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We look forward to seeing you this September at &Now: Points of Convergence!
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General Inquiries: andnowfestival2019@gmail.com.
Registration questions: iasinfo@uw.edu.


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Saturday, September 21 • 10:45am - 12:00pm
Writing Girlhood

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Girls' struggles are the struggles of our time, which still asks girls to be nice and not matter, which still requires girls to be sexual objects, to accommodate and serve others. Writers taking on girlhood risk sentimentality and over-determination, yet girl-affect generates boundaries that shape the collectivity without being essential. This panel asks, what are the possible narrative and affect positions of girlhood? How might these experiences be expressed creatively and transgressively in language? Are girls always subject to the process Judith Butler calls “girling,” an obligatory part of subjectivity: "Femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a norm whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline, regulation, punishment."  Writers on this panel will present a fem-noir fiction addressing, deflecting, and reconciling pressures on the “girled” body; nonfiction exploring girlhood as misperception, how are queer, brown bodies become infantilized based on white heteronormative expectations; a crowd-sourced epistle to a daughter about sexual violence; an essay about whiteness and shoplifting; and an ecofeminist video essay considering the relationship between girlhood and passivity/silence/submission through juxtaposing public domain footage of the natural world with clips from mid-20th century U.S. menstruation education. Through a multi-generic and interdisciplinary approach, we will showcase the effects and possibilities of the constructs of girlhood, especially those that disrupt, complicate, or subvert heteronormative, white, middle class values and experiences.
Speakers
avatar for Christine Hume

Christine Hume

Professor of English, Eastern Michigan University
Christine Hume is the author of a lyric memoir in the form of three interlinked essays, Saturation Project (Solid Objects, 2019), as well as three books of poetry. Her chapbooks include Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active Sense (Ugly Duckling Presse); Ventifacts (Omnidawn... Read More →
avatar for Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Aisha Sabatini Sloan is the author of The Fluency of Light and Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit. She is the Helen Zell Visiting Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Michigan's MFA program.
avatar for Christina Milletti

Christina Milletti

Christina Milletti’s novel Choke Box: a Fem-Noir won the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was published by University of Massachusetts Press in March 2019. Her first book, The Religious & Other Fiction (a collection of stories) was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and... Read More →
SM

Susan McCarty

Susan McCarty is an assistant professor of English at Oakland University in Michigan. She is the author of Anatomies (Aforementioned Productions, 2015). Her stories and essays have appeared in Zone 3, The Iowa Review, the Utne Reader, and other journals.

Saturday September 21, 2019 10:45am - 12:00pm PDT
DISC-162
  Panel
  • about Aisha Sabatini Sloan is the author of The Fluency of Light and Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit. She is the Helen Zell Visiting Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Michigan's MFA program.

Attendees (17)