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Fall 2021, CairoShort Course

Ab/Uses of the Erotic

Ab/Uses of the Erotic
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Course details

Cycle
Fall 2021, Cairo
Starts
Monday, Oct 18
Meets
Monday, 18:00–20:00
Length
8 weeks
Format
In person
Taught in
English

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About the course

How has the erotic been deployed as a colonial and racializing technology? How might the erotic scramble, however fleetingly and flimsily, the coherence of racialized and colonial relations? Lingering with this dialectic of ab/use, we consider how the erotic has been aesthetically and theoretically taken up—not despite but precisely because of the violence that haunts it.

Who teaches it

  • Omar ALSAYYED is a doctoral student at NYU whose research interests include cultural theory, critical race and indigenous theory, queer/trans/feminist theory, and contemporary Palestinian cultural production.

Course flow

Showing 8 sessions

October 2021

  • We will listen together to a recording of Lorde reading the essay, which inspired this course and its title.

    • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as PowerAudre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
    • Audre Lorde reading “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”

    In class

    • ActivityWe will listen together to a recording of Lorde reading the essay.
    • Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black DiasporaKeguro Macharia
    • Does anyone have the right to sex?Amia Srinivasan

November 2021

    • Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer HistoriesElizabeth Freeman
    • Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer DiasporaGayatri Gopinath
    • Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the HumanAlexander Weheliye
    • The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading PornographyJennifer Nash
    • Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary ImaginationDarieck Scott
    • View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual RepresentationTan Hoang Nguyen
    • Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and MasochismAmber Musser
    • Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer HistoryKadji Amin
    • The White ElephantShuruq Harb (film)
    • Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict ZoneGil Hochberg
    • Loving Unbecoming: The Queer Politics of the Transitive NativeJodi Byrd
    • Out in the DarkMichael Mayer (film)

December 2021

    • The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-DeterminationMark Rifkin
    • Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures and Other Latina LongingsJuana María Rodríguez
    • BonbonéRakan Mayasi (film)

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CILASIssue 1

18 October 2026

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