GENDER MATTERS // BELONGING MATTERS
The Annual Convening of The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute
Event Program
DAY 1 — April 19th, 2024 | Register
Naming and Framing: Places, People, Politics & Belonging
10:00 am Coffee & Arrival
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
10:15 am Conference Opening Remarks
Ellen Freeberg,
Associate Dean, NSSR
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
10:20 am GSSI Welcome: Why Belonging?
Pani Farvid
Co-director of GSSI and Associate Professor of Applied Psychology
10:30 am Opening Keynote The Belonging Journey: Bridging our way towards Belonging
Lorenley Báez
Associate provost for equity and Belonging at The New School
11:15 am Break
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
11:30 am Symposium: Belonging in Higher Ed: Intersectional Perspectives from Critical Psychology
The Study of Belonging In Psychology (15 mins)
Kaisa Wilson PhD,
Principal Advisor of Equity, Diversity & Belonging at ACC in New Zealand.
Belonging was a central concern for early psychologists (e.g., the subject of a famous feud between Sigmund Frued and a close friend), and is now a global buzzword. This presentation details Dr Wilson’s work in belonging and aid/development work, traces the history of the study of belongingness in psychology from its earliest origins to current understandings, including her own research in the area.
Anti-blackness and Black Misandry in University: The Tradition of Un-Belonging (15 mins)
Tyce Purvis,
PhD student in Clinical Psychology at The New School.
Black men between the ages of 18 and 24 have an overall college enrollment rate of approximately 31% and the lowest college completion rate at 40% (UNCF, 2017; NCES, 2023). Through discussion of concepts such as gendered racism, racialized surveillance, Black Misandry, and a personal narrative, this talk will explore some of the possible causes for disparities in Black men’s presence in higher education that extend beyond narratives regarding economic and intellectual inferiority. Suggestions for fostering support for Black students in higher education will be offered, as well as a strength-based theoretical perspective regarding the “tradition of un-belonging” for Black students in higher education.
Neurodivergence and Belonging in Higher Education (15 mins)
Robyn Attarian,
Masters student in Psychology at The New School.
This talk examines what belonging could mean in higher education through the lens of neurodivergence.
Belonging in Academia: Juggling Being Queer, Non-Binary, Appalachian, and an Academic
(15 mins)
Paige Griffith (they/them)
Masters student in Psychology at The New School.
This talk examines navigating the various pathologies, myths and harms that exist about queer and genderqueer Appalachian’s and within academia (and psychology), through critical inquiry, resilience, self-awareness, and rigor.
Decolonizing Turkish Psychology (15 mins)
Sedef Ozoguz, PhD,
Assistant Professor of Psychology at The New School
This paper critically examines the historical trajectory of the Americanization and colonization of psychology in Turkey, highlighting the decolonizing work of contemporary scholars via liberation psychology.
1:15 pm Lunch
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
2:00 pm Roundtable: On Being and Belonging
Uplifting contested lives at the intersection of Queer & Latinx/e
This round table convenes a roundtable of scholars and creative practitioners from the New School in a discussion about the politics of belonging through the lens of Latinidad, gender and sexuality. Examples of their creative practice will add texture to a discussion that interrogates how the concept of “belonging” both challenges and negotiates real and perceived power; the politics and pitfalls of representation; and, how contemporary narratives about gender, race, sexuality, class, geographic location, and dis/ability disrupt and complicate the hegemonic binaries of black-white and red-blue. Each presenter will contribute how their respective praxis folds into teaching and learning spaces at The New School and beyond. Through the experiences of Queer and Latinx/e life, this roundtable will explore the theme of belonging through activism, resilience, and resistance in the classroom; across the university and in our New York City environs.
Neyda Martinez
Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the School of Media Studies, Director of the Media Management Graduate Program, and Co-Director of the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative at The New School
Tamara Oyola-Santiago
MA, MPH, MCHES is a harm reductionist and public health educator. She is part of the collective, What Would an HIV Doula Do? and Director of Public Health Services at The New School.
Raúl Rubio
PhD, Chair of Languages & Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at The New School
3:00 pm Symposium: Belonging in the Built Environment
The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education
The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education (TOGAE) is a resource for students, university workers, practitioners, and others interested in organizing. This guide explores how teaching organizing skills can empower students and faculty to collectively remodel architectural education and ultimately foster greater belonging for all identities and experiences in our built environment. Its chief argument is that organizing is a key practice to transforming architecture education and addressing urgent local and planetary issues of belonging as it relates to climate change, environmental degradation, rampant commodification, and spiking inequity. Key questions include: How can organizing help create an architecture education system that fosters belonging for all identities and experiences? What organizing strategies can empower marginalized groups to belong in renewed architecture spaces? How can curriculum redesign through organizing foster belonging through non-normative architectures and design practices? How can organizing challenge oppressive power structures that determine who belongs in architecture? What organizing tools can map barriers to belonging in architecture education and profession? How can organizing build solidarity between architecture and other disciplines/fields to advance belonging? How can organizing help architecture redefine belonging beyond physical buildings to communities and identities? What examples of organizing have successfully created belonging for those excluded from architecture? How can organizing counter dominant narratives of belonging in architecture’s role in society? What past social movements for belonging can inform organizing strategies in architecture? The key arguments made in the guide will inspire audience members to integrate organizing skills into their own curricula. Doing so will cultivate a greater sense of belonging among students, both within the university and in the world at large.
Renzo Dagnino,
PhD candidate and fellow researcher at National University of Córdoba, Argentina
Kirsten Day,
Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia
Peggy Deamer,
Professor Emerita at Yale School of Architecture
Andrea Dietz,
Architect and the Exhibition Design program Director at the GWU Corcoran in Washington, DC, USA
Tessa Forde,
Doctoral Candidate and lecturer at Auckland University in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand
Jessica Garcia Fritz,
Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, USA and a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Itazipco
Palmyra Geraki,
Founding principal of architecture practice Palmyra and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA
Valérie Lechêne,
Assistant Director at Urban Systems Lab, The New School
3:30 pm Themed Session: Queering Belonging
Ethics, Care and Belonging (15 mins)
Columba González-Duarte,
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School
This talk examines monarchs’ related affects in North America and to whom and where these butterflies belong.
Legitimizing Past Life Memories: Trauma as Collective Altered States of Consciousness (15 mins)
Minsu Yoo,
Master student in Anthropology at The New School), Dong-Ren Hong (i filmmaker based in NYC and a recent Columbia University Film MFA graduate
Dong-Ren Hong,
Filmmaker based in NYC and a recent Columbia University Film MFA graduate supported by scholarships from Emerging Filmmakers Grant and Katharina Otto-Bernstein Grant
Recent neuroscientific discoveries have highlighted the beneficial impacts of psychedelic substances on patients with post-traumatic stress disorders. Concurrently, popular media in Euro-American regions have witnessed the rise of activist movements aimed at raising awareness of trauma-related experiences among Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) immigrants, alongside the portrayal of psychedelic healing as a means to foster collective action. Yet, trauma, once seen as a personal flaw, is now recognized as a complex mix of societal violence and accepted truths (Fassin, 2014), further complicating the understanding of the politics surrounding the term. Then, the question arises: what are the political implications of using psychedelics to connect individuals with the collective unconscious as a means of coping with racial trauma? How does the collective experience of time, influenced by the reintegration of traumatic memories through psychedelics, impact conventional forms of temporality? This project seeks to scrutinize the racial politics and discourse within these communities, specifically focusing on the role of psychedelic experiences in eliciting ancestral kinship memories. The study will encompass a critical review of the theoretical concept of trauma and its social implications. Through detailed participatory observation of the Asian Psychedelic Community, this study not only serves as a case study but also seeks to reconstruct and reinterpret its knowledge framework by weaving together historical trauma narratives using the evocative mediums of cinematic poetry, thereby challenging the conventional narrative of time.
At Home in Your Body: Gender Transition and Queer/Crip Un/Belonging (15 mins)
Max Thornton,
Masters student in Psychology at ThPhD in Theological and Philosophical Studies in Religion from Drew University. His research focuses on queer and trans studies in religion, disability and crip theory, and technology. He teaches philosophy and religion at Kean Universitye New School.
In this moment of intense anti-trans backlash across the country, one important political tactic is to accentuate the positive, emphasizing the known good outcomes of transitioning and using an affirmative register to narrate experiences of gender euphoria and feeling at home in one’s body. However, there are downsides to the dominance of a narrative of positive affect and gendered belonging. This paper problematizes the tropes of positivity and belonging in transition narratives, arguing for the crucial role of queer/crip un/belonging in the struggle for gender justice and liberation. In conversation with Cameron Awkward-Rich’s theorization of trans maladjustment, I identify four key areas of concern with discourses of gendered belonging: the exclusion of those unwilling or unable to express their transitions in these terms; the risk of unrealistic expectations in the framing of transition as a panacea; the absorption of transness into neoliberal capitalism and the blunting of a trans critique of the gendered status quo; and the suspicion that belonging might be an incoherent model of being and selfhood writ large. I suggest instead a dynamic model of partial, contextual un/belonging, motivated by a queer/crip ethics of interdependence, in which there is space for bad feelings.
A Tranifesto: A Compilation of Prayers, Ruminations, Gratitude, Stories, and Histories (15 mins)
Gino Romero (they/them),
MFA from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Studio Art from Florida State University.
Queerness has always existed in the periphery of society. Queer culture has grown out of the shared experience of non-belonging. During the 70s and 80s, we saw Queer and Trans communities create what we know now as modern Queer culture: ballroom, pageants, and even language. In these spaces, we saw how Queer and Trans people gathered to form bonds, care for each other when biological families wouldn’t, and mourn each other when our siblings passed due to AIDS or violence. The shared experience of non-belonging formed the syncretic practices we know as Queer culture today. The Queer creation of ritual is a direct response to the systematic exclusion that a large percentage of LGBTQ+ people experience. This formation is a product of the accessibility of resources to the community and cultural backgrounds of the community members (historically speaking this refers to Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ individuals). This congregation created new rituals that are unique to Queer and Trans culture, and what I refer to as “Queer Ancestral Veneration.” Queer Ancestral Veneration is a retronym, referring to Queer specific instances of syncretisms/formation of ritual. These Queer rituals are the formation and celebration of the bonds created. Queer Ancestral Veneration creates belonging through a shared experience of non-belonging.
4:30 pm Break
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
4:45 pm Symposium: Space, Place, Identities, & Belonging: Transnational Perspectives
Fighting for Belonging Amidst Symbolic Annihilating: Ugandan LGBT+ activism in the wake of AHA2023 (15 mins)
Cecilia Strand Phd,
Associate Professor at Department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University, and a current visiting scholar at The SexTech Lab and The Gender and Sexuality Institute at The New School.
In May 2023, the Ugandan government passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA2023) and thereby further embraced and expanded the colonial era’s anti-sodomy laws, attempting to orchestrate a symbolic annihilation of the Ugandan LGBT+ community. Drawing on an analysis of digital LGBT+ advocacy in the wake of the AHA2003 and interviews with Ugandan LGBT+ activists, the following paper explores both the chilling effects of the AHA2023 and their impact on representations. The paper argues that chilling effects produce a form of symbolic annihilation, which effectively makes it impossible to claim belonging and rights. The paper concludes with exploring the LGBT+ community’s imagistic resistance in digital spaces.
Looking for a Different Kind of Abolitionism: Sex Work, Migration and the Politics of Care (15 mins)
Niina Vuolajärvi PhD,
Assistant Professor of International Migration at the London School of economics working at the intersection of migration, feminist and socio-legal studies
The heightened concerns about trafficking and the globalization of commercial sex have led to a new trend in prostitution policies. In 1999, Sweden was the first country to aim at abolishing the sex trade through criminalizing buying (rather than selling) of sex relying on radical feminist arguments of commercial sex as a form of violence against women. Since then, versions of what is commonly known as the “Nordic” or “Equality” model have been passed throughout Europe and North America. Through multi-sited fieldwork among (migrant) sex workers in the Nordic region, including 210 interviews, this paper complicates the simplified image of this policymodel and asks: What does it mean that sex work is increasingly governed through feminist arguments of protection and care? What kind of feminist belongings and conceptions of justice does this policy approach promote? These questions become especially crucial in the context of feminized migration where migrants have become a majority in the sex trades. These new configurations of labor, intimacy and mobility call us to pay attention to what Angela Davis has named the intersectionality of struggles. My findings demonstrate how the Nordic Model approach legitimates state violence and racialized policing towards migrant and sex working women by creating an ideological landscape that defines sex work as a form of men’s violence against women to be combatted. I argue that the approach by exacerbating the already precarious lives of sex workers serves in itself as a form of “violence against women.” I conclude with a call for a different kind of abolitionist feminism and belongings.
Belonging Against Imperialism (15 mins)
Holly Hudson (they/them),
Organizer, writer and researcher working in anti-colonial, transnational movement building. Their work has been published in Shado, Ceasefire, EU Observer, Politico and the Guardian.
This paper will locate itself on the streets of two imperial cores, New York and London, where Palestine solidarity activism has gained needed traction in recent months; and in the archives of the first World Social Forum (2001) against global imperialism. Through these connected and internationally coordinated grassroots movements and their transnational lineages, I will argue for an anti-hegemonic definition of belonging that is both planetary; because of the urgent need for traversal, anti-imperialist solidarities (Gomez-Barras, 2018); yet inherently coalitional, localized, relational, because it begins with an embodied recognition of a shared and existential vulnerability (Butler, 2009). Imperialism, like neoliberalism, operates from ‘above’ and ‘below’ (Gago, 2017), so this paper seeks to build on existing dissolutions of the tension between ‘global’ and ‘local’ forms of political organizing. This is an expansive and dichotomous belonging that I will argue is a revolutionary mode of desiring Munoz’s critical post-capitalist ‘not yet here’ (Munoz, 2009); through a shared critical negativity. At once grassroots, predicated on friendship against arbitrary conscriptions of difference, and existentially belonging with those who we do not and will never know (Butler, 2009 and 2020). Spilling out of bodies on streets in desire for forms of life-making not predicated on the premature death of those racial capitalism has rendered disposable (Wilson-Gilmore, 2007); planetary belonging is local and global, without tension- it is a life affirmingly, planetary anti-capitalist disposition (Gilroy, 2000, Hildegard 2007, Wall Kimmerer, 2013). Dissolving this local/global dichotomy, I will call for a reactivation of the anti-imperialist internationalism that defined the World Social Forums, drawing on their examples of internationalist solidarity building, in dialogue with community based Palestine solidarity activism happening in London and New York right now.
5:30 pm Artists Corner
Power, Politics and Gender: Contemporary Transnational/Feminist Art
Paria Ahmadi,
Iranian artist and researcher based in New York.
She recently finished her studies in Master of Fine Arts in Photography at Parsons School of Design at The New School and holds a BFA in photography from Tehran University of Art. Her practice focuses on the politics of memory and archive, systems of meaning, and the poetic potential of image, objects, and language in relation. She works primarily in printmaking, sculpture/installation, video, and harmless humor.
Anahita Bagheri,
Iranian interdisciplinary artist based in NYC.
Papier-mache, sound, video, and words find their way into her art through sculpture, artist book, multimedia installation, and performance. With reference to Persian art and literature in her work, she examines structures of power and gender and delves into the interplay of personal and collective through the lens of experience, memory, and identity. She has had exhibitions at Arsenal Contemporary Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, 25 East Gallery, and Wollman Hall in NYC. She was a participant in AMT Moving Image Festival held annually at Tishman Auditorium. She has exhibited in biennials and art fairs, including Bon-gah Art Book Fair, and The 2nd Iran Contemporary Art Biennale, and also in O Gallery, Etemad Gallery, and Soo Contemporary Gallery in Tehran.
Fai Ahmed
Fai Ahmed’s work focuses on the politics of memory and the aesthetics of digital error. She published her first art book in 2020 titled “Untitled Album” and has exhibited at numerous local and international exhibitions, most notably in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and NYC.
6:00 pm Cheese & Wine Reception
Lang, Cafe, The New School
6:30 pm Private Documentary Screening: Wild Women of Anatolia*
Sedef and Aslı Özoğuz (UC L104)
*Please Note: This is a private screening, and open to students and faculty of The New School and guests who have registered, only.
Wild Women of Anatolia is a feature-length documentary by Sedef and Aslı Özoğuz. It is a collection of stories from five women across five regions of Anatolia in which they reveal their own experiences of being wild women, their freedom dreams and their connections to their respective landscapes. Doors will open at 6:00 pm with the screening beginning at 6:30 pm. The documentary screening will be 88 minutes followed by a short Q&A session.
DAY 2 — April 20th, 2024 | Register
Being, Feeling, and Doing: Bodies, Identities, Genders, & Sexualities
10:00 am Tea & Coffee
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
10:10 am Introduction to Day Two
Rose Réjouis,
Co-director of GSSI Associate Professor, Literature; Program Director, Gender Studies
10:30 am Opening Keynote: Anti-Colonial Thinking on Gender, Sexuality and Belonging
Madi Day
Anti-colonial queer and trans scholarship in so-called Australia has distinctly Indigenist origins. Both differing from and connected to Native queer and Two-Spirit critiques from Turtle Island, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander thinking on gender and hetero/sexuality is foundational in Indigenous Studies. It is also inextricable from legacies of Blak activism and solidarity with both Native American and Black intellectual movements. Visiting Fulbright scholar from Dharug Country (Sydney, Australia), Madi Day will speak on their PhD research which uses existing Black, Indigenous and anti-colonial theory to examine gender and heterosexuality as forms of colonial power, and consider why these approaches are yet to be taken up as central theory in Gender and Sexuality Studies in settler colonial nations.
(45 mins, and 15 mins Q&A)
11:15 am Paper: Language and Belonging
Rose Réjouis,
Co-director of GSSI Associate Professor, Literature; Program Director, Gender Studies
11:45 am Symposium: Racialized Bodies & Belonging
Reparative Birth Work: Black Midwifery and the Disruption of Black Inheritance (15 mins)
Alex Hack,
Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California and a former student of Parsons School of Design.
From The Moynihan Report to The Washington Post’s “Coming White Underclass,” Black maternity has been consistently represented as counter to American progress and its goals. Ruha Benjamin’s concept of “culture talk,” or the conflation of cultural stereotypes and genetics in biomedical discourse, can help us see the way Black motherhood is considered always-already malfunctioning. This particular logic is (re)produced via what Dorothy Roberts calls the myth of the “bio-underclass,” in her discussion of the “crack baby,” which places Black motherhood at the center of the supposed process by which intellectual deficiency leads to bad decisions leads to health problems leads to intellectual deficiency and so on. Drawing on my work interviewing midwives and doulas in Los Angeles, I posit contemporary Black midwifery as a reparative blueprint. Black birth workers, in their own words, center “listening,” “dignity,” “consent,” and “respect,” in ways that their patients can and do carry through life and into their future interactions with medical professionals, threatening cycles of oppression, disrupting racism’s epigenetic legacies, and acting against harmful representations of Black motherhood. Further, by working in a mode of “preventative care,” rather than care that takes place after trauma has occurred and poor health has taken its toll, Black midwifery takes an expansive view of health, locating harm both inside and outside the hospital. While modern obstetrics has led to decontextualized and techno-solutionist methods—methods often born via Black exploitation—Black midwifery finds answers in community and a rooted reciprocity, where the home and the material circumstances of Black mothers and their babies are seen as vital and vibrant—not as a bio-cultural problem.
Finding Freedom Through The Black American Booty (15 mins)
Brittney Monique Walker,
Narrative strategist with a background in journalism. She holds a B.A. in Journalism, a Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism and is currently pursuing her Masters in Liberal Studies.
The Black American woman’s body is at the center of American pop culture, racial capitalism and Black liberation, simultaneously. Black American women have lived and continue to live a contradictory existence in a liminal space somewhere between social acceptance and rejection, in which she is not considered fully human. Her exterior continues to be commodified for its aesthetics and production value. This is evidenced in the history of American slavery, care labor, high maternal death rates among Black women and the infamous Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL), a trending cosmetic surgery performed to transplant abdominal fat to the buttocks. Some Black American women are capitalizing on their racialized sexuality and obtaining social capital through the use of their sexualized bodies. Perhaps the booty has the power to influence a whole nation’s popular culture and create new capitalistic ventures (cue the cosmetic surgery industry, fashion, beauty and fitness worlds) and in turn, has the power to legitimize the existence and value of the whole Black woman. Some women find freedom in using their sexualized bodies in capitalistic ventures like sex work, social media influencing, dancing and more. Can Black liberation be obtained through racial capitalistic ventures of the Black woman’s Body? Both C. Riley Snorton’s historical analysis of medical experimentation and Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection, take a critical look at the technology of inscribing power on Black bodies. This foundation sets the stage for an exploration of contemporary practices among Black women using their sexualized bodies for both freedom and profit.
Stay Moving: Citing, Mapping, and Whiting Out of Transition in New York City (15 mins)
Thomas Koenigs,
Graduate student of philosophy interested in folk art and music, and creative means to decolonize historical material.
Zack Drescher,
Visual artist and musician, and a Lang alumni, class of 2020
Queering Walter Benjamin, I question “the record” of history, in particular, Manhattan’s LGBTQIA spaces. “To this most inconspicuous of all transformations the historical materialist must pay heed” (On The Concept of History, IV). Intent to assemble a “track,” of location, words, and sights, with found objects gathered from the West Village, Chelsea and on the Piers, in advertisement, pornographic centerfolds, postcards and photo prints, I have instead documented the narrowing of queer and trans identity in Manhattan. Using the FunTravel Guide as the imagined body in my collage, I have “taped down” the legs of a trans New York made available to me, one that seems to prioritize white personhood, erasing and exploiting BIPOC trans place and identity. At the Chisholm Larsson Gallery, between 17th and 18th Street on 8th Avenue, $1 postcards of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s bedroom in Arlington Virginia and the Morris-Jumel plantation in Washington Heights, and portraits of Ronald Reagan, are mixed with vintage advertisements for gay art galleries featuring exclusively white bodies that would have apparently “inspired the Greek Gods.” So too in the FunTravel Guide, (provided for free in the now-shuttering and beloved sex boutique, The Blue Store) corporate sponsors like AT&T and Shell congratulate themselves for their allyship, sponsoring foodie and bar events around the city. Putting these materials in conversation with each other, I hope to further complicate citation, the answer being “irrefutably with the victor” (Benjamin, VII). Rather, I mean to recontextualize academic “citation” in that place of police surveillance and gentrification; of whitewashing, erasure and violence against the trans and gender non-conforming community, particularly the young and the housing insecure, Black, Indigenous, and people of Color.
Stop Talking in Circles: A Reflective Discussion on Belonging while Gendered and Racialized (15 mins)
Derek Holland (they/them) MFA, MPH,
Artist and researcher currently based in Philadelphia, PA. Derek is currently a Black Midwest Initiative and former Access to Excellence Fellow and Instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This presentation will include a discussion following a screening of my short film, “STOP TALKING IN CIRCLES.” This work uses personal introspection, essay excerpts and everyday video recordings as source material to engage “living,” as a black being through six seemingly broad concepts that become more or less complicated: speaking (communication), noise (environmental impacts, intergenerational histories, time), critical thought (criticality, collective knowledge), manhood (patriarchy, gender, humanism) being yourself (autonomy, self actualization, self efficacy), and a thing (embodiment, action, community engagement). Living as black itself is a metaphysical question that the film attempts to articulate with less traditional editing and film making techniques as well as embracing the impossibility of encompassing all that is Black and specifically in this instance belonging in a world of racial constructions. This work draws reference from the work of artists Terrance Nance (Random Acts of Flyness) and Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust, Love is the Message, the Message is Death) and scholar/writers Akwake Emezi, Achille Mebmebe and Toni Morrison. The discussion portion of the presentation will ask the audience to critique the work and draw quotes from the accompanying essays aforementioned from scholars and artists as prompts for discussing
the possibilities and realizations of belonging in the contemporary world.
12:45 pm Lunch
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
1:30 pm Symposium: Feminist Interrogations of Being & Belonging
Exploring Contemporary Feminist Discourses: Belonging and the Shift from Collective Action to Individual Narratives (15 mins)
Shoshana Lowe,
Shoshana Lowe is a senior at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, graduating in spring with a B.A. in Culture and Media and a minor in Visual Studies
This research paper delves into the evolution of feminist discourse by examining two distinct periods: the second-wave feminist movement and contemporary digital feminist spaces. The study juxtaposes the content from r/TwoXChromosomes with articles from Off Our Backs, an influential feminist magazine from the 1970s. Analyzing 54 user-generated posts and 57 articles, the paper reveals a notable shift from collective activism to individualistic narratives in contemporary feminist discussions. Drawing on the themes of the “Belonging Matters Symposium,” the research critically assesses the impact of this shift on the feminist movement’s ability to address systemic issues effectively. The findings highlight a prevalent emphasis on individual empowerment and visibility within the current feminist discourse, mirroring the post-feminist sensibility that emerged in the late twentieth century. This focus on individualism, as opposed to collective action, may impact the sense of belonging within the feminist movement. The paper argues for a return to the collective spirit that characterized earlier feminist movements, as reflected in the writings of Adrienne Rich and Bee Wolf. By fostering discussions that prioritize collective action over individual narratives, digital feminist spaces can become platforms for organizing efforts against prevailing inequalities. The study poses critical questions about the dynamics of online discourse, urging a reexamination of the feminist commitment to “making a world where all people can live fully and well; where everyone can belong.” The findings contribute to ongoing conversations at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and collective belonging in the contemporary era.
“My Body Doesn’t Belong to Me”: Evil and the Secular Body (15 mins)
Jack Jiang,
Doctoral student in the cultural anthropology department at the New School for Social Research.
For Medieval Christian theologians, people’s bodies belonged to God. Christian ethics thus required prohibitions around what we could do to our own bodies. The story of the secular body, meanwhile, often centers on the sovereign individual subject inheriting the body from God. This story still retains its initial liberatory force in slogans such as “My body, my choice,” mobilized by pro-choice activists. But the secular body is also more complicated. At times, it can feel less like the property of the subject, and more like something that doesn’t belong. Farman (2017), for example, shows how once secularism has dispelled the afterlife, the body begins “ticking with the sound of its own end.” Our bodies–as sites of pain and suffering and a reminder of our ultimate mortality–becomes an active obstruction to personal flourishing. This paper focuses on the accounts of how anti-natalists perceive their own bodies. Anti-natalists are an activist community who hope to convince us all to reject procreation. Much of their argument that creating new life is always a harm rests on their understanding that our bodies are not our property, but a burden or debt bequeathed to us by our parents. Because anti-natalists are militant secular materialists, understanding their philosophies can help us examine the contradictions built into secular understandings of the relation between mind and body, and human and nature.
Trappings, Tropes, and the Implications of the “Tradwife” Influencer Movement, Continued: A Critical Conversation (30 mins)
This “Critical Conversation” is a faculty-student collaboration from The SexTech Lab, drawing on the empirical, visual, and discursive analysis of the newly emerging “tradwife” influencer movement within social media. As a continuation of the presentation from the 2023 Gender Matters Symposium, this event will begin with a 15-minute presentation to orient the attendee to the tradwife, share a short case example of a current tradwife, and establish guiding questions for discussion. Following the presentation, facilitators will walk attendees through a semi-structured discussion about perspectives, ethical considerations, and ideas on researching and capturing the tradwife influencer movement. Especially relevantly, facilitators will invite conversation on the tradwife as a phenomenon emerging from (i.e. white supremacy, libertarianism, self-reliance, individualism) and in opposition (i.e. participation in shared healthcare, schooling, employment, and community infrastructure) to ideas of belonging in the United States.
Sanjana Basker,
MA, is a first year doctoral student in counseling psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to doctoral studies, she attended the New School for Social Research, completing a masters in psychology and a certificate in gender and sexuality studies
Claire McGinley,
M.S. Ed, is a second year Psychology student at the New School for Social Research. Prior to adventuring into psychology Claire spent 10 years in the field of early childhood education and development
Rebekah Nathan,
MA, is a first year psychology student at the New School for Social Research, assistant manager for The SexTech Lab. Prior to her work at The New School, Rebekah acquired an MA in Psychology in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University
Juliana Riccardi,
BA, is a recent Bachelor of Arts in Psychology graduate from The New School. She has extensive research experience, including being a Lab Manager for the SexTech Lab
Pani Farvid, PhD.,
Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at The New School,the founder and director of The SexTech Lab and the co-director of The Gender and Sexuailty Institute
2:30 pm Symposium: Belonging in/through/out the “Abject”
Coherence and Co-creation: Gender, Recognition, and Belonging (15 mins)
Jess Saldaña (they/them),
Holds a Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from NSSR, an MFA from Parsons, and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. They are currently the Visual & Multimedia Resources Manager at the Pratt Institute Library and an LP Candidate in Psychoanalysis.
This presentation revisits L. Sander’s (1965) idea of recognition processes, applying them to gender, self performance and perception. As Lyons-Ruth (2000) would suggest Sander sought to “describe the microprocess through which two unacquainted individuals come to know one another’s minds in the service of conducting complex coordinated activity.” Gender emerges as a poly-rhythm among the complicated activity described here- bound up in a web of existing systems, “rhythms’ ‘ and perceptions of the other. This work applies processes of recognition to gender as a kind of belonging in the eyes of the other, to create coherence for self and other. The psychic ruptures that happen when gender is not recognized are also considered. Can non/recognition be a message to the other? How can we better understand gender expression as a collaborative activity with the hope of co-creating coherence? Can gender’s meaning only be fully realized by this messy mingling with the other? The psychoanalytic view used in this work will be largely influenced by intersubjective approaches to the field.
Striving for Belonging, Starving for Autonomy: The Phenomenon of ‘Holy Anorexia’ as a form of Self-Control Among Italian Women Saints (15 mins)
Giuseppe Vicinanza,
Giuseppe Vicinanza is a PhD student in Philosophy at The New School.
In his book “Holy Anorexia,” historian Rudolph Bell draws parallels between the fasting practices of Italian women saints and modern anorexia nervosa, framing it as a struggle for belonging and autonomy within the Christian church. Bell argues that holy anorexia broke established boundaries of female piety, creating new avenues for religious expression. This paper builds on Bell’s argument, suggesting that holy anorexia served as a suitable form of resistance for Christian women due to the theological framework of controlling the flesh in Christianity, as articulated by Saint Paul. This struggle against lust and bodily desires led to the mortification of the flesh, offering a solution within Christian doctrine. However, for women who were seen as embodying lust inherently, this created a paradoxical challenge. I propose that just as anorexia nervosa is often linked to a need for self-control today, holy anorexia in medieval times represented women’s assertion of autonomy, especially as they had limited control over their bodies in other aspects of life. By fasting, women could assert control over what entered their bodies, reclaiming autonomy and resistance within the patriarchal structures of Christianity.
Crafting the Straight, White Child: The Impact of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee on Public Schooling (15 mins)
Cyrus Gray,
Second-year MA student in Historical Studies at The New School and will begin a PhD in American Studies in the Fall.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education, numerous groups across the South formed in order to resist integration. In Florida, the government-funded Florida Legislative Investigation Committee was originally tasked with identifying black educators who may hold communist sympathies making them unfit to teach their youth. However, the FLIC’s mandate quickly changed targeting students and educators believed to be engaged in homosexual acts. In contrasting the manners in which the FLIC sought to protect students in public education first from black educators and peers and subsequently from the homosexual “menace”, I argue that the committee sought to preserve an idolized white, straight child. Analyzing the rhetoric used by the FLIC in their own documents, my research seeks to ask: who was public education made for and who belongs there?
AIDS at The New School: What is Remembered? (15 mins)
Stan Walden,
Master of Architecture candidate at the Parsons School of Constructed Environments.
My M.Arch thesis examines memories and artifacts from New School students, faculty, and staff present during the early years of the AIDS crisis, and beyond. This exercise relies heavily on the work of the staff at The New School Archives and Special Collections, who have begun to shed light onto this hidden yet critical history. I am thrilled to share that a proposal I made to the Aronson Gallery was accepted and thus the exhibit I designed for my thesis project will be installed in the gallery later this year/early next year. I am particularly interested in the process of collecting and transcribing oral histories related to this subject and this community. I plan to center them in this designed experience as a means to activate the archive and test its limits and possibilities as it is extended into the gallery space. Since I started to pursue this subject in earnest I have met nothing but encouragement from professors and staff who have been a part of this community for decades. This is a stark contrast compared to the reaction I got when I mentioned AIDS activism in a class investigating the legacy of the Stonewall Riots: “why would we talk about that, here?” Ever since hearing that remark, I have been interested in understanding and explaining why that history belongs in our memory, especially here.
Picking and Choosing (15 mins)
Alexis Clements,
Alexis Clements is an independent writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She has a M.Sc. in Philosophy & History of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in Theater Studies from Emerson College.
In this new work in progress, I am drawing on a prior film and a forthcoming film to analyze how identity markers shape notions of belonging. My prior film, “All We’ve Got” explored LGBTQ+ spaces that center women and femme-identified individuals, delving into the concept and physical manifestations of community within these subcultures. In my forthcoming film, “Covenant,” I am investigating residential segregation as a means of questioning the limitations imposed on community participation based on identity. With “Picking & Choosing” I’m making the ways these seemingly unrelated projects inform one another explicit, highlighting their related themes around the aspects of identity that influence our sense of belonging, how certain identities are prioritized, and the social norms generated by identity-based groups.
Angels of History: Wearer-Based Design for Transgender People of Color (15 mins)
Arjahn Cox,
Arjan Cox is a Black, non-binary fashion designer based in New York. Arjahn is a 2023 Fashion Design Graduate from Parsons School of Design with a minor in Gender Studies from The New School. Also Arjahn is a recipient of the 2022 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Häagen-Dazs Scholarship Award.
In this talk Arjan discussed their design work that engages with identities in mind with the hope of enriching the clothing options for people who do not fit the white, cisgender standard of fashion. With their work Arjahn hopes to de-gender fashion, expand ideas of wearability, and move fashion into a consciously and holistically inclusive space.
4:15 pm Break
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
4:30 pm Themed Session: Queering Gender, Sex, & Intimacies
Queer Ambivalence: Fantasies of Belonging in the Lesbian Imaginary (15 mins)
Hilary Thurston,
PhD Candidate at York University in the Department of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies with a clinical background in counseling and social service work.
Representations of relations characterized by rage and romance are commonly invoked as affective matrices of belonging in contemporary lesbian imaginaries. From the early 20th century, the lesbian subject has been characterized as angry, aggressive,
narcissistic, dependent, and obsessive in discourses ranging from psychopathology and social work literature (Freud 1949, Socarides 1968, Burch 1982, Krestan & Bepko 1980) to media and popular culture (Creed 1995, Murphy 2017). The mobilization of lesbian rage by the feminist movement (Warner 2011), combined with the more recent turn to reparative reading in queer studies (Sedgwick 2003) has established the figure of the angry lesbian as a culturally intelligible subject for analysis. What are the affective implications of this figure’s ambivalent legacy on the lives and love stories of queer women? Through a theoretical framework combining psychoanalysis and social theory, this paper presents a trauma-informed analysis of the commingling of queer rage and romantic fantasy in representations of lesbian relationships, including the memoir, In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, the novel, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, the Netflix series, The Ultimatum: Queer Love, and the Showtime series, The L Word. How does the ambivalent relation between queer rage and romantic fantasy work as a bonding agent in lesbian attachments that are animated by systemic trauma? The author argues that ambivalent attachments form where queer fantasies of belonging become entangled with the affects of oppression, and that cognitive dissonance is produced in the disparities between lesbian love stories and the affective experiences they mask and mediate.
Asexuality and Belonging: New Taxonomies of Gender and Sexuality (15 mins)
Maria Markiewicz,
Fulbright Fellow at The New School for Social Research in New York.
Asexuality, a sexual orientation characterized by a lack of sexual attraction, is gaining recognition as a legitimate and distinct identity within the spectrum of human sexuality. As individuals who identify as asexual seek to understand and articulate their experiences, the concept of belonging emerges as a central theme. This paper explores the intersection of asexuality and belonging, focusing on how identity politics and new taxonomies of gender and sexuality can be powerful tools in combating the ontological crisis of modernity. Belonging is a fundamental human need, essential for emotional well-being and social integration. For asexual individuals, the journey towards self-discovery and acceptance can be fraught with challenges, as their experiences often diverge from societal norms and expectations regarding sexuality. This divergence can lead to feelings of alienation and marginalization, highlighting the importance of creating spaces and communities where asexual individuals can feel a sense of belonging and validation. Identity politics, with its emphasis on recognizing and affirming the experiences of marginalized groups, offers a framework through which asexual (and all LGBTQA+) individuals can assert their identities and challenge dominant narratives surrounding sexuality. By embracing their sexuality as a valid and legitimate aspect of their identity, queer individuals can reclaim agency over their bodies and experiences, thus mitigating the ontological crisis of modernity characterized by a sense of fragmentation and disconnection from oneself and society.
We Have Never Been Monogamous: Making Kin and Making Knowledge (15 mins)
Sarah Sharp,
MA student at the New School for Social Research in the Liberal Studies program.
In the fourth chapter of her 2016 book, Staying with the Trouble, “Making Kin: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene,” Donna Haraway addresses the question of how we are to make and understand relationships with one another while living in an era of impending climate catastrophe. Sitting on the brink of ecological collapse, where relations between beings of all kinds are at stake, we are in a position where our actions and re-actions, and the thinking that drives them, have never been more pertinent for making our world and for taking care of one another. The central recommendation of Haraway’s chapter is clear: “make kin, not babies!” (SWTT 103). Through making reference to other relationship theorists and scholars of the history of science and technology, such as Angela Willey, Kim Tallbear, and Sophie Lewis–––all of whom both draw on and push back against Haraway’s work–––and unpacking and destabilizing one pattern of human relationality in particular, monogamy or, as Tallbear refers to it, “settler sexuality,” I aim to examine what constitutes and what is at stake in the making and re-making of kin for Haraway as well as the possibilities for and the implications of our current forms of relationality. As she writes at the end of her chapter, “it matters how kin generate kin” (103)
Objectionable: Quasi Things of Queer Literacy (15 mins)
Mark McBeth,
Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center at CUNY.
In this presentation, Objectionable: Quasi Things of Queer Literacy, the presenter analyzes literacy artifacts of the U. S. twentieth-century (i.e., police cadet textbooks, young adult sex education guides, and. syndicated advice columns) to show evidence of how heteronormative forces safeguarded their social influences which, thereafter, evoked Queer collective resistance against oppressive biases. Using Bruno Latour’s theoretical lens of quasi-objects—where seemingly inanimate objects become active participants (aka,“actants”) in human agency and activity—Objectionable supplements current ethnographic literacy research, offering a longitudinal method of analyzing the contents and contexts of homophobic literacy initiatives which, thereafter, results in Queer counter-efforts. In sum, Objectionable recovers how Queer literates used reading, writing, research, and social critiques to upend homophobic discourse, create communities, and develop a sense of belonging in a world that often didn’t welcome them. Ultimately, this archival-based study tells the protracted story of how Queers used literacy to object to homophobic “ill-literacy” (read: false narratives and logical fallacies) and, as a result, challenged and defied heteronormative orthodoxy. If normative social forces have presumed certain commonsensical assumptions about sexual and gendered existence, then Queer literates of the twentieth century read, wrote, researched, and critically determined their varying definitions of self and senses of self-worth, a literacy lesson gainfully commemorated and advocated in the twenty-first century.
Unboxing “Porn Trivia”: Sensual Scholarship and the Desire for Belonging (15 mins)
Kathleen Cherrington,
PhD candidate in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Program at York University, Toronto, Canada.
“Porn Trivia” is a board game, meticulously crafted to amplify conversations on pornography within the arenas of gender, sexuality, and media, while underscoring the multifaceted ways it contributes to society. Discourses of early Victorian erotic art, including mediums such as adult-oriented postcards, film, and photography, influenced the 1960s sexual revolution and shaped contemporary media, pop culture, and social justice movements. Navigating the blurred lines between erotic art and pornography, this game presents both intricate facets of cultural production and academic inquiry. In our contemporary landscape, it becomes increasingly challenging to draw clear distinctions between porn and erotic art, as elements of both seamlessly weave into our everyday lives through mainstream media. Featuring pink plastic micro-penises as game pieces to emphasize vulvar empowerment against cis-heteropatriarchal norms, this game combines color-coded spaces and cards for aesthetically pleasing educational engagement, in a box adorned with my doodles of genitals. The game invites participants to recognize pornography’s integral role in shaping hegemonic sexual norms through discourses of law, medicine, art, media, and sexuality. The game’s four trivia categories—Porn Stars and Celebrities, Truths and Falsifications, Porn Feminists, and History and Literature—provide a creative and comprehensive exploration of porn studies in an interactive “Porn Trivia Lounge” area at the conference, to collectively investigate the complex intersections of media, representation, identity, and commercialized sex. This unique and interactive project combines art, activism, education, and entertainment to unravel the intricate threads of belonging and non-belonging within the context of sex-positive feminism and inclusive dialogue.
5:45 pm Break: We will reconvene in the University Center. Please note, 65 West 11th St. closes at 6pm.
Lang Café
Eugene Lang Building, room B100
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011
University Learning Center
66 West 12th Street, 6th floor
New York, NY 10011
6:00 pm “Pieces of Me”, A Play by Bo Petersen
Bo Petersen,
Professional South African actress, currently living in the US
Pieces of me is an autobiographical play that exposes the devastating emotional cost of living secretly as a mixed-race family under the vicious racist apartheid regime and the legacy it bore.
7:15 pm Closing Remarks
University Learning Center
66 West 12th Street, 6th floor
New York, NY 10011
7:30 pm Dinner Reception for Panelists and Participants | Optional
The Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute is delighted to host you at our annual convening, in person, at The New School in New York City. This year, we bring together scholars, faculty, staff, students, activists, artists and performers for a two-day multimodal event that seeks to grapple with matters of belonging. The notion of belonging carries many connotations. Typically defined as “a subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences” (Allan et al., 2021), it is not only profoundly important to our sense of self, social connectedness and psychological wellbeing, but is also a concept that has been embraced by communities and institutions in complex ways. For some, belonging is a meaningful addition to projects of diversification and equity. In other cases, belonging has been co-opted and manipulated to reify power structures by focusing on affect over access. Belonging may also refer to possession – the belongings of humans, the belonging of one to another, the belonging of land to a people, a name to a concept, a body to a person. In this two day convening we unpack the theme belonging by asking: How does belonging interact with power, representation, and narratives of gender, race, sexuality, class, geographic location, and dis/ability? How does this unfold in higher education, research and scholarship? What does it mean to belong? Who belongs where and why? How can performative acts of promoting belonging be disrupted and reworked? Within this call, we revisit a political commitment to “making a world where all people can live fully and well; where everyone can belong” (hooks, 2008). How can we grapple with this call today? We hope you will be able to attend both days of programming, check out the art installations, and join us for a special documentary screening (night one) and play (night two).
We look forward to the conversations that are to come, across these two days of transdisciplinary, transnational and multimodal discussions.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you need anything and we look forward to seeing you!
Conference organizers:
Pani Farvid
Mariah Guevin
Vlad Nabat
Rose Réjouis