Description:

While both Black and Queer studies have frequently theorized the domestic and its interiors (e.g., the closet) as paradigmatic spaces from which (Black) queer subjects should flee, Black feminist critical and creative archives have historically reimagined the Black home as a crucial locus of gender and sexual freedom in the face of state-sanctioned surveillance of, and incursions into, Black life. Extending this Black feminist conceptualization of the possibilities of the Black domestic, this talk theorizes the Black home—specifically, the Black bedroom therein—as a dense and luscious site of polymorphous play, erotic experimentation, and unrelenting vitality.

Shoniqua Roach is assistant professor of African and African American Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. Her peer-reviewed work has appeared in Signs, differences, American Quarterly, Feminist Theory, and The Black Scholar, among other venues. Roach is completing her book manuscript, Black Dwelling: Home-Making and Erotic Freedom, an intellectual and cultural history of Black domestic spaces as paradigmatic sites of state invasion and Black feminist enactments of erotic freedom. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, and the Mandel Foundation, among others. Currently, Roach is the 2022-2023 Black Feminist Theory Project Scholar-in-Residence at Brown University. 

Organized by Gender & Sexuality Studies and African American Studies. 

This will be a Hybrid event (In-person and via zoom). Register below to receive the zoom link.