Convenor: Nayan Shah
Graduate Co-covenors: Quinn Anex-Ries and Cassandra Flores-Montano
Research Objective:
The RAce, GEnder, and Sexuality (RAGES) Research Cluster (previously named Race-ing Queer Studies) emerges from the intersections and tensions between gender studies, sexuality studies, and critical race studies. The group presumes that racialization and sexuality have been central to the production of modern subjects and that an understanding of contemporary structures of power and embodiment depends upon research that considers the racialization of desire and the sexualization of race. The cluster is fundamentally concerned with questions of thinking and doing gender otherwise. We work through concepts of gender, sexuality, and race as mutually dependent and defining. Some of the cluster’s interests include: transgender studies, feminisms, the history of sexuality, the history of medicine, biopolitics, queer theory, the black radical tradition, and affect studies.
The project draws on a significant constellation of faculty and graduate students at USC who are conducting innovative research on queer and transgender studies that intersects with research on racialization. This interdisciplinary network seeks to harness and combine these strengths and build a collaborative program of research and study.
The cluster is a graduate student generated project that provides a space for cluster members to workshop their work with one another.
Past Workshops and Events
2021-2022
- November 18, 2021 – Shayda Kafai, Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, “Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid.”
- Co-sponsors for February 11, 2022 – Francisco Galarte, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of New Mexico, “The Wound Makes the Man.”
- April 26, 2022 – Natalie Lira, Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “State Care: Sterilization and Confinement in California during the Eugenics Era.”
2020 – 2021
2019-20 Events
September 25, 2019
Jorge Leal, USC Postdoc in ASE and History, “The Post-Doc is In: A conversation between early career and in-training scholars about research, writing, teaching, and public scholarship”
October 10, 2019
Gayatri Gopinath, NYU Professor; Director of Gender & Sexuality Studies; Director of the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, “Unruly Visions: The Queer Regional Imaginaries of Sunil Gupta and Agha Shahid Ali” ASE Commons event
October 11, 2019
Gayatri Gopinath — Graduate student workshop on visual and curatorial methodology
November 15, 2019
Andrea Long Chu, doctoral candidate in Comp. Lit. at NYU, “Females: A Reading and Conversation” Cinema Critical Studies , co-sponsorship
Spring 2020
Jeanne Vaccaro, USC Postdoc at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries and the USC Dornsife Gender & Sexuality Studies Department
Spring 2020
Roundtable with new faculty on Race, Sexuality, and Caribbean Studies
Oneka LaBennet; Shawn McDaniel
2018-19 Events
October 4, 2018
Zackary Drucker, Chase, Joynt, Emmett Harsin Drager, and Quinn Anex-Ries
A roundtable discussion, “Agnes and Her Afterlives: Transsexual Archives, Lost and Found”
Critical Mediations Conference USC
October 24, 2018
Kyla Tompkins, Associate Professor, Gender Studies, Pomona College “So Moved: Ferment, Jelly, Intoxication, Rot” public talk
February 13, 2019
Kimberly McNair, USC Postdoc in African American Studies “A Calling of Names: Witness, Absence, and Materiality” seminar
April 10, 2019
Emma Pérez, Prof University of Colorado, Boulder seminar on “The Decolonial Imaginary”
April 11, 2019
Jules Gill-Peterson, Assistant Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh “DePathologizing Trans Childhood: Racial Justice and the History of Plasticity” talk
Contact Us
Department of American Studies & Ethnicity
Located in Kaprielian Hall on the University Park campus, ASE faculty, graduate students, and staff are available to assist you with information and resources about our academic programs and research specialties.
Address
University of Southern California
3620 South Vermont Avenue
Kaprielian Hall 462
Los Angeles, California 90089-2534