Jake Silver

Jake Silver is an anthropologist and a recent graduate of Reed College. His research investigates how queerness and desire become valued, felt, and commodified within a global landscape. In pursuing a PhD in anthropology, he is currently focusing on how the mobilization and migration of queer bodies across the globe interacts with and affects Middle Eastern conflict and narratives of political liberalism. An abbreviated version of his B.A. thesis, entitled “Intimacy and Assemblage: Israeli Nationhood and the Everyday Violence of Sexuality,” received an honorable mention in the Kenneth Payne Prize by the Association for Queer Anthropology, and a shorter article will soon be published in an anthology about eroticism and politics. He has been active in studying and pursing theories of gender and sexuality, with an attention to the cultural contingencies of these identities. His time at Reed has introduced him to brilliant feminists, theorists, and activists that have shaped his interests and given him a passion for advocating our rights of the body, of its contours, and of desire.