Careful Worldmaking: A GSS Symposium
Please join the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program community for the second biennial Careful Worldmaking Symposium. The symposium invites us to consider how our histories and our dreams for feminist, queer, and decolonial futures inform our everyday practices together on campus, and in our lives beyond. This year’s special guest speakers are Mel Y. Chen (University of California, Berkeley), Hil Malatino (Penn State University), and Eleanor Craig (Emory University). The guests will give shorter talks to allow ample time for discussion. There will be a light breakfast and a working lunch, during which we consider our dreams for the future of GSS at the University of Richmond.
Lecture: “Reimagining Gender: Esotericism, the Medieval Imagination, and the Proliferation of Identity"
4:30 - 6:00 P.M. | Humanities Commons
C. Libby
Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University
C. Libby is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Their current book project, Engendering Feeling: Religious Affect, Transphobia, and Historicity, uses medieval religious texts to explore the intersections of religion, embodiment, and affect through the lens of trans studies.
“Ordinary Crisis and the Stakes of Trans History”
10 - 11:15 A.M. | Humanities Commons
Hill Malatino
Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies, and Philosophy, Penn State University
Hil Malatino is associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and philosophy at Penn State University, and acting director of the Rock Ethics Institute. He is the author of Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience (2019), Trans Care (2020), and Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad (2022), as well as the forthcoming book Climbing.
“Unfoldings, Incubations”
11:30 - 12:45 P.M. | Humanities Commons
Eleanor Craig
Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University
Eleanor Craig is a postdoctoral fellow in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University. They are the co-editor of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion (2021), the “Practices of Devotion” special issue of Representations, and the “Affect Theory and Political Theology” special issue of Political Theology. They are completing a book entitled, Fated Falls: Religious Imaginaries and the Limits of the Human
Community-Building Lunch
12:45 - 1:45 P.M.| Humanities Commons
"Ever Drifting"
1:45 - 3:00 P.M.| Humanities Commons
Mel Y. Chen
Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, University of California
Mel Y. Chen is professor of gender & women's studies and director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley as well as director of the disability studies minor. They are the author of Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (2012) and Intoxicated: Race, Disability, and Chemical Intimacy Across Empire (2023) and co-editor of Crip Genealogies (2023) and the "Queer Inhumanisms” special issue of Social Text (2015).