Elevate Difference

Reviews by Sam McBean

Sam McBean

Sam McBean is working on her PhD in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. While frequently changing, at the moment of writing this bio, the working title of her thesis is ‘Haunting Pasts, Intimate Futures, and Fantastical Presents: Representing Feminism in Time.’ Before starting her PhD, she completed her Masters in Gender at the Gender Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her areas of research include: feminist and queer historiography, feminism and temporality, popular representations of feminism, and affective attachments to feminism.

Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories

In a temporally queer attachment of my own, I was bound to Time Binds before it was even published. With versions of the preface, introduction, and three out of four chapters having already appeared in academic journals, Elizabeth Freeman’s arguments had already made an impression on me. This is not to say that Time Binds is a redundant publication. Bound together, the individual pieces only gain in strength, displaying Freeman’s commitment to theorizing the intersections of temporality, queer theory, and the body.

Rape New York

Rape New York: Jana Leo’s title seems to defiantly ask its readers to ‘rape’ New York. It also simultaneously turns ‘rape’ into an adjective with which to describe New York City. Fascinated with this title, I pondered the difference a comma could have made. Rape, New York would then turn ‘rape’ into a borough of the city. This wordplay is not insignificant in Leo’s ultimate argument.

Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects

Christina Sharpe’s work Monstrous Intimacies is concerned with reading how the Euro-American and African-American post-slavery subjects are constructed. An academic text, and at times quite dense with analysis, this work will be of interest mostly to academics working in the fields of critical race theory, post-colonial theory, or literary and cultural theory.
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