Special session for the Sexualities Section of ASA.
Session Description:
Sex and the erotic are complicated, unstable, ephemeral, and messy. Scholars of sexuality know this and often embrace the paradoxes of sexual and erotic life. And yet, there remain theoretical, methodological, and conceptual terrains of sexuality(ies) unrealized. This panel for the 2023 American Sociological Association’s Sexualities Section seeks contributions that explore the awkward pairings of/with sex (i.e., madness, perversity, spirituality, healing, affect, panics, war, etc.) that sociologists of sexuality have yet to contend with. We especially desire contributions that center Black, brown, Indigenous, diasporic, immigrant, queer, trans, asexual, disabled, and/or neurodivergent perspectives, narratives, commentaries, and reflections on the field’s moments, methods, and modes of stickiness. What are the tense, frictional, competing and awkward remains of the study of sex? How should or can we reorient sociology to the geographic, historical, affective, subjective, experiential, embodied, queer, trans and racialized aspects of sexualities that have been left behind, rejected, and framed as dangerous, deviant, and abject?
Panelists:
Jack Jin Gary Lee, New School for Social Research: “Minor Articulations: Racialized Emotions and the “Malayan ‘Sexual Perversion’ Cases,” 1938-1940”
Alan Santinele Martino, Carleton University; Eleni Moumos, University of Calgary; and Ann Fudge Schormans, McMaster University: “‘Cripping’ Intellectual Disability and Sexuality in Media Representations: Conundrums and Possibilities”
George Sanders and Heidi Lyons, Oakland University: “Intensive Intimacy Machines”
Endia L. Hayes, Rutgers University: “Sweaty Sexualities: Unpacking Emily West/Morgan’s Stickiness to Violence and Pleasure”
Moderated by:
Ethan Coston, Virginia Commonwealth University
Jessie Laljer, University of Oklahoma
Kyle Lamoin Callen, University of Oklahoma