Amber Musser will present Archives of Sweat: Notes on Method
Abstract: This talk will work through different approaches to thinking about sweat as a critical analytic. These range from thinking about its racialized connotations, its aesthetic dimensions, and its sensual capabilities. It will engage with the following questions: what ideas become possible when we consider sweat; how does sweat allow us to think across the scales of the microbial to the planetary; and how might sweat bring together the cultural and biological. What dimensions of sweat still feel sticky and how can we bring these analytics of porosity to bear on other questions.
Amber Jamilla Musser is a professor of English, Africana Studies, and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES) at the CUNY Graduate Center. She writes and researches at the intersections of race, sexuality, and aesthetics and has published widely in queer studies, black feminism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (Duke University Press, 2024). Her collaborative projects include co-editing Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (NYU Press, 2021).
On Thursday, Sept. 24, from 11 am – 12:30 pm in the Global and International Studies Building rm 1060, Amber Musser and Faye Gleisser (Art History, IU) will discuss Faye’s work in progress, Hormonal Methods and Somatic Abolitionist Art. This event is organized by the Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities. Find out more here.