Quilting Points Reading Group

Quilting Points Reading Group

We will be looking at the work of Judith Butler this year, starting with a close reading of passages from 'Gender Trouble' and 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’. All welcome.

We are very pleased to announce the return of Quilting Points, an interdisciplinary critical and cultural theory reading group based at the University of Leeds. This year we will be conducting a year-long discussion on the work of Judith Butler.

As a group, we will explore what Butler’s relevance is now – not only to contemporary critical theory, but to wider political debates such as the #MeToo movement, trans and non-binary rights, and the Title IX amendment. When Butler is as readily quoted by Gayatri Spivak as she is by New York drag queen Sasha Velour, it seems prudent to probe just how and why she has come to make such a profound mark on the way we talk about gender, identity formation, and daily operations of power.

By way of introduction to Butler’s diverse corpus, during the first term, we will focus closely on some of Butler’s most foundational theories. Sessions will be broadly organised around four areas of inquiry: gender and identity; queerness; symbolic violence and language; and ethics.

 We will begin with a close reading of passages from Gender Trouble and her 1988 essay ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’. Our first session will be held on Thursday 4th October. All are very welcome to attend.

For further details, see https://quiltingpoints.blogspot.com/