{"id":1361,"date":"2022-05-19T16:49:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T20:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/cfr\/?page_id=1361"},"modified":"2026-01-21T12:12:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:12:02","slug":"critical-femininities","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/cfr\/critical-femininities\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Femininities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Critical Femininities is an emerging field of study that seeks to examine femininity unhinged from \u201cwoman\u201d (Dahl, 2012). In addition to elucidating and theorizing feminine and femme identities, Critical Femininities scholars follow traditions in non-academic femme writing and feminist and queer scholarship to understand femininity as subversive (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019), understand femme-ininity as a theoretical framework and a mode of knowledge production (Hoskin, 2017; Schwartz, 2018, 2020a), and understand femininity beyond identity, as affective, assemblage, and lineage (Brightwell & Taylor, 2019; Dahl, 2017; McCann, 2018; Schwartz, 2020b).<\/p>\n\n\n\n


If you would like to get involved in the Critical Femininities Network at York University, please contact us at critfemininities@gmail.com<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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News<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Registration for \"Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities\" Conference is now open! <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Join the Critical Femininities Research Cluster for \"Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference,\" taking place virtually (via Zoom) on August 15-17, 2025. This 3-day virtual conference will bring together scholars, activists, and artists critically exploring femininities through the theme of 'Connection.'<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Excess: Mad, Queer, Femme Abundance <\/em>
A Special Issue of Feral Feminisms<\/em>
edited by Andi Schwartz & Shayda Kafai
is now live!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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This two-volume special issue is based on the theme of the first Critical Femininities conference, Excess. Edited by Andi Schwartz, conference co-founder & co-organizer, and Shayda Kafai, conference keynote speaker, this collection includes several papers originally presented at Excess: The First Annual Critical Femininities Conference <\/em>at York University in the summer of 2021. <\/em>Volume one was published in August 2024 and volume two was published in June 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Irreverence: Proceedings of the Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/em> is now live!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The Critical Femininities Research Cluster's latest publication is now available. The works included in this collection were all originally presented at Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/em> at York University in the summer of 2023. The papers in these proceedings respond to multiple notions of ir\/reverence: Justine Wallace presents an analysis of Dionne Brand\u2019s In Another Place, Not Here<\/em> as a way to challenge queer Caribbean migrants\u2019 expected reverence for the global north as a queer utopia; Steff(ania) Juniper offers a creative rumination on lesbian relationships that draws on images of rituals and symbols of romantic reverence; Anoosha Hasan details findings from a study of women\u2019s activism in a post-flood Pakistan that challenged cultural taboos around menstruation; Emilie Collyer exemplifies irreverence as a form of feminist resistance, using absurdist and surrealist poetic forms to explore the affective expectations placed on feminine subjects; and, finally, Thea Jones explores how certain \u201cbreastless parents\u201d challenge discourses of normative motherhood\u2014a pillar that upholds the ideal of femininity. Click the button below to read more!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Liminal: Proceedings of the Second Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/em> is now live!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The Critical Femininities Research Cluster's first publication is now available. The works included in this collection were all originally presented at Liminal: The Second Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/em> at York University in the summer of 2022 and they all respond to notions of liminality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upcoming Events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

August 15-17, 2025 | Online<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Join the Critical Femininities Research Cluster for \"Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference.\" The conference will take place virtually (via Zoom) on August 15-17, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connection: joining, uniting, fastening, bringing together. Audre Lorde highlighted how when we \u201cmake connection with our similarities and our differences\u201d (53), we remind ourselves of our own and others\u2019 affective capacity. Femininity can be a rich and creative site of connectivity that expands beyond colonial imaginaries of womanhood and gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This conference marks half a decade of cultivating digital community dialogue around critical femininities, opening up intentional digital space for expanding normative definitions of connection. There are also possibilities in the ways we disconnect. As Alyson K. Spurgas (2021) writes, \u201cthere is promise in embracing a fracturing, in falling apart\u2014as antidote to the normative and neoliberal logic of keeping it together.\u201d There is value in interrogating the connective void left when white supremacy, colonization, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and other violent structures disconnect us from our femininities. The potential inherent in diving into disconnection also leaves room for exploring unexpected or idiosyncratic instances of re-connection to femininity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year's conference program includes 9 panels with interdisciplinary and international scholars, artists, and activists, a keynote address, and a creative workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find out more about the cluster and past conferences at this link<\/strong>: https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/cfr\/critical-femininities\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact us at<\/strong>: critfemininities@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ticket Information<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Critical Femininities conference has always been a space that centres graduate students, early career researchers, arts workers, and others working outside\/beyond the academy. To continue creating this supportive space, this year we are experimenting with a sliding scale conference registration fee. You can pay any amount (including $0) that works with your budget. Please note the currency is Canadian dollars (CAD).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Donation:
$0-$30: For conference presenters, students, arts workers, un- or under-waged
$30-$50: For those with a living wage
$50+: For those with access to institutional funding<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please email us if you would like an itemized receipt or have any questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fat Fashionings: Drawing FAT in Comics
A Workshop with Mollie Cronin<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Date:<\/strong> August 17, 2025
Time:<\/strong> 9:45am - 11:15am EDT
Location: <\/strong>Online (via Zoom)
Register:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.eventbrite.ca\/e\/connection-the-fifth-annual-critical-femininities-conference-tickets-1439440578519?aff=oddtdtcreator<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this workshop participants will explore drawing FAT in comics. From cartooning basics, to self-portraits, to worlds and environments, we will explore how the ways we conceive of and represent fat can shape our selves and spaces. Attendees of any and all levels of experience are encouraged to attend (no drawing experience needed!), and participants should bring paper and black pens, and any other drawing supplies they wish to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mollie Cronin<\/strong> is a cartoonist from Mi'kmaki (Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Fredericton, New Brunswick). She has a BA in Art History from NSCAD University and an MA in Gender Studies from Queen's, and recently completed the first year of a PHD program at York. Her fat-centric cartooning practice is often published under the name \"Art Brat Comics<\/a>\" where she depicts embodied fat characters and draws inspiration from her own experiences as a fat woman. Her current research examines representations of fat women in comics and includes her own cartoon interventions. Her first solo book project Future Me is Fat<\/a><\/em> is now available from Conundrum Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This workshop is part of \"Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference.\" <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Workshop facilitator Mollie Cronin<\/em>. Photo by Stevey Hunter. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Past Events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Generation: The Fourth Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

August<\/em> 16-18, 2024 | Online<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Centre for Feminist Research at York University is hosting scholars, researchers, activists, and artists for the fourth annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of \u2018Generation.\u2019 This year\u2019s conference will also include a collage workshop by artist stylo starr and Keynote address by Dr. Gina Starblanket!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Registration is free for all attendees and the conference will take place virtually on August 16-18, 2024.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Register using this form until August 1: https:\/\/forms.gle\/xrTYczJtn6RMS76t7<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To generate is to cause, create, or bring about. A generation may refer to a relation in time or the creation of art, scholarship, solidarity, or power. This conference aims to explore the multifaceted dimensions of and attitudes towards femininity across different generations, interrogating how various social, cultural, political, and technological factors intersect with and shape our experiences. In this moment of intergenerational conflicts, climate crisis, and generative AI, the time has come to think critically about our generations and what we generate.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow us on Instagram @crit_fem<\/a> for more updates!  <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity<\/strong>
Launch and Listening Party<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Date:<\/strong> October 21, 2023
Time:<\/strong> 1:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Location:<\/strong> The ArQuives (34 Isabella Street, Toronto)
RSVP<\/strong>: https:\/\/arquives.ca\/store\/still-brazen-twenty<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundational femme anthology Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity <\/em>was published in 2002. Editors Chlo\u00eb 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. Now, twenty years later, original contributors to the collection and emerging femme writers and scholars come together on this podcast to talk about femme\u2019s past, present, and future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join us in person at The ArQuives on Saturday, October 21, to celebrate the launch of Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity. <\/em>Come out for the chance to listen to all six podcast episodes before they\u2019re online, see ephemera from the early days of Brazen Femme, and share your memories of the book and visions of femme\u2019s future.

Find out more about the podcast here.<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

August 17-19, 2023 | Online<\/em>
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The Centre for Feminist Research at York University will host the third annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of \u201cIrreverence.\u201d The conference will take place virtually on August 17-20, 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be irreverent is to show disrespect where respect is demanded, to be flippant in the face of serious situations, and to satirize what others hold sacred. In western culture, the mother, the virgin, and the queen are figures of femininity that are often held sacred, exemplifying the entrenchment of idealized feminine characteristics such as domesticity, piety, and (hetero)sexual or moral purity. But for decades, irreverence has been woven into camp and poststructuralist approaches to femme theory, which insist that femme is an intentionally ironic performance of this idealized white, cis-heterosexual femininity (Albrecht-Samarasinha 1997; Case 1988; Duggan & McHugh 1996). Irreverent attitudes toward femininity\u2014especially white, heterosexual, and colonial femininities\u2014are also integral to other queer cultures and modes of critique: in recent years, hypersexual and outrageous impersonations of the sacred feminine figures the Virgin Mary and Queen Elizabeth (I and II) have been presented on the mainstage of TV\u2019s Rupaul\u2019s Drag Race. In this way, irreverence has wrought countercultural styles of femininities that relate to punk, drag, sex work, working-class, Indigenous, and racialized sensibilities (Bailey 2014; Chepp 2015; McCann 2016; Padaan 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the full CFP here<\/a>. If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Graphic by MA student Maisha Mustanzir<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Dying But Fine: Memeing the Void
A Workshop with Kristel Jax<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Date:<\/strong> Friday, August 18, 2023
Time:<\/strong> 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Location:<\/strong> Online via Zoom <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one infiltrate the zeitgeist with stealth, accuracy, and grace? In this Zoom workshop artist Kristel Jax of niche online humour operation @DyingButFine (rumoured to be indirectly inspirational to 2023 box office smash Barbie) will aim to answer any question you\u2019ve ever had about making, and sharing, memes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kristel Jax<\/strong> runs Instagram meme account @DyingButFine, a parody retreat where trademarked dolls are free to embody chaos, nihilism, and catharsis. Jax aka Brigitte Bardon\u2019t is the host of Drone Therapy Podcast, and shares the only real estate she\u2019ll ever own, a once-curbed, 2015 era Barbie Dream House, with her mini pug, Lana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This workshop is part of the Irreverence conference and open to all. Click here<\/a> to register for the conference. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Workshop facilitator Kristel Jax<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Femme Fiction: Irreverence, Resistance, and Intersectionality<\/strong>
Keynote Address by SJ Sindu<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Date:<\/strong> Saturday, August 19, 2023
Time:<\/strong> 1:30pm - 2:30pm EDT
Location:<\/strong> Online via Zoom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SJ Sindu<\/strong> is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels (Marriage of a Thousand Lies<\/em>, which won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award; and Blue-Skinned Gods<\/em>, 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<\/em> and Dominant Genes<\/em>), two graphic novels (Shakti<\/em> and the forthcoming Tall Water<\/em>), and one forthcoming collection of short stories (The Goth House Experiment<\/em>). 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<\/a> or @sjsindu on Twitter\/Instagram\/Threads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Keynote speaker SJ Sindu<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Critical Femininities Research Cluster at Congress 2023 | Critical Femininity Studies: Current Questions and Future Directions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Roundtable with Andi Schwartz, Jade Da Costa, Laura Brightwell, Hannah Maitland, Cassie Osei, Jessie Taieun Yoon & Lindsay Cavanaugh | Presented at SSA<\/em> | 9:00AM - 10:30AM EDT | CLH K<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, Ulrika Dahl began to define the field of critical femininity studies. Calling for an analysis of femininity beyond its ties to femaleness and its critique as a source of oppression, Dahl suggested we consider femininity as a genre \u201cin all its variations, representations, and materializations (p. 61).\u201d Dahl argued considering femininity\u2019s many genres enables us to theorize affective and power relations between femininities, especially as demonstrated in antiracist and postcolonial inquiries on femininities. For example, many scholars in these fields have considered femininities that diverge from white norms, in particular with regards to racialization, colonialism and transness (Aizura, 2009; Cheng, 2019; Huang, 2022; Keeling, 2007; Panuska, 2019; Reddy, 2016; Zuo, 2022). Now, ten years after Dahl\u2019s initial sketch of the field was published, this roundtable will illuminate the directions the field has already taken\u2014and where it still needs to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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