“Tarot, Femmes and Asian Diasporic Literature” with Xine Yao

Warm up your tarot deck and trim your undercut: Dr Xine Yao (UCL) is here to tell you all about femme invisibility, politics of unfeeling, queerness and race, occult queer practices, fashion and queer coding, ugly feelings, and so much more. Xine talks about her research on queerness and race in 19th century America, about race and professions in literary history, but also about her experience of working on these subjects in a Canadian versus a British context. If you want to think about queerness and race, or if you would like to learn about the subversive potential of unfeeling, hit play!Selected works by Xine (http://christineyao.com) :PhDivasDisaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America https://www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected “Femmes in Science: Queer Erasure and the Politics of Dress in Nineteenth Century America.” Gender in American Literature and Culture. Eds. Jennifer Harris and Jean Lutes. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2021. “The Craft: QTPOC Tarot in Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki’s Skim.” Q&A: Voices from Queer Asian North America. Eds. Kale B. Fajardo, Alice Y. Hom, and Martin F. Manalansan. Temple University Press, forthcoming 2021.Concepts, texts and people mentioned:#NoDAPLIdol No MoreSara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of EmotionJules Gill-Peterson’s Histories of the Trans ChildSianne Ngai’s Ugly FeelingsSara Ahmed’s Feminist KilljoyGloria AnzaldúaAudre LordeMartin ManalansanSianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories/Theory of the GimmickSusan SontagInvertJane AustenBildungsromanJames BarryRadclyffe Hall’s Well of LonelinessElizabeth Phelps’ Doctor ZayMammy tropeLGBTQIA2S+QTBIPOCMariko and Jillian Tamaki’s SkimDusk II OnyxReady for (a) reading? Follow Xine (@XineYaoPhD) and me (@Lena_Mattheis) on Twitter!Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:1.What does Xine mean by ‘unfeeling’?2.List some prejudices attached to being femme. Why are they harmful?3.Please look up Sianne Ngai and try to write a brief definition of ‘ugly feelings’.4.How does Xine describe the respective (literary) histories of the white woman doctor and the black woman doctor?5.What does Xine mean by ‘frigidity’ in this context?6.We talk about the undercut as an element of queer fashion. Can you think of other queer fashion moments? What do they say about sexuality and gender?7.In how far is tarot a queer practice?