During the third wave of feminism and beyond, many gender studies scholars critiqued second wave feminist thinkers and turned their attention to emerging gender theory. More recently, there seems to be a swell of renewed interest in the second wave. Scholars are re-examining earlier writings and ideas, in light of the politics and status of gender in this moment. This panel assembles gender studies scholars who will speak about their own research that incorporates the ideas brought forward by second wave feminists. Questions to be addressed include: are we witnessing a return to the second wave—and if so, why now? Or have we, in fact, never fully left it behind? What analytic, political, or critical resources might second wave feminism offer for understanding our present moment?
Moderated by Nicole Archer. Please note: This is an in-person event.
The Wolff Conference Room is wheelchair-accessible. There are wheelchair-accessible and all-gender bathrooms on the same floor as the conference room. Seating in the space can be changed as needed. Virtual attendance is not available for this event. ASL interpretation is available with advance notice.
Robyn Marasco is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at The New School for Social Research. She is the author of The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel, which reconstructs the emancipatory project of critical theory around the idea of negative dialectics. Her forthcoming book, Elements of a Political Theory of the Family, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2026.
Rose Owen is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Purchase. Before SUNY Purchase, she was the Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Theory at The New School for Social Research. Her first book project, Feminist Violence, shows how feminist theorists and activists transformed the concept of violence in the mid-twentieth century. Her writing has been published in Political Theory and New Political Science.
Amber Jamilla Musser is a professor of English, Africana Studies, and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES) at the CUNY Graduate Center. She writes and researches at the intersections of race, sexuality, and aesthetics. In addition to writing art reviews for The Brooklyn Rail, she has published widely in queer studies, black feminism, and critical theory. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014), and Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), amongst others.
Durba Mitra is a feminist historian and theorist whose scholarship spans women's, gender, and sexuality studies; comparative studies of race and ethnicity; and global intellectual history. She is the author of two books, the forthcoming The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism (Princeton University Press, 2026), and the award-winning Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Nicole Archer is Associate Professor and Chair of Art and Design at Montclair State University, with an affiliation in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. She serves as Vice President of Publications for the College Art Association and is the former editor of Art Journal Open. She is currently completing a book that investigates how textiles function as sites of political violence and resistance in the contemporary United States, and has recently co-curated a related exhibition, America Will Be!, for the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland.
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