Radical Kinship: Solidarity & Political Belonging

a panel discussion with Lisa Duggan, Che Gossett, Shellyne Rodriguez, & Helga Tawil Souri, & moderated by Layal Ftouni

Register for this free Zoom webinar here.

This panel explores contemporary debates on solidarity and coalitional politics that are instrumental to conceptualizing political subjectivity, collectivity and belonging in our current political conjuncture. Engaging with questions of intersectionality, afro-pessimism and Marxism, this session invites speakers to address the urgency of political affinities (comradeship, radical kinship) that can activate new socio-political imaginaries and envision alternative foundations and horizons for coalitional politics.

The panel was proposed by Layal Ftouni as part of her stay as a ‘global visiting scholar’ at CSGS in 2020 and is the topic of a forthcoming journal issue (2021) she is editing for Darkmatter journal. 

Lisa Duggan, Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Layal Ftouni, Graduate Gender Programme, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Che Gossett, Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies, Whitney Independent Study Program, & PhD Candidate, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University New Brunswick

Shellyne Rodriguez, visual artist, educator, writer, & community organizer

Helga Tawil Souri, Media, Culture, & Communication, New York University

Organized by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality. Co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU; & The Latinx Project at NYU.

***************

Please register for this free Zoom webinar here.

CART captioning services will be provided.

Please contact CSGS at csgs@nyu.edu or 212-992-9540 for more information.

****************

Lisa Duggan is a journalist, activist, and Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is author of Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Sensationalism and American Modernity and Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy, co-author with Nan Hunter of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture, and co-editor with Lauren Berlant of Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and Neoliberal Greed is in the new e-book series she is co-editing with University of California Press, American Studies Now. She was president of the American Studies Association during 2014-2015.

Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University. She is the co-founder of the transnational network Arab Cultural Studies and is the editor (with Tarik Sabry) of Arab Subcultures: Transformations in Theory and Practice (I.B.Tauris, 2017). Her current research project entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival (funded by the Dutch Research Council) explores the politics of life and death (human and environmental) in conditions of war and settler colonialism focusing on Syria and Palestine.

Che Gossett is a Black non binary femme writer. They are a 2019-2020 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies, in the Whitney Independent Study Program and a PhD Candidate in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University New Brunswick.

Shellyne Rodriguez is an artist, educator, writer, and community organizer based in the Bronx. Her practice utilizes text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation. Shellyne graduated with a BFA in Visual & Critical Studies From the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in Fine Art from CUNY Hunter College. She has had her work and projects exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, New Museum and her work has recently been commissioned by the city of New York for a permanent public sculpture, which will serve as a monument to the people of the Bronx.

Helga Tawil Souri is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU. Helga works on issues to do with technology, media, culture, territory and politics with a particular focus on the Middle East, and especially Palestine-Israel.

Image credit: “Orthography of the Wake” Shellyne Rodriguez