Programs

The CSSC organizes and provides support for a range of programs that expand discussion surrounding issues of sexuality and sexual culture across diverse disciplines, critical methodologies, and communities.

EVENTS

The CSSC hosts and co-sponsors a number of campus events relevant to the Center’s focus, including lectures by invited scholars, symposia and conferences, performances, and film screenings. Check our Events page for past and upcoming events.

WORKING GROUPS

The CSSC sponsors working groups organized around topics relevant to the Center’s focus. These groups are open to the public and may meet to discuss selected readings or workshop members’ work, and are eligible for additional CSSC support to invite guest speakers and host events. To propose a new working group, email cssc@berkeley.edu.

Currently Active Groups:

Queer of Color Working Group

The Queer of Color Working Group focuses on reading and sharing recent work in queer of color scholarship, and discussing them through the intersections of critical race and sexuality studies on a transnational level. For the AY 2021-2022, the group will be facilitated by Miguel Samano and Sofi Chavez. To join the group mailing list or receive readings, e-mail either facilitator at miguel_samano@berkeley.edu and sofia_chavez@berkeley.edu.

Critical Race and Animal Theories Working Group

The Critical Race and Animal Theories Working Group (Spring 2022) stimulates scholarship on the multidirectional relationships between registers of race, humanity-animality and species. The aim is to create a transdisciplinary space where graduate students, visiting scholars, and faculty interested in the many intricate questions that arise from spending time with these conceptual companions, to meet, discuss readings, and establish collegial networks. 

Our first meeting will be held online on Wednesday, February 23, at 7-8:30pm. Together we will decide on the frequency, time, location and format (online, offline, hybrid) of future meetings, as well as on the reading materials. This may include chapters from Bennet’s Being Property Once Myself, Boisseron’s Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question, Johnson’s Race Matters, Animal Matters: Fugitive Humanism in African America 1840-1930, or Kim’s Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species and Nature in a Multicultural Age. We may also wish to select academic articles, e.g. on animal nationalisms or race, species and colonialism. You are very welcome to bring other suggestions, too! 

To get the Zoom link of the first meeting or to get in touch with any questions or comments, please contact Mariska Jung (she/her) at mariskajung@berkeley.edu

The Disability and Sexuality Studies Working Group

The Disability and Sexuality Studies working group provides a space for inquiry into both disability scholarship and activism. Through connecting readings with current events, screenings, performances, etc., the group explores the intersections of queer theory and disability studies. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture. For more information contact co-coordinators, Gracen Brilmyer and Natalia Duong at ucbdss@gmail.com

DISSERTATION RETREAT

Every other year, the CSSC sponsors, in conjunction with the Center for Race and Gender, a two-day dissertation workshop retreat, on the Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma, that brings together 3-4 faculty advisors and 8-12 doctoral candidates whose dissertation research focuses on interactions of sexuality, race, and gender. The retreat is intended to provide an opportunity for doctoral students to receive in-depth feedback on their dissertation projects from other students and faculty with related yet diverse research interests, as well as to participate in formal and informal discussions about broader theoretical, methodological, and professional issues relevant to work at the intersection of sexuality, race, and gender. So as to continue the scholarly conversations initiated at the retreat, graduate student participants are invited to present additional work as part of the CRG’s Thursday Forum series the following semester. The next retreat is planned for Spring 2016, so check our website early that semester for the call for applications.