Please join the Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies RIW for a discussion with Professor Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African Studies) on Wednesday April 24th, from 12 to 2pm at Tisch 2024. We will be discussing the introduction and first chapter (Is the Animal the New Black?) from Professor Boisseron’s most recent book Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (Columbia University Press, 2018). Please RSVP to Duygu Ula (dula) or Sahin Acikgoz (sahin) to receive a copy of the introduction and first chapter. Free copies of the book will also be available to the participants on a first come first serve basis. RSVP to receive your copy. Please note that receiving a book constitutes a commitment to attend the event, as our Rackham funding for the books is contingent on attendance at the event.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to Duygu Ula (dula) or Sahin Acikgoz (sahin) with any dietary restrictions.

Book Description:

The animal-rights organization PETA asked “Are Animals the New Slaves?” in a controversial 2005 fundraising campaign; that same year, after the Humane Society rescued pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while black residents were neglected, some declared that white America cares more about pets than black people. These are but two recent examples of a centuries-long history in which black life has been pitted against animal life. Does comparing human and animal suffering trivialize black pain, or might the intersections of racialization and animalization shed light on interlinked forms of oppression?

In Afro-Dog, Bénédicte Boisseron investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life. She analyzes the association between black civil disobedience and canine repression, a history that spans the era of slavery through the use of police dogs against protesters during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. She also traces the lineage of blackness and the animal in Caribbean literature and struggles over minorities’ right to pet ownership alongside nuanced readings of Derrida and other French theorists. Drawing on recent debates on black lives and animal welfare, Afro-Dog reframes the fast-growing interest in human–animal relationships by positioning blackness as a focus of animal inquiry, opening new possibilities for animal studies and black studies to think side by side.

Please join the Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies RIW for a dissertation chapter workshop on Tuesday April 16th, from 12-1:30pm at the Comparative Literature Library (Tisch 2021C). We will be discussing Tuğçe Kayaal’s (UM, Middle East Studies) chapter titled ““Boy Lovers” and Cross-Generational Sexual Practices in the Late Ottoman Empire (1913-23).” Please see below the abstract for Tuğçe’s chapter.

TGSS welcomes all graduate students, faculty and staff who are interested in transnational gender and sexuality studies in any discipline or geographic region.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to Duygu Ula (dula) or Sahin Acikgoz (sahin) with any dietary restrictions and to receive a copy of the chapter.

ABSTRACT:

“Boy Lovers” and Cross-Generational Sexual Practices in the Late Ottoman Empire (1913-23)

This chapter explores the condemnation of cross-generational sexual practices in the late Ottoman Empire through a sexual abuse case occurred in Konya Öksüz Yurdu [House of Orphans] during World War I. Based on the discursive analysis of the testimonies of children from the House of Orphans, wartime magazines, and advice literature on youth sexuality, this chapter argues that in the ideological landscape of the wartime empire, which was built on a patriarchal sex/gender system based on the norms of heterosexual sex, Ottoman boys were imagined as de-sexualized and innocent subjects who were under the protection and training of their parents. However, war orphans and the presence of their unsupervised bodies constituted a moral threat as both the objects and subjects of “perverse” sexual desires. Moreover, in the late Ottoman Empire’s political and literary discourses, cross-generational sexual practice between an adult man and an adolescent boy was condemned and labeled as an indicator of the penetrator’s morally weak character. Hence, as the police record on the case occurred in the House of Orphans showcase, any sexual encounter between an adult man and a boy was a more substantial threat to the social order than the act of rape.

Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop will be meeting on Thursday April 5th, 11am-noon at the Comp Lit Library (Tisch 2021C) for a reading group preceding Prof. Trish Salah’s graduate student workshop and guest lecture on April 10 & 11. Copies of Trish Salah’s book Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 will be made available to reading group participants on a first come first serve basis.

This event is open to all graduate students, staff and faculty.