing workshops and performed spoken word poetry at over 300 colleges and universities, and at political conferences, high schools, and prisons across the United States and internationally.