Toward a Queer Politics of the Welfare State

Priya Kandaswamy

Stevenson 101
9:30 AM

What does it mean to think about the welfare state from a queer perspective and what is the relationship between queer politics and struggles for economic justice? Dr. Kandaswamy will explore how engaging with welfare history potentially expands the terrain of queer studies and vice versa. Dr. Kandaswamy is an associate professor of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. Her Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform (Duke University Press, 2021) documents how constructions of gendered citizenship articulated to curtail Black freedom during the Reconstruction Era continue to haunt contemporary debates about economic inequality.