In this episode, host Kyla Wazana Tompkins interviews Kemi Adeyemi, author of "deviance" entry of Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. The conversation covers the politics of the dance floor, the history and significance of the term deviance, and the relationship between deviance and resistance. Adeyemi emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexities and nuances of deviance, and cautions against romanticizing deviant subjects.

Kyla Wazana Tompkins is Professor and Chair of Global Gender Studies at the University at Buffalo.

Kemi Adeyemi is Associate Professor at the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.

keywords.nyupress.org

In this episode of Feminist Keywords, host Amber Musser interviews Jennifer Nash, the author of the keyword 'Intersectionality.' They discuss the definition and utility of intersectionality, its global travels, and the anxiety and contestation surrounding the term. They also explore the politics of intersectionality, its relationship to Black feminist scholarship, and its misinterpretation by the right. Nash emphasizes the importance of grounding intersectionality in a critical race tradition and reclaiming it as a tool for understanding power and fostering coalition. The conversation highlights the need to challenge dominant narratives and institutions in order to create more inclusive and hospitable spaces.

Jennifer C. Nash is the Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She is the author of The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (Duke University Press, 2014); Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Duke University Press, 2018), Birthing Black Mothers (Duke University Press, 2021), and How We Write Now: Living With Black Feminist Theory (forthcoming with Duke University Press in August 2024).

Amber Jamilla Musser is professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (2024).

• Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum University of Chicago Law Forum 1 (1989): 139-167.
• Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241-1299.
  Anna Julia Cooper A Voice From the South https://librivox.org/search?title=A+Voice+from+the+South&author=Cooper&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced
• May, Vivian M. Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist. New York: Routledge, 2012:
• Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU Press, 2021. (editors: Aren Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Amber Musser, Karma Chavez, Mishuana Goeman, Shona Jackson and Kyla Wazana Tompkins). 2021
• keywords.nyupress.org

In this episode of Feminist Keywords, host Amber Musser interviews Tiffany King, author of the entry 'Flesh' in the book Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. They discuss the intersection of Black and Indigenous feminisms, the significance of the term 'flesh', and its resonance in the current political moment. They also explore the connection between flesh and cultural texts, as well as the different levels at which flesh can be understood. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding and valuing the experiences of marginalized communities.

Tiffany Lethabo King holds the Barbara and John Glynn Research Professorship in Democracy and Equity and is associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (2020).

Amber Jamilla Musser is professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (2024).

More Reading:

• Awkward-Rich, Cameron The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022).
• Harjo, Joy. Remember. Strawberry Press, 1981.
• Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU Press, 2021. (editors: Aren Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Amber Musser, Karma Chavez, Mishuana Goeman, Shona Jackson and Kyla Wazana Tompkins). 2021
• keywords.nyupress.org
• Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Kitchen Table Press, 1983.
• Morrison, Toni. "Beloved. 1987." New York: Plume 252 (1988).
  Snorton, C. Riley. Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2017.
• Spillers, Hortense J. "Mama's baby, papa's maybe: An American grammar book." diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65-81.

In this episode Karma Chávez talks with Harvard professor Durba Mitra, author of the "sexuality" entry in Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Mitra discusses how ideas about sexuality shape modern society, the ubiquitousness of sexuality as a concept, sexuality and identity, and some of the problematic ways sexuality gets taken up to justify war.

Bios:

Karma R. Chávez (she/her) is Chair and Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT Austin | @queermigrations

Durba Mitra (she/her) is Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Resources:

• Feminist Keywords Collective, Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2021. keywords.nyupress.org
• Mitra, Durba, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691196350/indian-sex-life
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1990.

In this episode, Karma Chávez talks with University of Illinois-Chicago Professor Beth Richie, author of the "carcerality" entry in Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Richie discusses her life long work challenging prisons and mass incarceration, the importance of challenging carceral logics through teaching inside and outside of prisons, and the necessity of a feminist abolitionist politics.

Bios:

Karma R. Chávez (she/her) is Chair and Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT Austin | @queermigrations

Beth E. Richie (she/her) is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Resources:

• Feminist Keywords Collective, Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2021. keywords.nyupress.org
• Richie, Beth E. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. New York: NYU Press, 2012. https://nyupress.org/9780814776223/arrested-justice/
• Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. Abolition. Feminism. Now. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1546-abolition-feminism-now
• Kim, Alice, Erica R. Meiners, Jill Petty, Audrey Petty, Beth E. Richie, and Sarah Ross. The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1161-the-long-term