Feminisms Unbound: Undoing Empire: Form, Function, Feminism
To what extent is “empire” useful as a theoretical and political tool for countering hegemonies in these uncertain times? How is it understood—as metaphor for unchecked power or perhaps as historically specific arrangement of domination and influence? What kinds of questions does this concept enable and what kinds of inquiries does it foreclose? Does empire serve well to understand the complexities of colonial as well as contemporary forms of global power holding sway in numerous parts of the world? But, what of the “internal” dimensions of empires, that is, ongoing assaults on indigenous, subaltern, and marginalized communities?
Taking on these and other salient questions, the participants in this roundtable reflect on the salience of empire for contending with forms of economic, cultural, political, and militarized dominations. Bringing to bear expertise in indigenous studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, they offer insights and provoke conversations on the racialized, sexualized, and gendered dimensions of “internal” and “external” hegemonies at this historical moment.
Roundtable Participants
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui teaches comparative colonialisms, indigenous studies, critical race studies, and anarchist studies. She is the current Chair of American Studies as well as the Director of the Center for the Americas. Her first book is Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity, published by Duke University Press in 2008. Kauanui’s second book, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty (forthcoming, Duke University Press), is a critical study on land, gender and sexual politics in the competing nationalist claims between those advocating for federal recognition and those who seek to have Hawaii restored as an independent nation. Kauanui serves as a radio producer for an anarchist politics show called, “Anarchy on Air,” and she previously hosted the radio program, “Indigenous Politics; From Native New England and Beyond,” which aired for seven years and was broadly syndicated through the Pacifica network. A book of select interviews from that show titled, Speaking of Indigenous Politics, is forthcoming (2018, University of Minnesota Press). Kauanui was one of the six co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. She is actively engaged in Palestine solidarity activism and serves on the advisory board of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Kalpana Seshadri, Professor of English, Boston College
Kalpana Seshadri teaches courses in Anglophone literatures and contemporary theory with a focus on global relations of power. She is the author of two books on the philosophy of race: Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race and HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language. She is currently completing a book project entitled Posthuman Economics: The Terms of Gaia, which looks at the shared discourses of world ecology and economy and the meaning of nature.
Kaysha Corinealdi, Assistant Professor of History, Emerson College
Kaysha Corinealdi’s research interests include twentieth century histories of empire, migration, and activism in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Her current book manuscript, Defining Panama, focuses on politics of racial exclusion and transnational activism in Panama and the United States from the late 1920s to the early Cold War period. Dr. Corinealdi’s work has appeared in The Global South and she has also served as book reviewer for journals such as the Hispanic American Historical Review and Western Folklore.
Moderator
Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
Jyoti Puri works at the crossroads of sociology, sexuality and queer studies, and postcolonial feminist theory. Her book, Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle against the Antisodomy Law in India, was recently published by Duke University Press (February 2016). She has also published books, including Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India (Routledge 1999) and Encountering Nationalism (Blackwell Publishers 2004), as well as articles, book chapters, and journal special issues on sexuality, state, gender, and nationalism. She is currently working on a project on death and migration.
About Feminisms Unbound
This Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality (GCWS) initiative, Feminisms Unbound, is an annual event series featuring debates that focus on feminist concerns, theories, and practices in this contemporary moment. This series is intended to foster conversations and community among Boston-area feminist intellectuals and activists. The series, in its open configuration, endeavors to allow the greatest measure of engagement across multiple disciplinary trajectories, and a full array of feminist investments.
The event organizers, who are also visiting scholars with the GCWS this year, are Kimberly Juanita Brown, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies, Mount Holyoke College, Lisa Lowe, Professor of English and American Studies, Tufts University, and Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology, Simmons College, have programmed the four events in this series.