Laurie Essig is an assistant professor in sociology at Middlebury College. She joined the faculty in 2006. She teaches courses in social theory, sociology of gender, sociology of freakishness, and sociology of heterosexuality.
Essig is the author of “Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other” (Duke University Press, 1999). She has written on the freak shows as the source of American popular culture as well as the importance of mermaids in structuring the hetoersexual imagination in academic publications. She is also the author of a variety of personal essays in places as varied as Salon, the Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR's "All Things Considered," and Legal Affairs.
She writes a blog titled "Class Warfare" for TrueSlant.
Her newest book, "American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Spirit of Our Time," (Beacon, 2010) is a critique of neoliberal capitalism through cosmetic surgery.
Essig graduated from Franklin and Marshall College and received her M.I.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.