EVENT DETAILS

Angela Willey: Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology

In this talk, Willey both frames and traces the broad contours of Undoing Monogamy, a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, the book demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The talk traverses the books'  treatments of colonial sexual science, monogamous voles, polyamory, and the works of Alison Bechdel and Audre Lorde to show how challenging the lens through which human nature is seen as monogamous or nonmonogamous forces us to reconsider our investments in coupling and in disciplinary notions of biological bodies.