Critical Femininities is an emerging field of study that seeks to examine femininity unhinged from “woman” (Dahl, 2012). In addition to elucidating and theorizing feminine and femme identities, Critical Femininities scholars follow traditions in non-academic femme writing and feminist and queer scholarship to understand femininity as subversive (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019), understand femme-ininity as a theoretical framework and a mode of knowledge production (Hoskin, 2017; Schwartz, 2018, 2020a), and understand femininity beyond identity, as affective, assemblage, and lineage (Brightwell & Taylor, 2019; Dahl, 2017; McCann, 2018; Schwartz, 2020b).
If you would like to get involved in the Critical Femininities research network at York University, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca.
News
Registration for "Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities" Conference is now open!
Join the Critical Femininities Research Cluster for "Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference," taking place virtually (via Zoom) on August 15-17, 2025. This 3-day virtual conference will bring together scholars, activists, and artists critically exploring femininities through the theme of 'Connection.'
Excess: Mad, Queer, Femme Abundance
A Special Issue of Feral Feminisms
edited by Andi Schwartz & Shayda Kafai
is now live!
This two-volume special issue is based on the theme of the first Critical Femininities conference, Excess. Edited by Andi Schwartz, conference co-founder & co-organizer, and Shayda Kafai, conference keynote speaker, this collection includes several papers originally presented at Excess: The First Annual Critical Femininities Conference at York University in the summer of 2021. Volume one was published in August 2024 and volume two was published in June 2025.
Irreverence: Proceedings of the Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference is now live!
The Critical Femininities Research Cluster's latest publication is now available. The works included in this collection were all originally presented at Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference at York University in the summer of 2023. The papers in these proceedings respond to multiple notions of ir/reverence: Justine Wallace presents an analysis of Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here as a way to challenge queer Caribbean migrants’ expected reverence for the global north as a queer utopia; Steff(ania) Juniper offers a creative rumination on lesbian relationships that draws on images of rituals and symbols of romantic reverence; Anoosha Hasan details findings from a study of women’s activism in a post-flood Pakistan that challenged cultural taboos around menstruation; Emilie Collyer exemplifies irreverence as a form of feminist resistance, using absurdist and surrealist poetic forms to explore the affective expectations placed on feminine subjects; and, finally, Thea Jones explores how certain “breastless parents” challenge discourses of normative motherhood—a pillar that upholds the ideal of femininity. Click the button below to read more!
Liminal: Proceedings of the Second Annual Critical Femininities Conference is now live!
The Critical Femininities Research Cluster's first publication is now available. The works included in this collection were all originally presented at Liminal: The Second Annual Critical Femininities Conference at York University in the summer of 2022 and they all respond to notions of liminality.
Upcoming Events
Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference
August 15-17, 2025 | Online
Join the Critical Femininities Research Cluster for "Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference." The conference will take place virtually (via Zoom) on August 15-17, 2025.
Connection: joining, uniting, fastening, bringing together. Audre Lorde highlighted how when we “make connection with our similarities and our differences” (53), we remind ourselves of our own and others’ affective capacity. Femininity can be a rich and creative site of connectivity that expands beyond colonial imaginaries of womanhood and gender.
This conference marks half a decade of cultivating digital community dialogue around critical femininities, opening up intentional digital space for expanding normative definitions of connection. There are also possibilities in the ways we disconnect. As Alyson K. Spurgas (2021) writes, “there is promise in embracing a fracturing, in falling apart—as antidote to the normative and neoliberal logic of keeping it together.” There is value in interrogating the connective void left when white supremacy, colonization, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and other violent structures disconnect us from our femininities. The potential inherent in diving into disconnection also leaves room for exploring unexpected or idiosyncratic instances of re-connection to femininity.
This year's conference program includes 9 panels with interdisciplinary and international scholars, artists, and activists, a keynote address, and a creative workshop.
Find out more about the cluster and past conferences at this link: https://www.yorku.ca/cfr/critical-femininities/
Contact us at: critfemininities@gmail.com
Ticket Information
The Critical Femininities conference has always been a space that centres graduate students, early career researchers, arts workers, and others working outside/beyond the academy. To continue creating this supportive space, this year we are experimenting with a sliding scale conference registration fee. You can pay any amount (including $0) that works with your budget. Please note the currency is Canadian dollars (CAD).
Suggested Donation:
$0-$30: For conference presenters, students, arts workers, un- or under-waged
$30-$50: For those with a living wage
$50+: For those with access to institutional funding
Please email us if you would like an itemized receipt or have any questions.
Fat Fashionings: Drawing FAT in Comics
A Workshop with Mollie Cronin
Date: August 17, 2025
Time: 9:45am - 11:15am EDT
Location: Online (via Zoom)
Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/connection-the-fifth-annual-critical-femininities-conference-tickets-1439440578519?aff=oddtdtcreator
In this workshop participants will explore drawing FAT in comics. From cartooning basics, to self-portraits, to worlds and environments, we will explore how the ways we conceive of and represent fat can shape our selves and spaces. Attendees of any and all levels of experience are encouraged to attend (no drawing experience needed!), and participants should bring paper and black pens, and any other drawing supplies they wish to use.
Mollie Cronin is a cartoonist from Mi'kmaki (Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Fredericton, New Brunswick). She has a BA in Art History from NSCAD University and an MA in Gender Studies from Queen's, and recently completed the first year of a PHD program at York. Her fat-centric cartooning practice is often published under the name "Art Brat Comics" where she depicts embodied fat characters and draws inspiration from her own experiences as a fat woman. Her current research examines representations of fat women in comics and includes her own cartoon interventions. Her first solo book project Future Me is Fat is now available from Conundrum Press.
This workshop is part of "Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference."
Past Events
Generation: The Fourth Annual Critical Femininities Conference
August 16-18, 2024 | Online
The Centre for Feminist Research at York University is hosting scholars, researchers, activists, and artists for the fourth annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of ‘Generation.’ This year’s conference will also include a collage workshop by artist stylo starr and Keynote address by Dr. Gina Starblanket!
Registration is free for all attendees and the conference will take place virtually on August 16-18, 2024.
Register using this form until August 1: https://forms.gle/xrTYczJtn6RMS76t7
To generate is to cause, create, or bring about. A generation may refer to a relation in time or the creation of art, scholarship, solidarity, or power. This conference aims to explore the multifaceted dimensions of and attitudes towards femininity across different generations, interrogating how various social, cultural, political, and technological factors intersect with and shape our experiences. In this moment of intergenerational conflicts, climate crisis, and generative AI, the time has come to think critically about our generations and what we generate.
If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca
Follow us on Instagram @crit_fem for more updates!
Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity
Launch and Listening Party
Date: October 21, 2023
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Location: The ArQuives (34 Isabella Street, Toronto)
RSVP: https://arquives.ca/store/still-brazen-twenty
The foundational femme anthology Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity was published in 2002. Editors Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri curated a collection of prose, poetry, visual art, and theory that explored femme on its own terms and brought us new, complex understandings of femme experience that changed the conversation about queer femininities. Now, twenty years later, original contributors to the collection and emerging femme writers and scholars come together on this podcast to talk about femme’s past, present, and future.
Join us in person at The ArQuives on Saturday, October 21, to celebrate the launch of Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity. Come out for the chance to listen to all six podcast episodes before they’re online, see ephemera from the early days of Brazen Femme, and share your memories of the book and visions of femme’s future.
Find out more about the podcast here.
Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference
August 17-19, 2023 | Online
The Centre for Feminist Research at York University will host the third annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of “Irreverence.” The conference will take place virtually on August 17-20, 2023.
To be irreverent is to show disrespect where respect is demanded, to be flippant in the face of serious situations, and to satirize what others hold sacred. In western culture, the mother, the virgin, and the queen are figures of femininity that are often held sacred, exemplifying the entrenchment of idealized feminine characteristics such as domesticity, piety, and (hetero)sexual or moral purity. But for decades, irreverence has been woven into camp and poststructuralist approaches to femme theory, which insist that femme is an intentionally ironic performance of this idealized white, cis-heterosexual femininity (Albrecht-Samarasinha 1997; Case 1988; Duggan & McHugh 1996). Irreverent attitudes toward femininity—especially white, heterosexual, and colonial femininities—are also integral to other queer cultures and modes of critique: in recent years, hypersexual and outrageous impersonations of the sacred feminine figures the Virgin Mary and Queen Elizabeth (I and II) have been presented on the mainstage of TV’s Rupaul’s Drag Race. In this way, irreverence has wrought countercultural styles of femininities that relate to punk, drag, sex work, working-class, Indigenous, and racialized sensibilities (Bailey 2014; Chepp 2015; McCann 2016; Padaan 2023).
See the full CFP here. If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca
Dying But Fine: Memeing the Void
A Workshop with Kristel Jax
Date: Friday, August 18, 2023
Time: 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Location: Online via Zoom
How can one infiltrate the zeitgeist with stealth, accuracy, and grace? In this Zoom workshop artist Kristel Jax of niche online humour operation @DyingButFine (rumoured to be indirectly inspirational to 2023 box office smash Barbie) will aim to answer any question you’ve ever had about making, and sharing, memes.
Kristel Jax runs Instagram meme account @DyingButFine, a parody retreat where trademarked dolls are free to embody chaos, nihilism, and catharsis. Jax aka Brigitte Bardon’t is the host of Drone Therapy Podcast, and shares the only real estate she’ll ever own, a once-curbed, 2015 era Barbie Dream House, with her mini pug, Lana.
This workshop is part of the Irreverence conference and open to all. Click here to register for the conference.
Femme Fiction: Irreverence, Resistance, and Intersectionality
Keynote Address by SJ Sindu
Date: Saturday, August 19, 2023
Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm EDT
Location: Online via Zoom
What does it mean to write and create stories from a femme perspective? As a queer, genderqueer femme Tamil diaspora writer, I approach my art from a heritage of resistance. In this talk, I’ll trace the histories, theories, and politics that inform and interact with my creative practice, with a focus on irreverence as a technique to subvert expectations in the publishing industry.
SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels (Marriage of a Thousand Lies, which won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award; and Blue-Skinned Gods, which was an Indie Next Pick and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), two hybrid chapbooks (I Once Met You But You Were Dead and Dominant Genes), two graphic novels (Shakti and the forthcoming Tall Water), and one forthcoming collection of short stories (The Goth House Experiment). Sindu holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University and is a co-editor for Zero Street, a literary fiction series featuring LGBTQ+ authors through the University of Nebraska Press. Sindu is an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. More at sjsindu.com or @sjsindu on Twitter/Instagram/Threads.
The Critical Femininities Research Cluster at Congress 2023 | Critical Femininity Studies: Current Questions and Future Directions
Roundtable with Andi Schwartz, Jade Da Costa, Laura Brightwell, Hannah Maitland, Cassie Osei, Jessie Taieun Yoon & Lindsay Cavanaugh | Presented at SSA | 9:00AM - 10:30AM EDT | CLH K
In 2012, Ulrika Dahl began to define the field of critical femininity studies. Calling for an analysis of femininity beyond its ties to femaleness and its critique as a source of oppression, Dahl suggested we consider femininity as a genre “in all its variations, representations, and materializations (p. 61).” Dahl argued considering femininity’s many genres enables us to theorize affective and power relations between femininities, especially as demonstrated in antiracist and postcolonial inquiries on femininities. For example, many scholars in these fields have considered femininities that diverge from white norms, in particular with regards to racialization, colonialism and transness (Aizura, 2009; Cheng, 2019; Huang, 2022; Keeling, 2007; Panuska, 2019; Reddy, 2016; Zuo, 2022). Now, ten years after Dahl’s initial sketch of the field was published, this roundtable will illuminate the directions the field has already taken—and where it still needs to go.
Cluster Members
Dr. Laura Brightwell’s award-nominated dissertation addresses the dismissal of feminine gender expressions and culturally feminized experiences such as mothering from queer theory. Her research spans femme memoir, queer parenting, and queer and trans histories. Recently, she was a Research Associate for the project “On Our Own Terms: An Oral History and Archive of Queer Femme Community and Culture in Toronto, 1990-2000,” also known as the Femme Story Archives. You can read Laura’s writing in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, feral feminisms, and the anthology Gender Hate Online: Understanding the New Anti-Feminism. Laura lives on Treaty 13 territory in Tkaronto with her partner, two silly kids, and Bruce the cat. You can follow her on Instagram @lauraannebrightwell
Kathleen Cherrington is a third year PhD student in the Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies Program, at York University. For 15 years, she worked as an outreach worker to marginalized populations, specifically chronically homeless individuals, prisoners, and street-based sex workers. Her research specializations include critical sex work and erotic labour studies; transnational sexualities; scholar activism; gendered labour; women in poverty; sexual rights; creative research methods and methodologies; feminist art activism; and urban sexualities.
Dr. Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa (they/them/she/her) is a gender nonbinary queer woman of colour PhD Sociology candidate at York University, Tkaronto, a community organizer, educator, and knowledge mobilizer across central Southern Ontario, and a creative writer and poet. Their research, teaching, pedagogy, organizing, and art converge on topics of race and racism, queer and trans belonging, feminism, the sociology of health, and social justice. For more information, please visit: Jadecrimson.com.
Jenna Danchuk is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University. Her research explores feminist and LGBTQ movement histories, media and sub/cultural studies; and public history and archival research methodologies. Jenna’s writing has appeared in the Journal of American Periodicals, The Journal of American Culture, FUSE Magazine, WORN Fashion Journal, Spiral Nature, and on the Bitch Media Blog. Her dissertation explores the role of New Age spiritualities in lesbian-feminist communities and culture c. 1976-1987. She currently works as a Research Associate for Dr. Chloë Brushwood Rose and Dr. Andi Schwartz’s On Our Own Terms Oral History project, also known as the Femme Story Archives.
Mackenzie Edwards is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University. Her research uses queer and disability influenced approaches to study fatness in popular and social media. She is also a union steward as well as a co-editor and social media manager of Excessive Bodies. Mackenzie’s work has been published in Fat Studies and Screen Bodies and presented at conferences internationally.
https://mackenzie-edwards.com/
Alex MacKenzie (she/they) is a trans non-binary, queer femme Ph.D. candidate at York University in the Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies department. Her graduate work focuses on fan engagement with K-pop by queer and Black fans. Her work is interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of cultural studies, queer theory, transnational studies, urban studies, fat studies, trans studies, critical femininities, and critical race theory. Her work will be published in the Excessive Bodies journal and has presented at the Critical Femininities Conference and the Feminist Digital Media Conference. She is also a research assistant at the Canada-Mediterranean Centre at York University and teaches in the field of Urban Studies at the University of Toronto.
Hannah Maitland lives and works on Treaty 13 territory in Tkaronto, where she is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Department at York University. Hannah is a feminist researcher who studies girl activists, their politics, and their relationships with their mothers. Her other research areas include youth activism, sex education, and sex education controversies. Beyond her research, Hannah is the co-founder of the Ontario Digital Literacy and Access Network (ODLAN), producer for the Resisting the Script podcast and the Sexuality Studies Spotlight podcast and involved with other organizations and projects that help foster intergenerational relationships in 2S-LGBTQ+ communities. You can find some of her writing in the journal Sex Education and Shameless Magazine.
Allegra Morgado (she/her pronouns) is a Ph.D. student in the Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies Department at York University, researching the impacts fat and queer community have on community members' lives and living, working, and playing on Treaty 13 territory. She returned to academia after working in the non-profit sphere for over 5 years, focusing on creating inclusive learning spaces for youth and providing workshops to adults on queer and trans* inclusivity. She is passionate about accessible knowledge mobilization and using research to imagine and create a better world. Beyond her work she also loves writing poetry, exploring the outdoors, and playing tabletop role-playing games with her friends.
Maisha Mustanzir (she/they) is an M.A. student in the Social Anthropology program at York University. Her research explores the intersection between care, labour, and the bureaucracy within shelters that offer aid to women facing violence in Toronto, Ontario. She is interested in using multi-modal and artistic forms of information dissemination and knowledge production. Currently, Mustanzir is also an editor at Contingent Horizons at York University.
Casey Robertson is a PhD candidate in Humanities at York University exploring the intersection of sound studies and trans studies through Jean-François Lyotard's politics of aesthetics. Casey is also a graduate research associate of the Centre for Feminist Research, and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, and a member of the Advocacy and Development Humanities Organizing Committee (ADHoC). Prior to coming to York, Casey received an honours BA in Music (minoring in Philosophy) and a Diploma in Sonic Design from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and an MA in Humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. As a musician, activist, and community organizer, Casey is also frequently involved in various equity-centred initiatives and projects throughout the Greater Toronto Area.
Website: http://www.caseyrobertson.net
Dr. Andi Schwartz is the Coordinator of the Centre for Feminist Research at York University and a Research Associate with the Critical Femininities Research Cluster. Andi has a PhD and MA in Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies from York University, and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. Her academic work has been published in Punk and Post Punk, Feminist Media Studies, Social Media + Society, First Monday, Feral Feminisms, and others. Andi lives in Tkaronto with her dogs.
Dr. Sara Shroff was a 2023-2024 Visiting Scholar at the The Centre for Feminist Research/ Le Centre de recherches féministes at York University. Sara is a Fellow at the Center for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, where she was also the inaugural postdoctoral fellow from 2019-2021. Most recently, Sara was an Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences, with joint appointments in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science. Her work takes up racialized histories of labor, capital, and coloniality, infrastructures and intimacies of brown femininities along side the geo-poetics of desire, migrations, and sacred knowledges. Sara's work has appeared in top academic journals such as Feminist Review, Feminist Theory, Kohl, and Third World Thematics as well as several anthologies in Peace Studies, Feminist Economics, South Asian Studies and International Relations. Sara received her PhD in Urban and Public Policy from The New School and has taught at The New School, New York University, and PACE University. She currently serves on the editorial board of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography and as a Co-Editor for the International Feminist Journal of Politic's Conversations. She previously served as a committee member at the Saida Waheed Gender Institute, and Queer Asia. Prior to joining academia, she worked in public policy, global philanthropy and finance for over 18 years.