Much of my current research agenda concerns the political and affective desires that fall within the rubric of ‘mixed race.’ My book manuscript explores how these desires travel within the Asian diaspora, notably the scenes in which empire casts Asian people with white heritage. I engage cultural figures (Andrew Cunanan, Joanna Gaines, Daniel Holtzclaw, Elliot Rodger, Tura Satana), writers (Sara Ahmed, Grace Cho, Michiyo Fukaya, Chanel Miller, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Julietta Singh, Ocean Vuong, Michelle Zauner) and artists (Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Isamu Noguchi, Gina Osterloh, Emma Sulkowicz), theorizing the ontological dilemma of mixed race subjection alongside the sexual logics of empire that bring Asian people and whiteness together. My methodology turns toward minoritarian aesthetic practices—memoir, self-portraiture, performance and installation art, queer visual culture, poetics, sculpture, ceramics, and revolutionary protest—as critical indexes to articulate the evolving relationship between mixed race subjects and US imperialism in Asia and the Pacific.
Below you will find a list of my publications. Please get in touch if you'd like a PDF. |
Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Half, 2012.
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Academic Articles
A Case for the Two-Dimensional:
Balinese Dance, Colonial Shadows, and Feeling Otherwise with Zavé Martohardjono Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas Volume 7: Issue 3. 2023. This article encounters the shadows of coloniality from the vantage point of the two-dimensional. Spotlighting the queer and trans dance of interdisciplinary artist Zavé Martohardjono, the author traces the connections between diasporic gesture, cultural erasure, and land in the context of a shifting Indonesian governance, arguing that the distinct register of the two-dimensional—the flat space of virtual mediums like Zoom—allows the past to touch the present, and enables the viewer to unwind from colonialism’s grip on bodily movement. In doing so, the article observes the dance between dimensionality and embodiment, and the colonial shadows that linger in between, in order to forward new ways of anti-colonial feeling and being within the colonial present.
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“So, I turn inside":
Overcome by the Unbearable, Seeing Myself in Michiyo Fukaya Feminist Studies Special Issue “Celebrating Forty Years of This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave” 2022. Paying tribute to Michiyo Fukaya, a mixed-race Asian American lesbian poet and feminist activist who died by suicide in 1987, this essay experiments with a reading practice that merges queer and feminist thought with poetics and autotheory. Throughout, the author interweaves details of Fukaya's life with their own, wading through Fukaya's writings to force attention onto the topics of sexual violence, anger, mental health, and U.S. imperialism. Fukaya—a contemporary of those who grace the pages of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color and All The Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies—is largely absent in discussions of third world feminism, women of color feminism, and 1980s feminisms writ large. Attending to this absence, the essay models how one might touch and be touched by their dead, suggesting a turn inwards towards the feminist past as a prerequisite to survival.
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Book Chapters
“How to Speak without Words: Abuse and/as Disability in Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Dirty River.” Disability Representation in Film, TV and Print Media. Routledge’s Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Series. Edited by Michael Jeffress. 2021.
“Sexuality,” in The Modern Language Association's Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities. Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, eds. Co-authored with Alexis Lothian. 2020.
Encyclopedia Entries
“Coming Out,” “Lesbian Feminism,” and “Loving v. Virginia,” in Jason Pierceson, ed., LGBTQ Americans in the U.S. Political System: An Encyclopedia of Activists, Voters, Candidates, and Officeholders. ABC-CLIO: 116-117, 262-264, 265-267. 2019.
Reviews
“Guilty Party, Curated by Justin Hoover." Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 7(1-2): 229-233. 2022.
“Queering the Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalisms in the Filipina/o Diaspora.” Feminist Formations, 33(2): 343-346. 2021.
“Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 7(3): 215-218. 2020.
“After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life.” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 29(1): 95-98. 2019.
Public Writing
"Remembering Konerak Sinthasomphone." Reappropriate: Asian American feminism, politics, and pop culture. 2021.
“Watching the Future Closely.” Frontiers Augmented. 2021.
Catalog Essays
“Truth Before Flowers – Jennifer Ling Datchuk.” Women & Their Work. Austin, TX. 2019.
Poetry
“July 9th” and “The Moon, the Tide, the Sun.” Sinister Wisdom, 125: Glorious Defiance. 2022.
“How to Speak without Words: Abuse and/as Disability in Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Dirty River.” Disability Representation in Film, TV and Print Media. Routledge’s Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Series. Edited by Michael Jeffress. 2021.
“Sexuality,” in The Modern Language Association's Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities. Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, eds. Co-authored with Alexis Lothian. 2020.
Encyclopedia Entries
“Coming Out,” “Lesbian Feminism,” and “Loving v. Virginia,” in Jason Pierceson, ed., LGBTQ Americans in the U.S. Political System: An Encyclopedia of Activists, Voters, Candidates, and Officeholders. ABC-CLIO: 116-117, 262-264, 265-267. 2019.
Reviews
“Guilty Party, Curated by Justin Hoover." Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 7(1-2): 229-233. 2022.
“Queering the Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalisms in the Filipina/o Diaspora.” Feminist Formations, 33(2): 343-346. 2021.
“Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 7(3): 215-218. 2020.
“After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life.” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 29(1): 95-98. 2019.
Public Writing
"Remembering Konerak Sinthasomphone." Reappropriate: Asian American feminism, politics, and pop culture. 2021.
“Watching the Future Closely.” Frontiers Augmented. 2021.
Catalog Essays
“Truth Before Flowers – Jennifer Ling Datchuk.” Women & Their Work. Austin, TX. 2019.
Poetry
“July 9th” and “The Moon, the Tide, the Sun.” Sinister Wisdom, 125: Glorious Defiance. 2022.