“Sexual Embodiment Projects: Mediating Modernist Selves and Queer Subjectivities”

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner Room
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 5:20pm
Add to Calendar
Date: 
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 5:20pm to 7:00pm

The Department of Gender Studies

2012-2013 Public Lecture Series

presents

Sara Crawley

 

“Sexual Embodiment Projects: Mediating Modernist Selves and Queer Subjectivities”

 5:20 p.m., Wednesday, 20 March 2013, Gellner Room

 

Following modernist tradtitions asserting a liberal, rational actor (or self), radical, liberal and socialist feminist theories of the 1970s and 1980s have tended to envision change as resulting from powerful acts of agentic actors. Contradicting such traditions, poststructuralist Queer theorists of the 1990s challenged the notion of volitional, agentic actors by introducing queer subjectivities with questionable potential for creating change outside of textual deconstruction. Where does this leave the enthusiast of feminist and queer theories now? Is there a way to mediate between modernist feminist theories and poststructuralist queer theories to envision agency, the actor and activism without such stark, oppositional terms?   I offer the notion of sexual embodiment projects (derived from ethnomethodology) as a  theory of practical actors leading everyday lives organized through the textual relations of ruling. 

 ***

 Sara Crawley is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, University of South Florida. Her substantive research interests center on feminist gender and sexualities theories, symbolic interactionism, social theory, and interpretive research methods. The central thread running through her research is a concern for how sex category creates social barriers for people and the ways in which people narrate, negotiate, and resist accountability to gendered and sexualized expectations. In addition to her scholarly commitment to Sociology, she retains strong ties to the field of Women’s Studies by regularly publishing in and reviewing for national and international journals in both Sociology and Women’s Studies. To date she has co-authored a book, Gendering Bodies (with Lara Foley and Connie Shehan, 2007, Rowman & Littlefield), and her research and writing has appeared in Gender & Society, Feminism and Psychology, Feminist Teacher, Hypatia, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies (a research annual edited by Norman K. Denzin), International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and Handbook of Constructionist Research.