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For the second edition of CORA, we are proud to present an exclusive interview with Esther Newton, arguably one of the most important names in queer anthropology. In this interview, Esther discusses her distinguished career and the many roadblocks and setbacks she had to overcome to eventually find herself as a multi-published academic and Professor Emerita at SUNY Purchase.
Sounds from a formalist ontology is a poetry diptych exploring words, literary sounds, thoughts, and images folded within a formalist ontology – an ontology constrained by, and subjected to, form. It stems from the ripples of a poetical anthropological study concerned with form and visual perception, and engages with fiction and fabulation as modes of knowledge and experience.
Stigmatizing language can be hugely influential to the social perception of marginalized communities, and social media has amplified these effects. Exploring over 3000 Instagram comments, this research features a critical discourse analysis of how referential language is used differentially and potentially harmful on social media posts made by LGBTQ+ couples.
This essay explores how Victorian exotic plant enthusiasts related to their plants. Drawing on historical research, it portrays botanical interest in nineteenth-century Europe as contradictory. On the one hand, imperial and scientific aspirations sought to transfer plants from colonies to metropoles where technical innovations such as glasshouses enabled research and control of vegetal beings. On the other hand, the proximity to such plants and the care they demanded inspired a deep love for botanical subjects. This affective connection had a powerful influence on the perceptions of plants and their agency, the recognition of which deeply questioned the ideas of human superiority of the period.
A dichotomy between the lifelessness of objects and the activity of personhood has long been a feature of western thought (Bauer 2019, 338). Objects, however, are active and constitutive in our social world. This essay explores the interconnections between objects and persons in social life through the framework of entanglement theory, analyzing the creation of gender in western social life, specifically the categories of western femininity and womanhood—these categories, though multiple, are greatly defined by a focus on physical appearance and norms of beauty (Cairns and Johnston 2015, 24).
Sadness, despite the negative experience it implies, is often relished when it comes. Whether through weepy music or a tear-jerking film, we allow sadness to compound upon itself rather than avoiding it. What happens when one then seeks sadness as an object in itself, i.e. the effect without the cause? How much do we live in service of our sentimentality?
Can I invite you – the reader – to dwell in fragments of something akin to love emerging in spaces in between? Through intimate fears of being a monstrous Orientalist, emergent friendships in Amman, and the beauty of a Jordanian grandmother and her grandchild, this imagistic piece is an invitation to dwell in what emerges in experiences of fragments of something akin to love.
In summer, farmers bring their sheep to the green areas of Helsinki. While waiting for the sheep to arrive, I started writing fictional stories and imagining what they could tell me about the sheep-human relationship. I listened to them, followed them, and learned from them, seeing them move as one and look back at me together.
Cover Photo "Mississippi River embrace" by Irène Svoronos
irene.svoronos@gmail.com
http://irenesvoronos.com
Instagram: @sirenesanss
