Call. Me. Mother. But what on earth does that word even mean? Dr Teagan Bradway (SUNY Cortland) takes us down the magnificent and multifaceted rabbit holes of queer kinship to chat about trans* motherhood, kinlessness, polyamory, race and kinship, queer kids, and the deep traumas and shiny possibilities attached to all of these. We discuss whether we really ‘choose’ our chosen families, how institutions intervene in our various relationships, and why the throuple makes for many more narrative possibilities than your average rom-com has to offer. From Netflix algorithms to pregnant butches, we pretty much cover it all.

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Texts and people mentioned:

Bradway, T., and Ellen Lee McCallum, eds. After Queer Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Bradway, T. Queer Experimental Literature: The Affective Politics of Bad Reading. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Bradway, T. "Queer Narrative Theory and the Relationality of Form." PMLA 136.5 (2021): 711-727.
Bradway, T., and Elizabeth Freeman. Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging and Form. Forthcoming.
Weston, Kath. Families We Chose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. Columbia University Press, 1997.
Renee Gladman
POSE
Paris is Burning
Marlon Bailey
Stockton, Kathryn Bond. The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Duke University Press, 2009.
Lee Edelman
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Are you my Mother?
Jules Gill-Peterson
Kate Davies’ In At the Deep End
Freeman, Elizabeth. "Queer belongings: Kinship theory and queer theory." A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies (2007): 293-314.
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet’s Dialogues
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts
Harry Dodge’s My Meteorite
Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby
A.K. Summers’ Pregnant Butch
My Mama Wears Timbs: A Short Documentary on Motherhood & Masculinity by Ari Fitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRgTLb5EbiQ&t=51s

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.What is queer kinship? Do you have concrete examples from life or literature?
2.Which critiques of the term ‘chosen family’ does Teagan present? Do you think relationships can be thought of as marketplaces?
3.How can kinship be used in violent and stigmatizing ways? Which examples of racialised kinship does Teagan give?
4.What does the term ‘kinless’ mean?
5.Please write a brief definition of either the term ‘nuptials’ or ‘throuple’ that mentions one primary text (as an example) as well as one secondary text.