Description:

Join us in welcoming SPAN's new postdocs, Ray Noll and Renee Shelby. Each postdoc will give an overview of their research, followed by a Q&A session. 

RSVP at link provided. Registration required. 

Ray Noll
Gender & Sexuality Studies, Anthropology and Political Science

"Jail Refrains: Queer Relations Within and Beyond Necessity"
Ray Noll’s ethnographic fieldwork engages with interlocutors who were previously incarcerated in a women’s division at Cook County Jail (CCJ) in Chicago, Illinois. Ray’s research spans a decade and explores CCJ through its “refrains.” These refrains are phrases spoken amongst those currently and formerly incarcerated (e.g., “gay for the stay”), whose repetition, circulation, and accumulation define life at the jail. The project poses the problem of resistance and refusal to CCJ by situating these ethnographic “refrains” within practices - such as belonging and sexuality - that demonstrate the fundamental limits of confinement and incarceration.

Renee Shelby
Gender & Sexuality Studies, Sociology and Legal Studies

"Designing Justice: Sexual Violence, Technology, and Citizen-Activism"
Renee Shelby examines the gendered and racialized consequences of technology designed to address sexual violence. She is interested in how "anti-violence tech," including panic buttons, AI reporting apps, sexual assault kits, and electronic monitors, become a site of enacting whiteness and work to uphold the racially unequal practices of the punishment industry. By focusing on design politics, her study also offers insights for reimagining justice practices.