Critical Polyamorist to read at poets' theatre, somerville, MA, september 1

Dear friends, I'll read a series of my Critical Polyamorist 100s at the Poets' Theatre at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts, September 1. See the flyer below for more information. Around the 100s, I will also give commentary, sort of a mini and not too-academic lecture, about critical relations that disrupt settler state ideas of relating, including compulsory monogamy. The compulsory monogamy system in addition to the privileging of state-sanctioned marriage and imposed norms of nuclear family and private property have disrupted Indigenous notions of extended family and more just and sustainable relations with more-than-humans. My longtime friend and writer-colleague, Richard Cambridge, curates this reading series. In a former life as a performance-oriented poet (long before I was an academic), Boston and Cambridge were my poetic stomping ground. I left reluctantly in early 1996 for professional opportunities.  While I have finally found another home in Edmonton, Alberta, this reading is a sort of homecoming for me. The last time I did a reading of creative writing in the Boston area was in 1995. I have focused on academic writing for nearly two decades now. The Critical Polyamorist 100s have helped bring creative writing back into my writing practice. The 100s are informed by and in turn loop back to inform my academic work within non-monogamy studies, Indigenous studies, and science studies in which I challenge imposed and colonial forms of settler relations.   

I'll also be in town for the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) annual meeting in Boston, August 29-September 2, 2017 where I'll be giving comments as part of a Presidential Plenary panel, "Interrogating the Threat," that will focus on what we as Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars should be most concerned about in this current moment. The panel will consider questions "across domains of settler colonialism and the (post)colonial, (in)security and (anti)militarism, bio and health politics, race/difference and (im)migration, and multi-species environments." That's a mouthful. I hope to see you, if you're in town, at one or maybe even both events.