CURRENTS: Mejdulene Shomali and Foster Reynolds-Santiago
Humanities Work Now
Location
Online
CURRENTS: Mejdulene Shomali and Foster Reynolds-Santiago – Online Event
Date & Time
December 6, 2021, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Description
CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now
is lunchtime series that showcases exciting new faculty work in the humanities
in a dynamic and inter-disciplinary setting.
The Uses of Beauty in Palestinian Liberation Practices
Mejdulene Shomali, Assistant Professor, Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies; Inclusion Imperative Faculty Collaborator (Fall 2021)
This talk discusses how beauty operates
as a shifting signifier in political and aesthetic discourses around
Palestinian liberation. At times, representation of the beauty of Palestine and
Palestinians operates to obscure the material violences that foreclose
Palestinian freedoms. At other times, beauty is the means by which Palestinian
activists sustain their activism and imagine a free Palestine.
AND
Transgender Euphoria: Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation
Foster Reynolds-Santiago, MFA Candidate, Intermedia + Digital Arts; Dresher Center Graduate Student Research Fellow (Fall 2021)
How can an island riddled with
generations of hateful queer rhetoric be re-imagined to prioritize Transgender
narratives through the visualization of data? “Transgender Euphoria: Puerto
Rico’s Queer Exaltation” explores Transgender and Latinx experience by
examining the spiritual relationship between physical materials indigenous to
Puerto Rico and its Transgender population, proposing that the island of Puerto
Rico can be visualized as a place where being Transgender is an exalted state
of existence.
Image description: Side by side photos - On the left, a woman with long curly hair and wearing a blue dress smiles at the camera. On the right, a black and white photo of a man with short dark hair and a beard. He is wearing glasses.