Wednesday, January 25, 2023
12:00 PM 1:30 PM
The value of visibility is contingent on a variable, embodyminded social currency. Being seen tends to benefit most the people whose bodies and minds adhere closest to norms structured by whiteness, cisnormativity, and abledness. In their interactive talk, J. Logan Smilges shows how queer and otherwise marginalized populations navigate the risks that subtend their precarious visibility. Centering their analysis on the dating app Grindr, Smilges introduces profile pictures as a digital site for rhetorical quieting—a strategy whereby users regulate how their bodyminds signify to people around them. As part of their talk, Smilges will offer an opportunity for attendees to evaluate how their own social media use is situated within a political matrix of presence and absence.
Accessibility
CART will be provided. Please email Evan Hoye ([email protected]) with access questions and concerns.
Speaker Bio
J. Logan Smilges is an assistant professor of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia, where they study the interanimation of gender, sexuality, and disability as medical, social, and political categories. Driven by commitments to transfeminism and disability justice, Smilges is interested in the forms of solidarity practiced by trans, queer, and disabled people that engage the complicated histories conjoining all three communities. Their first book, Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (University of Minnesota Press 2022), attends to the mutual disavowals of silence and disability in queer politics, and their second book, Crip Negativity (University of Minnesota Press 2023), proposes a model for critical negativity in the field of disability studies. Their other work is published or forthcoming in Transgender Studies Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, Disability Studies Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Peitho, and elsewhere.
Co-Sponsors
University of Michigan | Department of American Culture
University of Michigan | Research on Women & Gender (IRWG)
University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies (UMInDS)