Celeste Orr

Dr. Celeste E. Orr (they/them) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, the Director of the Gender & Women’s Studies Program, and the Wendy J. Robbins Professor in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of New Brunswick. Orr’s research broadly concerns intersex studies, disability studies, and queer studies.

Education

• PhD, Feminist and Gender Studies, University of Ottawa
• MA, Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, McMaster University
• MA, Philosophy, Queen’s University
• BA, Philosophy and English Literature, McMaster University

Orr is the author of the award-winning book, Cripping Intersex (UBC, 2022), which received a 2024 Canada Prize from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Cripping Intersex investigates how intersex and interphobia intersect with disability and ableism. In doing so, Orr develops a new field of study – crip intersex studies – and argues for a crip approach to intersex activism and scholarship. In integrating feminist disability studies with intersex studies, Orr also provides tools to break down the traditional sex dyad and the entrenched cultural mandate against intersex traits.

Orr is presently working on their second book, tentatively titled Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject (under contract, Concordia UP), with co-author Dr. Nicholas Hrynyk. This project explores the ways queer people anticipate discriminatory violence both outside and within queer “communities.” Orr and Hrynyk interrogate the embodied impacts of anticipating violence and how queer folks police themselves in the attempt to avoid violence.

Orr and Dr. Casey Burkholder have a forthcoming co-edited special issue, “On Intersex Joy,” that will be published in Feminist Theory Spring 2026. Orr, Burkholder, and the contributors of this special issue wonder what a sustained focus on joy, happiness, pleasure, or euphoria might bring to intersex studies, intersex activism, and feminists concerned with these emotions and experiences.

Selected publications

Books

Hrynyk, Nicholas, and Celeste E. Orr. (under contract, Concordia UP). Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject.

Orr, Celeste E. 2022. Cripping Intersex. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Edited special issues

Orr, Celeste E., and Casey Burkholder, eds. Forthcoming 2026. “On Intersex Joy.” Special Issue, Feminist Theory.

Magnet, Shoshana, and Celeste E. Orr, eds. 2022. “Feminist Loneliness Studies.” Special issue, Feminist Theory 23 (1): 1-139.

Journal articles

Dudys, Tori, Celeste E. Orr, and Casey Burkholder. Forthcoming. “Temporal disobedience: Intersex timescapes, chronopolitics, and queer joy.” Feminist Theory.

Breu, Christopher, Casey Burkholder, and Celeste E. Orr. 2025. “Compulsory Dandyism: A conversation on intersex joy and desire with Dr Christopher Breu.” Feminist Theory 0 (0).

Orr, Celeste E., and Casey Burkholder. 2025. “Introducing the special issue: on Intersex Joy.” Feminist Theory 0 (0).

Orr, Celeste E., Alessia Mastrorillo, and Nicholas Hrynyk. 2025. “‘I’ve grown fearful of any rustle behind me’: defining anticipating discriminatory violence as violence.” Feminist Theory 26 (2): 266-285.

Orr, Celeste E., and Shoshana Magnet. 2022. “Feminist Surveillance Studies and the Institutionalization of Interphobia.” Surveillance & Society 20 (4): 420-433.

Magnet, Shoshana, and Celeste E. Orr. 2022. “Feminist Loneliness Studies: an introduction.” Feminist Theory 23 (1): 3-22.

Orr, Celeste E. 2019. “Resisting the Demand to Stand: Boys, Bathrooms, Hypospadias, and Interphobic Violence.” Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (2): 89-113.

Book chapters

Orr, Celeste E. 2023. “Covid and In/Essential Intersex Medical Management.” In Covid and…How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic, edited by Emily Winderman, Allison L. Rowland, and Jennifer Malkowski, 147-168. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Orr, Celeste E., and Amanda D. Watson. 2021. “‘Usually the mother:’ Dilation and the medical management of intersex children.” In From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine, edited by Rohini Bannerjee and Karim Mukhida, 65-83. Bradford: Demeter Press.

Orr, Celeste E. 2019 (2016). “(Liberatory) Reproductive Technologies and (Eugenic) Interphobic Selection.” In Connecting, Rethinking and Embracing Difference, edited by Anthony Gambrell, Debora Osborne, and Lawrence Buttigieg, 87-102. Leiden: Brill.

Orr, Celeste E., and Amanda D. Watson. 2018. “‘We changed her nappies. We saw that she was a girl.’ Caster Semenya’s Femininity and the Power of Maternal Testimony.” In Mothering, Mothers, and Sport: Experiences, Representations, Resistances, edited by Judy Battaglia, Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich, and Pamela Morgan Redela, 15-48. Bradford: Demeter Press.

Supervision areas

• Intersex studies
• Disability and mad studies
• Queer studies
• Feminist, gender, and sexuality studies
• Processes of pathologization and modes of violence
• Resistance, activism, and social movements

Reach out to Orr to discuss possible supervision for undergraduate, MA, and PhD research projects.