Dr. Maria Gurevich

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Biography

Dr. Gurevich is Director of the SHiFT Lab (Sexuality Hub: Integrating Feminist Theory). She joined Ryerson’s Psychology Department in 2001, following a Clinical/Research Fellowship in Psychosocial Oncology (Princess Margaret Hospital, 1999-2001), and a postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Health Psychology at Mount Saint Vincent University (1996-1998).

Her research examines the ways that popular and scientific discourses about sexuality intersect with people’s everyday experiences, with negotiations of sexual (im)possibilities and (dis)pleasures at the core. This work interrogates normative assumptions about sexual health, agency, desire, and relationship conduct, based on privilege, power, and access. A central line of research addresses the role of sexual technologies in sexual expectations and practices (e.g., pornography, sexual enhancement medication, sexual expert advice, and digital dating). A critical sexuality studies approach is adopted, wherein the construction and constriction of sexual concepts and practices are examined by tracking the culturally- and historically-specific epistemic and empirical foundations of sexuality research.

A key focus of the SHiFT lab is how "responsible" neoliberal and postfeminist subjects are constructed in a range of representational contexts that target embodiment, identities and practices. Lab members adopt feminist poststructuralist, queer, contemporary psychoanalytic and affect theoretical approaches in their work.

Selected Publications

Thomas, E. & Gurevich, M. (2020, Under Review). Disordering non-Desire: A critical analysis of the medicalization of desire and the DSM-5 diagnosis of Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder. Feminism & Psychology.

Cosma, S. & Gurevich, M. (2020). Securing sex: Embattled masculinity and the pressured pursuit of women’s bodies in men’s online sex advice. Feminism & Psychology,  30(1), 42-62.

Cosma, S. & Gurevich, M. (2018). (Re)producing the “natural man” in online men’s advice media: Achieving masculinity through embodied and mental mastery. Psychology & Sexuality, 9(1), 86-97.

Gurevich, M., Cormier, N., Leedham, U., & Brown-Bowers, A. (2018). Sexual dysfunction or sexual discipline?: Sexuopharmaceutical use by men as prevention and proficiency. Feminism & Psychology, 28(3), 309-330.

Gurevich, M., Brown-Bowers, A., Cosma, S., Vasilovsky, A. T., Leedham, U., & Cormier, N.  (2017c). Sexually progressive and proficient: Pornographic syntax and postfeminist fantasies. Sexualities, 20(5-6), 558-584.

Vasilovsky, A., & Gurevich, M.  (2017). “The body that cannot be contained”: Queering psychology’s gay male body dissatisfaction imperative. Sexualities, 20(5-6), 622-643.

Gurevich, M., Mercer, Z., Cormier, N., & Leedham, U. (2017b). Responsible or reckless men?: Sexuopharmaceutical messages differentiated by sexual identity of users. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 18(4), 341-351.

Gurevich, M., Leedham, U., Brown-Bowers, A., Cormier, N., & Mercer, Z. (2017a). Propping up pharma’s (natural) neoliberal phallic man: Pharmaceutical representations of the ideal sexuopharmaceutical user. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 19(4), 422–437.

Brown-Bowers, A., Gurevich, M., Vasilovsky, A. T., Cosma, S., & Matti, S. (2015). Managed not missing: Young women’s discourses of sexual desire within a postfeminist heterosexual marketplace. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 39(3), 320-336.

Gurevich, M., Vasilovsky, A. T., Brown-Bowers, A., & Cosma, S. (2015). Affective conjunctions: Social norms, semiotic circuits, and fantasy. Theory & Psychology, 25(4), 513-540.