Women’s & Gender Studies Feminist Lecture Series Presents

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality in Global Context

A Lecture by Jane Ward
Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara

In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward critiques one of the basic premises of the mainstream LGBT rights movement—that heterosexuality is easier than queerness—by asking for whom, and under what conditions, is straightness easier. Drawing from ethnographic field work, archival research, and cultural studies methods, Ward examines the 20^th century emergence of a “heterosexual repair industry”—a self-help empire designed to romanticize and ease heterosexual misery while eliding attention to heteropatriarchy and the queer, feminist interventions poised to undo it. In this talk, Ward takes her analysis in new directions, pointing to the global implications of heterosexual misery by analyzing the global “anti-gender” (or “gender critical”) movement and the collective anxiety about gender and sexuality that animates it. Ward conceptualizes “gender critical” projects as expressions of heteroparanoia and psychic dissonance aimed at reconciling the paradoxes of modern heterosexuality, and offers a feminist assessment of these projects’ trajectories.

Friday, May 05, 2023 ~ 3:00 – 4:30 pm ~ Lubar Entrepreneurship Center 107

Sponsored by the William F. Vilas Trust Fund and Women’s & Gender Studies
Co-sponsored by Departments of Global Studies and Sociology, LGBT+ Studies, LGBTQ+ Resource Center and Women’s Resource Center.

This event is free and open to the public.