Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity
A Podcast
The 2022 Femme Scholars Series aimed to celebrate twenty years of the foundational femme anthology Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, published in 2002. Editors Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri curated a collection of prose, poetry, visual art, and theory that explored femme on its own terms and brought us new, complex understandings of femme experience that changed the conversation about queer femininities. Twenty years later, emerging writers and scholars and original contributors to the anthology come together on this podcast to talk about femme past, present, and future.
Featuring: Chloë Brushwood Rose, Anna Camilleri, Trish Salah, Anurima Banerji, Kathryn Payne, Zoe Whittall, Allison Taylor, Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa, Sarah York-Bertram, Leah Horlick, and Andi Schwartz.
Find out more about the podcast here.
"Femme Fiction: Irreverence, Resistance, and Intersectionality" with SJ Sindu
SJ Sindu was the invited keynote speaker for Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference.
What does it mean to write and create stories from a femme perspective? As a queer, genderqueer femme Tamil diaspora writer, I approach my art from a heritage of resistance. In this talk, I’ll trace the histories, theories, and politics that inform and interact with my creative practice, with a focus on irreverence as a technique to subvert expectations in the publishing industry.
SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels (Marriage of a Thousand Lies, which won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award; and Blue-Skinned Gods, which was an Indie Next Pick and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), two hybrid chapbooks (I Once Met You But You Were Dead and Dominant Genes), two graphic novels (Shakti and the forthcoming Tall Water), and one forthcoming collection of short stories (The Goth House Experiment). Sindu holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University and is a co-editor for Zero Street, a literary fiction series featuring LGBTQ+ authors through the University of Nebraska Press. Sindu is an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. More at sjsindu.com or @sjsindu on Twitter/Instagram/Threads.
"Brazen Postures, Interstices, and Other Disturbances" with Anna Camilleri
Anna Camilleri was the invited keynote speaker for Liminal: The Second Annual Critical Femininities Conference.
Anna Camilleri is an interdisciplinary artist with a practice rooted in disability justice. Her body of work spans literature, sound, interdisciplinary and collaborative performance works, visual public artworks, and installations. Her book publications, including Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, co-edited with Chloë Brushwood Rose, have been recognized with distinctions from the LAMBDA Literary Foundation, the Association of Independent Publishers, and the American Library of Congress. Anna is an Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency alum, University of Toronto (Scarborough) Department of Arts, Media, and Culture artist residency alum, and a Centennial College Theatre Arts and Performance educator (design and producing). Anna is a Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Lab fellow, a member of the Workman Arts advisory, and an artist collaborator with the Creative Users “Laying the Groundwork for a Sustainable Deaf and Disability Arts Future” project. Over the past fifteen years, Anna has provided consultancy and mentorship to equity-building organizations and artists that have gone on to grow high-impact projects and distinguished art practices. Recent works include May I Take Your Arm? (Theatre Passe Muraille 2021 mainstage, NAC’s English Theatre Collaborations Unit, Festival of Live Digital Art 2019 and 2020) and the Countdown Public Art Project, an aesthetic and discursive intervention into gender-based violence (2016 to present). Anna isfounding artistic co-director of ReDefine Arts (established in 2005 as Red Dress Productions) based in Toronto, Treaty 13 Territory, with programming hubs and projects across Ontario. ReDefine Arts works within a network of partnerships to create and present interdisciplinary and community grounded performance and public artworks that advance disability justice, collective liberation, and artistic innovation.
"Femme Memoir as Feminist Praxis" with Dr. Raechel Anne Jolie
Dr. Raechel Anne Jolie was the invited speaker for the 2021 Femme Scholars Series. The event was co-sponsored by the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies Program (York University), the Sexuality Studies Program (York University), and the Joint Program in Culture and Communication (York University and Ryerson University).
Check out the recording of the event here.
Raechel Anne Jolie (she/they) is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a PhD in Critical Media Studies, with a minor in Feminist & Critical Sexuality Studies from the University of Minnestoa. Her writing has appeared in The Baffler, Bitch, Teen Vogue, In These Times, among other publications. Jolie is also the editor and co-creator of The Prison Arcana tarot zine, made in collaboration with incarcerated artists. Rust Belt Femme is their first memoir and received recognition in NPR's Favorite Books of 2020, was a finalist in the Heartland Bookseller's Award, and was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction.
“Queer Interventions: Mad Femme Excess in Parts” with Dr. Shayda Kafai
Dr. Shayda Kafai was the invited keynote speaker for the first annual Critical Femininities Conference.
Check out the recording here.
Shayda Kafai (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Ethnic and Women’s Studies department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She is the author of Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid. As a queer, disabled, Mad femme of color, she commits to practicing the many ways we can reclaim our bodyminds from systems of oppression. To support this work as an educator-scholar, Shayda applies disability justice and collective care practices in the spaces she cultivates. Shayda’s writing and speaking presentations focus on intersectional body politics, particularly on how bodies are constructed and how they hold the capacity for rebellion. From discussions of madness and suicide to femme politics and crip art, Shayda works to reframe our most disempowered bodyminds as vehicles of change-making. In honor of self-care and her communities, Shayda is also an artmaker and co-founder of CripFemmeCrafts with her wife, Amy. They make art that empowers all our bodyminds, particularly centering the magic and joy-making that comes from the wisdom and beauty of disabled, Fat bodyminds of color.
"Queer Femme Selfie Practices as Strategies for Recognition" with Elianne Renaud.
Elianne Renaud is a postgraduate research student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at the University of Newcastle. Elianne does research in queer subjectivities, critical femininities and social media as an intertextual site for reimagining the feminine subject. Her current project is 'Queer Femme Selfies: Instragram selfies as an intertextual site for critically imagining alternative femininities and queer subjectivities.'
"Resistance and Reinvention: Femmes' Negotiations of Cultural Discourses About Femininity" with Laura Brightwell
Laura Brightwell is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, & Women's Studies at York University. She is a recipient of the Provost Dissertation Scholarship and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. She researches femme marginalization through the lens of storytelling. Laura is interested in the intersections of queer theory and lived experiences and bridging the gap between academic and non-academic knowledge production. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Lesbian Studies, feral feminisms, and Gender Hate Online: Understanding the New AntiFeminism.
"Femmeship: Political Alliances, Communities of Care, and Friendship in Femme Internet" with Dr. Andi Schwartz
Dr. Andi Schwartz is the 2020-2021 Visiting Scholar in Sexuality Studies at York University. She has a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies from York University. Her research interests include femme subjectivities, critical femininities, online subcultures and counterpublics, and radical softness. Andi also holds a Master's in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies from York University and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. Her academic work has been published in Feminist Media Studies, Social Media + Society, Psychology & Sexuality, First Monday, Feral Feminisms, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, and several anthologies. She is the organizer and host of the Femme Scholars speaker series.
"'You Have to Have a Pretty Face': Queer Fat Femme Negotiations of Fat Femininity" with Allison Taylor
Allison Taylor is a PhD candidate in the department of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Taylor’s SSHRC-funded, doctoral research explores queer fat femme identities, embodiments, and negotiations of femmephobia, fatphobia, and other intersecting oppressions in a Canadian context. Her research interests include fat studies, critical femininity studies, queer theory, and critical disability studies. Her work has been published in places such as Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, Psychology & Sexuality, the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and The Routledge International.
"Femme Theory: How Queer Femininities Can Help Re-Think Gender and Power" with Dr. Rhea Ashley Hoskin
Dr. Rhea Ashley Hoskin is an Ontario Women’s Health Scholar and an AMTD Global Talent postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo where she is cross appointed to the departments of Sociology & Legal Studies, and Sexuality, Marriage & Family Studies. Dr. Hoskin received her PhD from Queen’s University where she was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal for her work on Femme Theory. Her work focuses on Femme Theory, including femininities, femme identities, critical femininities and femmephobia. Dr. Hoskin’s work applies Femme Theory to understand psychosocial and cultural phenomenon, various forms of oppression, perceptions of femininity, and sources of prejudice rooted in the devaluation or regulation of femininity.
Find out more about Dr. Hoskin's research here.