gender – High Theory

Affective Masculinities

by webwitchFebruary 27, 2023February 27, 2023UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Amrita De talks about affective masculinities, aspirational linkages with dominant scripts of masculinities, socially organized. As she expands her work beyond her study of South Asian masculinities, she talks about how understanding and loosening these linkages entails crucial feminist work. She also talks about Shah Rukh Khan.

Amrita De is a Postdoctoral fellow in the Center of Humanities and Information at Penn State University. Her research focuses on global south masculinity studies and affect theory. Her works have been published in NORMA, Boyhood Studies, Global Humanities and are forthcoming in other edited collections. She is also working her way through her first novel centered around contemporary Indian Masculinities.

Aunties

by webwitchFebruary 13, 2022July 19, 2022UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Kareem Khubchandani talks about aunties, figure across culture that stand for inquiry and succor, at limits of, or outside of traditional family structures. The conversation spans across genres and contexts, mainly focusing on work in the new field of Critical Aunty Studies.

Kareem Khubchandani is the Mellon Bridge assistant professor in theater, dance, and performance studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which received the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Outstanding Book award, 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno book award, 2021 MLA/ASA Alan Bray Memorial Prize honorable mention, and the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship. Kareem is also co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and curator of criticalauntystudies.com.

Music used in promotional material: ‘Like Swimming’ by Broke for Free

Tagged : drag / drag studies / family / feminism / feminist theory / gender / gender and sexuality / gender and sexuality studies / kinship / kinship studies / lgbtq / queer studies / queer theory / south asia / South Asian Studies / women's studies

Autotheory

by webwitchApril 11, 2021May 24, 2022UncategorizedLeave a Comment

In this episode Kim speaks with Lauren Fournier about autotheory.

Lauren has recently published a book on the subject, titled Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (MIT Press, 2021). In the episode she points to Maggie Nelson’s book The Argonauts as the book that made the term famous, but refers us to a longer history of autotheoretical feminist writing, including work by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks.

She also mentions critical research by Zoe Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism” and the book I Love Dick, by Chris Kraus.

Lauren is a writer, curator, and artist, who currently holds a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in visual studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently co-editing a special issue of ASAP Journal on Autotheory with her colleague Alex Brostoff. Her novella, All My Dicks, is forthcoming with Fiction Advocate.

colorful image with a line drawing of a cat superimposed and the words "one is not born but becomes a tabby" on it — Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell, *Hers is Still a Dank Cave: Crawling Toward a Queer Horizon,* 2016, 24:32 colour and sound (English)

Image: Art by Sona Safaei-Sooreh

Music used in promotional material: ‘Braided Flower’ by Lee Maddeford

Tagged : autobiography / confessional / creative nonfiction / feminism / feminist theory / gender / L'ecriture feminine / life writing

Intersectionality

by webwitchDecember 13, 2020May 2, 2022UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Saronik interviews Kim about intersectionality, a concept developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Kim references two essays by Crenshaw in the episode: one that she read, and one that our previous podcast guest, Chad Hegelmeyer taught.

“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039 (Kim read this one)

“Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum Iss. 1 (1989) https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8/ (Chad taught this one)

Kim recommends that you read the latter.

This week’s image is a painting by Alma Thomas, titled “Light Blue Nursery” (1968). The image is made available under a Creative Commons license by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Tagged : class / Critical Race Theory / feminism / gender / gender and sexuality studies / intersectional feminism / intersectionality / race / violence against women