Xinlei Wang (she/they) is a Master's student in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on feminism and lesbianism in contemporary China and transnational feminist and queer thoughts. Her other research interests include gender and sexuality, Marxism and post-colonialism, and feminist/queer literature and performance.

Title: Free from the Boundary: Rethinking Chineseness in Chinese Feminism

Xinlei Wang's thesis focuses on rethinking the concept of Chineseness in contemporary Chinese feminism. It examines how contemporary liberal feminism in China is shaped by transnational feminist influences and global capitalism’s commodification of feminism, while also exploring how radical feminists’ embrace of fanxiao (anti-filial piety) reflects a rejection of patriarchal culture that can intersect with anti-Chineseness. This project presents a nuanced theorization of Chineseness through the epistemic positionalities of subaltern subjects and frameworks of subalternity, offering a critical lens for understanding its construction in feminist discourse.

Olivia Kerr (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Olivia’s research explores the contours of twentieth century African American women’s lives through archival analysis. Fundamentally, she is interested in Black life within the early-to-mid twentieth century United States and the intracommunal dynamics within the Black Public Sphere. More broadly, she parses through the tangible and epistemic manifestations of Blackness, gender, class, and sexuality during the period. 

Title: Prairie Writers: Midwestern African American Women's Print Culture During the Early-to-Mid Twentieth Century

Olivia Kerr's presentation serves as a working research launch that will explore the written and textual production of African American women in the early-to-mid twentieth century Midwest. She aims to construct a foundational understanding of African American print culture in the 1920s-1940s—with a specific focus on the Midwest. On a more particular level,  Kerr is intrigued by the texts (written and printed) of African American women in this period, such as newspaper columns, letters, and pamphlets. Textual primary source materials will be drawn from geographic sites in the Midwestern region, with a focus on Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Milwaukee. As this presentation is a work in progress, the findings presented may change at the time they are delivered, particularly the geographies and the archival materials. Kerr seeks to explore the ways that these African American women perceived their subject positions in their respective spatiotemporalities within a larger Black [Midwestern] Public Sphere.