WESLEYAN ARGUS -- Cohler spoke next. She is a professor of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State. Her scholarly interests include the relations between gender, sexuality, race and nationalism. She is currently writing a monograph about cultural representations of American military spouses at the turn of the 21st century. She studied English and feminist, gender and sexuality studies at the University.
Cohler’s talk was titled “Uses and Misuses of Intersectionality.” It responded to The Wall Street Journal opinion piece by President Michael Roth from May, titled “The Opening of the Liberal Mind.”
Cohler said the most influential training she received from Wesleyan University was not related to a particular text; it was instead the skill of performing close, critical, and contextual interpretations of any encountered text. She said her talk on Roth’s opinion piece was yet another application of this preparation.