Love Us Back: Queer Commitment After Institutional Betrayal

What pedagogies arise from institutional betrayal? How can we do the work we love in contexts where harassment is endemic and administrative responses to it escalate the problem? What assumptions have normalized the expectation that our institutions cannot be spaces of love?

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Jennifer Doyle to discuss all of these issues as they arise in her most recent book, Shadow of My Shadow (Duke University Press, 2024). This remarkable work develops from Doyle's own experience of being stalked by a student and unfurls into a bracing critique of the institutional administration of harassment cases--as well as the attachments that arise in their aftermath. This line of inquiry builds on Doyle's Campus Sex / Campus Security (Semiotexte, 2015), on how the bureaucratic management of sex on college campuses coincides with the militarization of campus police.

Jennifer Doyle is a writer, arts and performance curator, sports analyst, and professor of English. She serves on the Board of Directors of Human Resources Los Angeles; her most recent co/curated exhibition is Sciencia Sexualis at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, LA (2024-2025).

In addition to the books named above, Jennifer is the author of Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2013) and Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). She is also the voice behind the beloved soccer blog From a Left Wing (2007-2013) and, now, The Sport Spectacle.

Links to recommended stuff!

Esme Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf, 2019)

Barbara Johnson, "Muteness Envy" in The Barbara Johnson Reader (Duke UP, 2014)

Francois Tosquelles, Psychotherapy and Materialism, English translation (ICI Berlin Press, 2024)

Camille Robcis, Disalienation (University of Chicago Press 2021)

Colm Toibin, The Magician (Scribner, 2022)

Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking (Scribner, 2014)