By Leah Stark

When confronted with the notion of asexuality, most people are baffled by the idea of a life devoid of sexual attraction.

But that's rapidly changing, in society and in academia, thanks in part to Stanford scholar Karli Cerankowski. A lecturer in Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Cerankowski's research and activism has made strides toward designating asexuality as an academic discipline.

Cerankowski, who received her PhD from Stanford's Program in Modern Thought and Literature last year, emphasizes social discourse and de-pathologization of sexual orientation.

In her dissertation about the ways asexuality is misunderstood in American culture, Cerankowski traced "the history of the creation of sexual categories" through an extensive study of text and media from pop culture as well as historical works, including collections of sexology texts in the Stanford University Libraries.

Cerankowski says that "society has normalized certain levels of sexual desire while pathologizing others. In a sense, it's the social model that's broken, not asexuals."

Although sex and sexuality are centralized, prized aspects of our culture, Cerankowski says that "if we recognize the diversity of human sexuality, then we can understand that there are some people who just don't experience sexual attraction or have a lower sex drive or have less sex, and that doesn't mean there is something wrong with them."

Cerankowski and her co-editor, Megan Milks, recently published  Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, the first collection of essays on asexuality — and the second book ever to be written on the topic.

Asexualities is academic in its approach, and contributors from a variety of disciplines pursue the subject through scientific, sexological, psychoanalytical and political models.

Science takes a back seat to the human experience in the introduction of the book, where Cerankowski and Milks each share personal anecdotes. Cerankowski details her own perplexing identity journey, spanning her identification as celibate to her establishment in the queer community. She recounts later finding some resonance upon exploring the small world of asexuality, but realizing that current definitions needed to be complicated and the parameters loosened.

Cerankowski's own research reveals that people are capable of obtaining just as much contentment from other areas of life, and complete gratification in life doesn't necessarily include sexual gratification.

"We sort of prioritize sexual pleasure and sexual fulfillment in our lives, but we can think about the other ways that people experience intense pleasure, like when listening to music," Cerankowski says.

Cerankowski's studies of asexuality found their home under the expansive umbrella of queer and sexuality studies, which she says assists in the acceptance of asexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation.

In 2010, Cerankowski and literary scholar Megan Milks speculated on the creation of "asexuality studies" as an academic field in an article they co-authored for Feminist Studies. And now, just five years later, Cerankowski says asexuality studies is becoming more recognizable as an academic field of study.

"We argued in our article, and I still argue, that approaching the study of asexuality from a queer and feminist perspective can be an enriching endeavor," Cerankowski says. "Not only can we use those theoretical and methodological tools to understand and theorize asexuality, but asexuality can also shift those frameworks and get us to think about queerness and sexuality in new and exciting ways."

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