BAER, Brian James and KAINDL, Klaus. Queering Translation, Translating the Queer. Theory, Practice, Activism. New York & London, Routledge, 2018, 234 pp., ISBN: 9780367365677

This groundbreaking work is the first full book-length publication to critically engage in the emerging field of research on the queer aspects of translation and interpreting studies. The volume presents a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives through fifteen contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars in the field to demonstrate the interconnectedness between translation and queer aspects of sex, gender, and identity. The book begins with the editors’ introduction to the state of the field, providing an overview of both current and developing lines of research, and builds on this foundation to look at this research more closely, grouped around three different sections: Queer Theorizing of Translation; Case Studies of Queer Translations and Translators; and Queer Activism and Translation. This interdisciplinary approach seeks to not only shed light on this promising field of research but also to promote cross fertilization between these disciplines towards further exploring the intersections between queer studies and translation studies, making this volume key reading for students and scholars interested in translation studies, queer studies, politics, and activism, and gender and sexuality studies.

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

This article, concentrating on trends in the field of gender and sexuality studies of the last decade or so, makes a case for expanding both the geography and the methodology for early modern gender studies, broadly conceived. Themes considered here include the intermingling of the intimate and the imperial as well as marriage, law, slavery and labor, freedom, settler colonialism, intersectionality, queer studies, mothering, and reproduction. This topic, and article, also point to the need to make use of material culture and to interrogate the silence and violence of the archive remaining.

TOP 5 TINDER HACKS! BLACKBOXING ALGORITHMS IN THE DATING APP INDUSTRY

Tinder’s swipe feature operates algorithms that have influenced a new generation of dating apps. In this paper, we argue that the mystique surrounding Tinder’s algorithms is as productive for the dating app industry as the actual technical operations they perform. We seek to understand how actors in the dating industry construct matchmaking algorithms as strategic unknowns that can be harnessed to reach commercial objectives. To do so, we mobilize the notion of ‘algorithmic blackboxing’ – how actors strategically construct algorithms as black boxes to reach certain goals – to analyze a corpus of 48 online dating guides that offer ‘best advice’ to exploit Tinder’s matchmaking algorithms. Our analysis shows that dating guides overwhelmingly construct Tinder’s algorithms as black boxes whose secrets must be unlocked for users to generate matches and, therefore, find love. The alleged unintelligibility and opacity of Tinder’s algorithms allow self-proclaimed ‘dating experts’ to sell their advice or services in the context of a speculative dating economy. To obtain more matches, dating guides promote a common injunction: to hack Tinder. They invite users to modulate their behaviors and practices to become more algorithmically recognizable. Dating guides also readily invoke rhetorical arguments that draw on statistical data produced by Tinder, which highlights the emergence of new ‘regimes of truth’ within the matchmaking industry that enact a dataist ideology. We conclude by advocating for the importance of critically examining the increasing algorithmic mediation of dating cultures at the intersection of Internet, gender, and sexuality studies.

The Politics of Affirmative Consent: Considerations from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Perspective

While "no means no" considers sex as consensual until someone says no, "yes means yes" defines sex only then as consensual when all parties have explicitly agreed. Consent is thus positively determined by the presence of a yes and no longer negatively determined by the absence of a no. "Yes means yes" thus not only sets the limit as to when sex becomes sexual violence, it also tells us how morally "correct" sex should look like. In the first part I will give an insight into debates about affirmative consent in the US and Germany. In the following, I will work out how affirmative consent misjudges the subjectifying functioning of sexual power relations. I will show that the understanding of affirmative consent is based on a gendered giver-receiver grammar of consent, which stabilizes heteronormative notions of female sexuality as passive and male sexuality as active. Based on the results of conversational analytical studies on sexual communication, I will argue that the politics of affirmative consent underestimates the internalization of heteronormative discourses in sexual subjects.

Introduction

This special issue questions translation and its politics of (in)visibilizing certain bodies and geographies, and sheds light on queer and cuir histories that have confronted the imperial gaze, or that remain untranslatable. Part of a larger scholarly and activist project of the Feminist and Cuir/Queer Américas Working Group, the special issue situates the relationships across linguistic and cultural differences as central to a hemispheric queer/cuir dialogue. We have assembled contributions with activists, scholars, and artists working through queer and cuir studies, gender and sexuality studies, intersectional feminisms, decolonial approaches, migration studies, and hemispheric American studies. Published across three journals, GLQ in the United States, Periódicus in Brazil, and El lugar sin límites in Argentina, this special issue homes in on the production, circulation, and transformation of knowledge, and on how knowledge production relates to cultural, disciplinary, or market-based logics.

Queering the Transnational: Notes on an Emerging Politics of Law and Sexuality

This chapter argues that transnational law holds significant potential as a methodological lens to study the intersection of gender, sexuality, and law. The discourse on gender and sexual rights has been cultivated by transnational dialogue and deliberation, and serves as an apt site to study the regulation of gender and sexuality. “Law and sexuality” as an academic discipline is meaningful when explored through the lens of transnational law and legal scholarship. Law schools ought to incorporate the dynamic interaction between domestic decision-making, foreign jurisprudence, and the international legal system and critical perspectives on each into their curricula. The first section of this chapter provides a primer to the study of law and sexuality through feminist and queer perspectives to critically engage with the legal regulation of gender identity and sexuality. Following this, the second section discusses the relevance of bringing transnational perspectives to the legal curriculum, particularly in the context of gender and sexuality studies.

World-Making in the Academy: Transnational Scholars Seeking “Home” in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

In this roundtable discussion, faculty of color associated with a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program reflect on our experiences within the academy. As faculty of color connected to the notion of the transnational through our various identities, experiences, family histories, and places of origin, we discuss the various ways we navigate academic spaces. Through an autoethnographic method, we consider our distinct yet overlapping experiences of seeking “home” in the academy.

Graphic Embodiments

Comics and other graphic narratives powerfully represent embodied experiences that are difficult to express in language. A group of authors from various countries and disciplines explore the unique capacity of graphic narratives to represent human embodiment as well as the relation of human bodies to the worlds they inhabit. Using works from illustrated scientific texts to contemporary comics across national traditions, we discover how the graphic narrative can shed new light on everyday experiences. Essays examine topics that are easily recognized as anchored in the body as well as experiences like migration and concepts like environmental degradation and compassion that emanate from or impact on our embodied states. Graphic Embodiments is of interest to scholars and students across various interdisciplinary fields including comics studies, gender and sexuality studies, visual and cultural studies, disability studies and health and medical humanities.

Queer Theory and Heteronormativity

The concepts of queer theory and heteronormativity have been taken up in educational research due to the influence of disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Queer theory seeks to disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries that structure our understandings of gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity describes the belief that heterosexuality is and should be the preferred system of sexuality and informs the related male or female, binary understanding of gender identity and expression. Taken together, queer theory and heteronormativity offer frames to interrogate and challenge systems of sex and gender in educational institutions and research to better support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ youth. They also inform the development of queer pedagogy that includes classroom and instructional practices designed to expand and affirm gender and sexual diversity in schools.

Remembering Romit Dasgupta

Romit Dasgupta lectured in Japanese Studies at the University of Western Australia until his untimely passing in 2018. He was posthumously awarded the Philippa Maddern Award in 2019 by the University of Western Australia Academic Staff Association. The citation described him as ‘[p]rofessional, highly organised and respectful to all, …proactive and willing to help others in regard to any issues, consistently demonstrating his passion in supporting his colleagues and students’. In the essays collected here, Romit’s friends and colleagues reflect on Romit’s qualities and his academic contributions. Romit Dasgupta’s work ranged over gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, cultural studies, cultural history, Asian Studies and Asian-Australian Studies. Each of the author's discusses the inspiration they received from Romit Dasgupta's work in these fields.