DU Women & Gender Studies Program

Mark your calendars! 10/6, 6:30 pm

Abstract: This talk explores the FBI’s audio surveillance of Black freedom agitators through its production of s*x tapes involving prominent southern activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. It begins with a history of audio surveillance of Black intellectuals to understand racial listening and it’s relationship to racial liberalism. It proceeds with a discussion of the ways that the s*x tapes from the civil rights era marked a unique technological collision of race panic and s*x panic that amplified how racial desire built anti-Black repression. With a particular focus on discourses of emasculation and impotence, the paper charts how anti-Black voyeurism resists and promotes what Ghassan Hage has labeled “paranoid nationalism.” It concludes with an assessment about the relationship between white eavesdropping and state entrapment as modes of utilizing technology to bridge white s*xual repression, particularly during J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure at the FBI. Using FBI files, Johnson administration records and interviews, and memoir, I suggest that the civil rights s*x tapes provide a unique space to understand how racial intimacy flamed anti-Black animus in the FBI even as racial intimacy in the Department of Justice helped to inaugurate cooperation between white governmental officials and Black activists, particularly in the U.S. South.

Springfield Followers! We wanted to let you know about an awesome book group that is happening in the Spring Semester. Though it is on Drury's campus, everyone is welcome!

A group of faculty will be facilitating discussion of Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. We will run the discussion sessions in person, and also on ZOOM. Our discussions are informal, and will cover at maximum 20 pages of text each week. As a member of the larger public, you need not commit to attend each week -please feel free to attend as your schedule allows. Past sessions have included staff from across the university and staff from disciplines such as religion, physics, computer science, education, business, history, and languages. We also very regularly have attendees from the broader Springfield community. The conversations are truly rich, informative, and a lot of fun. No background in philosophy or religion is needed. Just bring your curiosity and an open mind.

If you are interested, send an email to Chris Panza ([email protected]) and you will be added to the email list.

Spring 2022 Meetings:

Who: Everyone (Faculty, Staff, Students, Community members) is Welcome

When: Every Monday, from 12 - 1pm

Where: In Person (location TBA) or by ZOOM (from your office, or your car, or your kitchen, or wherever!)

The Book: Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny can be viewed here - https://www.amazon.com/Down-Girl-Misogyny-Kate-Manne/dp/0190604980

Here’s a blurb to better understand Manne’s project:

Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with s*xism, and why is it prone to persist—or increase—even when s*xist gender roles are waning? Down Girl is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs.