FQT Podcast

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with scholar Colby Gordon, who is associate professor in Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College, about early modern trans studies and theology, and his exciting new and first book, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature (University of Chicago, 2024). Song credit (-30sec): "My Enemies are Mine" by Jim S...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with professor Petrus Liu, who is professor of Chinese & Comparative Literature and of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University.  Professor Liu is the author of Queer Marxism in Two Chinas (Duke University Press, 2015) and The Specter of Materialism: Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus (Duke Unive...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with multimedia artist, director, and producer Zackary Drucker about her archival work on and connection to Flawless Sabrina, about being attuned to the spiritual realm, and her prodigious work in TV & film -- especially her co-directed Sundance award-winning and Emmy nominated HBO original documentary film The Stroll (2023) and the HBO doc...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Dr. Beeta Baghoolizadeh.  Dr. Baghoolizadeh is a historian and an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University, in the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.  Gossett speaks with Dr. Baghoolizadeh about her book The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran (Duke University Press, March 2024) and how Irania...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Lee Edelman, Fletcher Professor of English Literature at Tufts University, about the continued resonance and influence his book  No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Duke UP, 2004) and about his newest work  Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing (Duke UP, 2022). Edelman discusses his theorization of queerness as a...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett talks with Black trans activist and writer Raquel Willis about Black trans liberationist movements, intersectionality, Black feminism(s), growing up in the South, and her new book, The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation (St. Martin Press, 2023).

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett talks with filmmaker, actress and cultural worker Nava Mau.  Nava Mau recently received the 2024 Critics Choice Association's "Breakthrough Performance" Award for Television (Limited Series) for her role in the Netflix hit series Baby Reindeer.   Nava Mau was the lead actor and director, and co-producer for the short film Waking Hour (2019), and s...

McKenzie Wark is professor of Culture and Media at the New School, Eugene Lang College and the author of over 10 books.  Her memoir Love and Money, Sex and Death was published in September 2023 by Verso Press, and her other recent writing moves at the nexus of trans studies, autotheory and autofiction, including Rave  (Duke UP, 2023), Philosophy for Spiders: on the low theory of Kathy Acker (Duke...

In this episode, FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks to professor Perry Zurn.  Zurn Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, Fellow at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities ('23-'24) and a Visiting Scholar at the FQT at Penn.  He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (UMinn, 2021), and co-editor of Trans Philosophy (forthcoming UMinn, 2024),...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University, Jack Halberstam about his latest book, Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire  and his prolific writing in queer theory, trans studies and cultural studies. This episode includes a musical clip from "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak as narrated by Tammy Grimes.

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with the luminary and accomplished filmmaker, director and producer Lilly Wachowski.  Lilly Wachowski discusses some her most influential and heralded films, such as   The Matrix , which she co-directed and filmed with her sister, filmmaker Lana Wachowski, as well as recent work she has been involved in either writing, directing and/or prod...

In this episode (recorded fall 2023) FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Judith Butler, who is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.  Butler discusses their now published book   Who's Afraid of Gender?   (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), their extensive scholarship, including on...

In this episode of the Gender Jawn podcast, FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with poet, professor and "intellectual cabaret" performer extraordinaire  Wayne Koestenbaum about his conception of "fag ideation," queer theory, art, poetics, and Koestenbaum's rich body of work. Also discussed is Koestenbaum's newest book of poetry, Stubble Archipelago just recently published by Semiotexte Pres...

In this episode Che Gossett, associate director of The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, speaks with UC Davis assistant professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Christoph Hanssmann about his book  Care Without Pathology : How Trans- Health Activists Are Changing Medicine (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).  Professor Hanssman discusses transnational tra...

In this episode FQT Associate Director Che Gossett speaks with William Lampson Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University: Tavia Nyong'o. Nyong'o is the author of The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory  (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), and most recently,  Afro-Fabulations: The Queer D...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with philosopher Brian Massumi, whom is professor of communication at the University of Montreal, about affect studies, critical theory, the work of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead, and process philosophy.  Massumi is the author of Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation  (Duke UP, 2002) and most recently, Couplets:...

In this episode FQT Center associate director Che Gossett speaks with trans historian and John Hopkins University professor Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child  (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), which received a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the Children's Literature Association Book Award.  Gill-Peterson is also the author of A Short Histo...

In this episode FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Yale University Professor Daphne Brooks about her newest book,  Liner Notes: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard UP, 2021) -- winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame -- about Black feminist archives, music history, and Beyonce's brilliance. Music Credits: Koko by Charlie Park...

In this interview Che Gossett speaks with Maggie Nelson -- poet, writer, 2016 MacArthur fellow, and professor of English at the University of California -- about her newest book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Random House, 2021) and many other works of poetry and prose.  Also mentioned in the episode are poets and writer Eileen Myles and poet and NYU professor, Fred Moten.

The first episode of the 2023-2024 academic year, September's Gender Jawn podcast features an engaging and dynamic conversation with Kate Scott, the play-by-play announcer for the Philadelphia 76ers, as well as the Seattle Seahawks, who is also the first woman play-by-play caster in Philadelphia's history.  Scott has called play-by-plays for NHL, NFL and the Olympics, as well as the 2023 World Cup...

December's edition of Gender Jawn features a two-part series on housing issues facing Philadelphians. Part-one featured a discussion with Akira Drake Rodriguez on saving the UC Townhomes and Jane Allen on the Whole Home Repair Program. In part two, Gwendolyn Beetham considers how home ownership has been plagued by discriminatory lending practices and how homeowners can support queer, trans, and PO...

December's edition of Gender Jawn features a two-part series on housing issues facing Philadelphians. In part one, Maria Murphy speaks with Akira Drake Rodriguez about saving the UC Townhomes and Penn's role in the destabilization of west Philly and the displacement of its residents. Jane Allen, Policy Director for the Office of State Senator Nikil Saval, shares the goals for the Whole Homes Repai...

November's episode features a discussion on the politics of laughter with Delia Casadei, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California Berkeley. Gender Jawn host Maria Murphy and Casadei discuss the social reproductive labor of laughter, how laughter articulates political unknowns, the Feminist killjoy practice of withholding the social reproductive labor of laughing, and laughter t...

Penn community members Serena Mayeri, Carol Tracy, Antoilyn Nguyen, and Alicia Meyer comment on the recent Dobbs ruling that overturned the nearly 50 year precedent of the constitutional right to an abortion. This ep also features excerpts from the work of SaraEllen Strongman, Dorothy Roberts, and Jessa Lingel. Resources mentioned in this ep: Center for Reproductive Rights Our Data Bodies Tech Lea...

In this last episode on this year's theme, "Care for the Future," Tamir Williams speaks with Rachel Kauder Nalebuff about her genre-bending book Stages: On dying, working, and feeling . Kauder discusses her experience as an artist-in-residence at an elder care facility in the Bronx, NYC; the lessons she learned from staff members at the nursing home about dying, grief, time, and caregiving; and he...