From Patriarchy to Pussy Riot: Gender, Sexuality, and Global Citizenship

The First Annual Northeastern Women’s History Month Symposium

March 14, 2014
8:30 am – 5:00 pm

Cabral Center and the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Northeastern University

Presented by the Northeastern Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Forum for Feminist Thought
Sponsored by the Northeastern Humanities Center
Co-Sponsored by: CSSH; Sexual Citizenship Collaborative Cluster; Departments of Communications Studies, English, Political Science, and Sociology & Anthropology; the School of Law; and the International Affairs Program 

View the full program for the event, including panelist bios and panel abstracts, here.

The topic of sexual citizenship has taken on added urgency in the current social and political climate.  From same-sex marriage to immigration to reproductive rights and beyond, what it means to think through “citizenship” has increasingly been imagined as cross–cut not just with gender, race, and class but sexuality as well. The concept of sexual citizenship bridges the private and public, and stresses the cultural and political iterations of sexual expression and sexual and gender identity. 

This symposium seeks to dig deep into this work, bringing it into closer dialogue with feminist theory and queer theory more broadly construed.  What, we ask, is the relationship between theories of sexual citizenship and theories of gendered citizenship?  How do these play out along cross-national vectors and along national vectors of race, class, and ethnicity?  How is sexual citizenship activated in the “war on terror?”  What models of sexual citizenship are implicit in current political contestations, such as those over same-sex marriage and immigration reform?  What does “belonging” mean for citizens formally included but socially abject? 

The event was filmed by Adam Polgren at Pack Network and can be viewed on YouTube.