The Role of Music in Rousseau’s Non-Ideal Domination Contract–Or, why you should read my book

I’ve been reading Carole Pateman’s and Charles Mills’s Contract & Domination, prepping it to teach later this term in my graduate Feminist Theory class. Here, I want to talk about Mills’s discussion of the early, Discourses-era Rousseau, because I think…

Mainstream Feminism’s Demand for Realism: On “Fotoshop by Adobé,” aesthetics, and posthuman feminism

This video has been making its rounds on feminist social media: Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo. The video critiques, via parody, the standard practice of ‘shopping female images, both in the mainstream media, and in individuals’ own…

The Traffic In Men?

The Traffic In Men?

This week, my graduate feminist theory class read Gayle Rubin’s classic article “The Traffic In Women.” We considered whether and how men could be trafficked—i.e., how men might be used as the medium for relations among other men. Rubin argues…

"The Protestor" Is No "Basic Bitch": The Politics and Aesthetics of Stereotypical Blackness in 2011

“The Protestor” Is No “Basic Bitch”: The Politics and Aesthetics of Stereotypical Blackness in 2011

I want to take a minute to reflect on the representations of race, specifically, the representations of African-American blackness, in US pop culture in 2011. In several blog posts, and a few of my published works, I’ve argued that stereotypical…