NeMLA Session: Critical Intersex Futures (NeMLA 2026 Annual Convention)
Pittsburgh, PA
Organization: Northeast Modern Language Association
Event: NeMLA 2026 Annual Convention
This hybrid panel will consider interdisciplinary work in the slowly expanding field of critical intersex studies. For the purposes of this session, "critical intersex studies" refers to scholarship centered on those beyond a falsely naturalized sex binary and engages with cultural, historical, and theoretical dimensions of how we define "intersex." Example projects include historiographies on the development of the sex binary, such as Jules Gill-Peterson's Histories of the Transgender Child; explorations of intersex embodiment and medicalization, such as Hil Malatino's Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience; intersectional approaches to intersex identity such as Celeste Orr's Cripping Intersex or Juliana Huxtable's work on Black intersex liberation; and more. This panel hopes to move toward a consideration of intersex futurity (or futurities) amidst increasing fascist repression.
This panel is particularly interested in rhetorical and literary analyses of artwork by intersex creators, counterhistories of intersex communities, research on recent intersex advocacy movements (1990s and on), and international and transnational intersex movements. Preference will be given to intersex scholars. We will accept proposals of traditional conference papers, multimedia presentations, and creative artwork.
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21686
Court(ney) Felle