The Intersections Working Group in English
“The Archives and Genealogies of Intersectionality”:
A Conversation with Roderick A. Ferguson (American Studies at the University of Minnesota, TwinCities) and Grace Kyungwon Hong (Gender Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles) the coeditors of Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press, 2011)
This conversation will engage the intellectual and political stakes of interdisciplinary scholarship in race, gender, and sexuality in the context of neoliberal capitalism and affirmative power. What is the importance of “intersectional” work? How can we address the tendency to dismiss or deploy the concept of “intersectionality” without serious attention to the genealogies of Black feminist and woman of color feminist theory and activism out of which this concept emerged? What kinds of unlikely archives must be assembled in order to excavate such a genealogy? How is intersectionality a methodology as well as a concept that engages archival and genealogical imperatives, and how are interdisciplinary programs and projects positioned in relation to the conceptual and methodological possibilities of intersectional work?
Roderick A. Ferguson is a professor of race and critical theory. From 2009 to 2012, he was the chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. From 2007 to 2010, he was the associate editor of the journal AmericanQuarterly. He is the coeditor of the University of Minnesota Press series Difference Incorporated. He is also the coeditor, with Grace Kyungwon Hong, of Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press, 2011). He is also the author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota Press, 2004) and The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
Grace Kyungwon Hong is an associate professor in the Department of Gender Studies and the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Culture of Immigrant Labor (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and the coeditor, with Roderick A. Ferguson, of Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press, 2011). She is also the coeditor, also with Ferguson, of the Difference Incorporated book series from the University of Minnesota Press.
