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John P. Birkelund Lecture

Seeing, Sensing, Feeling: Sexual Subjects, Precarious Lives

Juana María Rodríguez examines an array of biographical materials depicting the life of San Francisco Latina transgender activist Adela Vázquez. As she considers these different genres of representation, from graphic narratives and oral histories to documentary films and social-media selfies, Rodríguez asks: How do representational forms shape the subjective experiences of the life stories we are consuming? How does autobiography complicate visual narratives that attempt to unravel the ways we understand race, gender, and sexuality? How do various forms of visual, textual, and digital documentation transform our affective encounters with the sexual lives of marginalized subjects across a lifetime?