Event Description:
On November 13th, Judith Butler (Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley) will discuss their most recent work, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024). The event will feature a roundtable discussion of the book with Professor Butler and three U-M faculty members, and supplements Butler’s lecture on November 14th as this year’s speaker for the 34th annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. The discussion will begin with a conversation between the panelists before opening the discussion for questions from the audience.
In Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Butler aims to address the following question: “What kind of phantasm has gender become, and what anxieties, fears, and hatreds does it collect and mobilize?” (36). While doing so, Butler examines how this phantasm relates to today’s “myriad acts of cancellation, pathologization, criminalization, and delegitimation . . . seeking to destroy freedoms and powers that social movements on the Left have struggled for decades to establish” (24). The book is a timely and necessary investigation into the weaponization of “gender” as a phantasm invoked by those calling “for the elimination of gender education, the censorship of texts concerned with gender, and the disenfranchisement or criminalization of transgender or genderqueer people” (36).
The CEW+ is also coordinating a reading group to follow the November 13th event. Interested U-M community members may participate in further discussion of Who’s Afraid of Gender? through two events:
Copies of Who’s Afraid of Gender? will be provided in advance for everyone who registers for the reading group.
Moderator:
Scott Larson, Lecturer IV in American Culture, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Panel:
- Judith Butler, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley
- Damani Partridge, Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
- Lawrence M La Fountain-Stokes, Professor of American Culture, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
- Gayle Rubin, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Women’s Studies
Event Details:
November 13th, 2024
3:30-5:00 pm
Walter and Leonore Annenberg Auditorium, Room 1120
Joan and Sanford Weill Hall
Sponsors
The Faculty Senate
The CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund
The Ford School of Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
