Biography
Chasin was born in 1961, in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she received her bachelor's degree in European Cultural Studies in 1984. In 1993, Chasin earned her Ph.D in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. She received her master's degree in fiction writing, in 2002, from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Chasin joined Boston College in 1993 where she served as assistant professor for six years. She taught American Studies and Women's Studies in the English Department at B.C.. In the academic year 1998-99, Chasin taught in Women's and Gender Studies and American Studies at Yale as the Stephen Baker Assistant Professor of Lesbian and Gay Studies. In 1999, she was appointed as visiting faculty in English at the University of Geneva. Chasin served as an instructor at Columbia University for one year from 2005 to 2006 where she taught feminist theory as well as literary and cultural studies. In 2006, she joined The Eugene Lang College at The New School where she served as associate professor in Literary Studies until 2026.
Works
Chasin has published several books of fiction and non-fiction. Her first book Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market was published in the year 2000 by St. Martin's Press. The book focuses on the political gains and losses that have been attained by marketing to the LGBT community. Kissed By, a collection of short experimental fictions, was published by FC2 in 2007. In 2012, Jaded Ibis Press published Chasin's novella Brief, both as a book and as an interactive app. Chasin's most recent monograph, Assassin of Youth: A Kaleidoscopic History of Harry J. Anslinger's War on Drugs, was published in the year 2016 by University of Chicago Press. The book tracks the cultural currents that produced prohibitionist drug policy in the U.S.
Chasin's writing has appeared in several print media such as Unsaid, Post Road, AGNI, Denver Quarterly and Chain. She has also written for online magazines including Exquisite Corpse, elimae, Diagram and Big Other. The film, Composer and I, was adapted from the original story written by Chasin. The film premiered at the Athens Film Festival in April 2012.
Chasin was the founder and artistic director of Writing On It All, a public participatory writing project that ran on Governors Island in New York Harbor from 2013 to 2018.
Chasin was a Live Feed Creative Resident at New York Live Arts from 2018 to 2020 with director Zishan Ugurlu. Their full-length performance, Fragments, Lists, & Lacunae, featured Judith Butler and was produced by Live Arts in February 2020.
