In the opening of Unpayable Debt (2022), Denise Ferreira Da Silva turns toward the temporality of modernity and its racialized gendered others, asking, “How to break this perverse circuitry” (13). Her work on Octavia Butler’s writing exposes linearity as central to the “confection of post-Enlightenment descriptors and pillars” (59). Following da Silva’s question, this seminar engages writing that locates the temporal cracks in the ontological givens of modernity and presents the possibility for alternative temporal modes. We investigate how temporality shapes conceptions of the racialized, gendered subject and how contemporary writing across languages crafts alternative temporal responses to the “perverse circuitry” crafted through colonization. While queer theorists like Elizabeth Freeman (2010) have questioned chrononormative time and concepts of futurity based on re/productivity, recent work in trans studies has critiqued progress-oriented understandings of transness. Moving with and beyond gender studies, this seminar orients to time from an interdisciplinary perspective. Scholarship in black studies and native studies, in particular, illuminates how time functions in the problematic distinction between “human” and “thing” between sovereign subjects and racialized others. This seminar gathers scholars from various fields investigating new directions in temporality studies, elucidating how contemporary writers and artists work with temporal modes to envision alternative presents and futures.

If applicants have questions about any aspect of potential proposals, please reach out to the seminar organizer, Liz Rose (lizrose@sas.upenn.edu).