Call for Graduate Student Commentators for the SPAN Annual Workshop

To all graduate students with interests in gender, sex, and sexuality,

We are writing to invite you to volunteer to be a commentator for one of the three talks that will be held in conjunction with the annual SPAN Workshop, whose theme this year is “Pandemic Sex: Intimacy | Virality | Separation in the Age of COVID-19.” The Workshop will take place Friday, April 22 on Zoom.

The three talks on Friday, along with the names of the invited speakers, are:

Talk I:

  • How To Have Collectivity in a Pandemic – Deborah Gould + 1 commentator

Talk II:

Talk III:

We are especially interested in having graduate students play a key role throughout the workshop. Our plan is for each talk to be followed by one graduate student commentator, each of whom will speak for approximately 5 minutes. The goal of these comments is to frame the Q&A that will follow by highlighting key points and raising critical issues for discussion. Commentators will receive the paper two to three weeks in advance so that they can prepare their comments. The workshop is scheduled to run from 10:15 am – 4:30 pm on April 22nd. Commentators will be expected to attend all talks.

We very much hope that you will be interested in participating in this event! If you are, please let us know by Monday, March 28 which talk (or talks) you would be interested in commenting on by emailing Cassilyn Ostrander, sexualities@northwestern.edu. Also, let us know if you have any scheduling constraints for that day.

SAVE THE DATE: 2022 SPAN Workshop

Pandemic Sex:
Intimacy | Virality | Separation
in the Age of COVID-19

April 22, 2022
10:15 AM to 4:30 PM CT, Zoom
Presentations by:

Mel Y. Chen (UC Berkeley)
Author of Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect

Deborah Gould (UC Santa Cruz)
Author of Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS

Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia University)
Author of The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality; Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism; Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism; and The Inheritance