Jordache A. Ellapen reflects on his photographic project, Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy, which blends photographs from his family archive with contemporary portraits shot in a studio. The work examines the intersections of race, sexuality, and eroticism as they relate to the in/visibility of black and brown queer bodies and subjectivities in South Africa.
Keguro Macharia weaves together histories and theories of blackness and sexuality to generate a fundamentally new understanding of both the black diaspora and queer studies.
Mel Y. Chen considers "toxicity" and "animacy" in the racializing and queering of bodies and sociality. Through a look at national panic in the US surrounding lead in Chinese-manufactured toys, an auto-ethnographic exploration of body, sociality and immunity, and other varied discussions, Chen probes social and object relationships amid material and bodily assemblages.
In this essay, we suggest that this new conceptualization of Swamp Thing re-positions the creature as a thing; an obdurate entity that does not easily adhere to rigid classifications of ‘human’ or ‘plant,’ of ‘animate’ or ‘inanimate,’ of ‘original’ or ‘copy’ (even if characters within the comic text may argue otherwise).
In Noah Baumbach’s 2015 national-millennial fable, Mistress America, “I’m just normal” bespeaks dissatisfaction. It’s an identity that Tracy claims in an effort to project her way out of it.