Proclaim The New School a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented Students

An Open Letter to President Van Zandt and Provost Marshall

The result of the U.S. election cannot be understood in isolation from the global context of migration and refugee flows. Fear and ignorance about what causes people to leave their communities, and about the effects this has in the societies they join are at the core of xenophobic reactions and ...
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Proclaim The New School a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented Students

Freud and Irigaray in Grey Gardens

Penis Envy as Male Phantasy

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. The American documentary Grey Gardens, directed by the Maysles brothers, is a celebrated landmark of its genre. The viewer enters the life of Edith “Big Edie” Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Beale. The peculiar couple lives in ...
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Freud and Irigaray in Grey Gardens

Women Count

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. On Monday October 24, women in Iceland left work at 2:38 p.m. to protest the gender wage gap. The time was decided by calculating the gap percentage to the regular work day: Every day, the hours that women work ...
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Women Count

Exile as Haven

On The New School Dorm Room Doors Vandalized with Swastikas

Those of us at The New School received news on Saturday that dorm room doors had been vandalized with swastikas. The president has acted swiftly, calling it a hate crime and enacting a zero tolerance policy for such actions. Since this may be an act of students -- entry to ...
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Exile as Haven

How to Think through Cages

What I liked so much about these suggestions was the subtle call to think without fear and without expectations. The cages will always be there, but I came to understand how important it is to create a philosophical cage that allows you to leave it. When would leaving become necessary? ...
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How to Think through Cages

What Is A Woman?

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. I thought it would be cheeky to start this response with the question present in all the readings for this course -- “What is a woman?” -- but, feeling unsure, I decided to do what any sophisticated academic might ...
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What Is A Woman?

The Postcoloniality of Gender

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. To elucidate further the connection among (post)colonialism, gender, and domination, two texts in particular come to mind: Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” from 1984 and M. Jacqui Alexander’s “Not Just (Any)Body Can Be A ...
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The Postcoloniality of Gender

The Plurality and Quasi-Anarchism of Drag

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. I am often told that the subject of my research, drag -- as a pastime, a spectacle, a performance, or an art form -- makes some people “uncomfortable.” The reasons offered as explanation range from (legitimate) concerns about transphobia ...
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The Plurality and Quasi-Anarchism of Drag

Deweyan Response to Hyperdemocracy

This piece is part of the OOPS Series, "Social Interaction." This past May, Andrew Sullivan -- political blogger extraordinaire -- made his much anticipated return to the land of talking heads with an essay on hyperdemocracy and the rise of tyranny. In it, he argued that the overexpansion of direct democracy ...
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Deweyan Response to Hyperdemocracy