Dr. Chandra Frank
Chandra Frank (she/her/hers) is a feminist researcher who works on the intersections of archives, waterways, gender, sexuality and race. Her curatorial practice explores the politics of care, experimental forms of narration, and the colonial grammar embedded within display and exhibition arrangements. Chandra earned a PhD in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies with an emphasis on queer and feminist studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, including Feminist Review, the Small Axe VLOSA catalogue, The Place is Here publication and the collection Tongues. She recently co-edited a special issue on Archives for Feminist Review. Her curated exhibitions include Re(as)sisting Narratives (Amsterdam/Cape Town), Fugitive Desires (London), and Proclamation 73 (Durban) (co-curated with Zara Julius). Chandra curated the 2016 Archives Matter Conference at the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths. She is on the international editorial board of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. In addition, she is the Project Manager of the Experiment Program in International Living, a summer program for US students focused on LGBTQ+ Rights and Advocacy in Amsterdam: https://www.experiment.org/experiment_blog/program-spotlight-the-netherlands-dutch-culture-and-lgbtq-rights/.
Chandra’s dissertation and book project looks at the everyday experiences of the transnational feminist and queer Black, Migrant and Refugee Movement in the Netherlands during the 1980s. Using an innovative methodology based on Dutch colonial water infrastructures, she looks at how water functions as a form of domination, border and control and how, at the same time, it offers a theoretical and methodological framework to look at queer diasporic subjectivities. She frequently is invited to deliver lectures and keynotes at international academic and art institutions. Chandra has taught at Goldsmiths, School for International Training, and California State University Los Angeles. Her areas of teaching include queer and feminist theory, popular culture, visual cultures and critical race studies. Currently, Chandra is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
In Fall 2020, Chandra is teaching COMM 4040: Cultural Studies, cross-listed with WGS 4001: Special Topics: Gender, Sexuality, and Visual Cultures. In Spring 2021, Dr. Frank is teaching WGS 4029/7029: Gender, Sexuality and Culture, with an emphasis on visual cultures. For further information, you can reach Dr. Frank at frankc6@ucmail.uc.edu.
Dr. Anima Adjepong
Anima Adjepong (they/them/theirs) holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin with certificate degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies. Their research examines transnational migration, cultural politics, sport, and social change in West Africa and the diaspora. A recurring theme in their work is how questions of gender and sexuality animate West African cultural politics and social-change efforts. Their first book Afropolitan Projects (under contract) used transnational ethnography to examines the cultural politics through which class-privileged Ghanaians position themselves as cosmopolitan Africans and citizens of the world.
As a Taft fellow, they will continue developing a major interdisciplinary study focused on women’s football (soccer), gender, sexuality, and Ghanaian national identity. The goals of this research are to critically examine the interplay of gender and sexuality in the production of national identity and assess how this relationship shapes women and LGBTQ Ghanaians’ full inclusion into the national community. Engaging what Anima calls a “promiscuous methodology,” the study deploys a range of qualitative methods (auto/ethnography, content analyses, archival research, storytelling) and multi-disciplinary frames to adequately answer a complex question about the relationship between postcolonial African nationalism, gender, sexuality, and cultural politics.
Anima looks forward to bringing their expertise in community engagement, program management, and cross-institution collaborations to the Taft center and greater UC community.
In Fall 2020, Anima will facilitate workshops for Taft faculty and students focused on a range of pertinent issues related to qualitative research methods, pedagogy, and/or community engagement. Watch for additional information on these workshops. In Spring 2021, Dr. Adjepong is teaching:
Queer of Color Critique
WGS 4039/7039
Monday / Friday
11 AM – 12:15 PM
Description: Examine the material implications of queer of color theorizing on the social landscape through an engagement with women of color feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique.
For further information, you can reach Dr. Adjepong at adjepoaa@ucmail.uc.edu.