High Maintenance Feminisms
Seminar with Jillian Hernandez︎︎︎
[Four people connect virtually on a Zoom grid that is outlined by a magenta line. They are engaged in a group conversation about Jillian Hernandez’s curatorial and scholarly projects. On the top left of the grid is seminar leader Jillian Hernandez, a femme Latina wearing rose gold sectioning clips in her black curly hair, which is parted down the middle. On the top right is Amber Hawk Swanson, a femme white woman with long dark hair and gray streaks on either side of her straight-cut bangs. On the bottom left is Sidore Kuroneko, a Japanese-British Synthetik with shoulder-length black and purple ombré dyed hair. And on the bottom right is Davecat, a Black man with dark hair slicked over the right side of his forehead. Jillian Hernandez, who is smiling, wears a neon and black crocheted top. She sits in a room with several small framed artworks on the walls. Amber, who smiles behind her violet mask, wears a magenta sweater over a magenta dress. She sits against a pastel grid background in front of a live studio audience that is not pictured. Sidore is wearing a black sleeveless dress with white skulls, a black choker, glasses with silver frames, and vintage Pan Am corded headphones. She sits in front of a black bookcase holding books and collectables. Davecat, who looks amused, is wearing a white button down, a black necktie, and silver corded headphones. He sits on a loveseat covered with a plaid blanket and his bookshelf and desk are viewable in the background.]
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SEMINAR LEADER
Jillian Hernandez studies the autonomous aesthetics, genders, and sexualities of Black and Latinx people. Her scholarship crosses the fields of art history, performance, gender, ethnic, Latinx, and Black studies, and is informed by her work as a community arts educator, curator, and cultural producer. Her book Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment, published by Duke University Press, traces how the body practices and art making of Black and Latinx women and girls are intertwined, and how they complicate conventional notions of cultural value and sexual respectability through creative authorship. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Florida. She recently curated the exhibition Liberatory Adornment, which featured projects by Yvette Mayorga, Kenya (Robinson), and Pamela Council at the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College.
Photograph by Kenya (Robinson) / BLIXEL.co © 2022
Photograph by Kenya (Robinson) / BLIXEL.co © 2022
[A femme in profile pulls her black curly hair back against a floral background.]
Image description provided by Jillian Hernandez.
ASSIGNMENT
Reading
- Hernandez, Jillian. “Beauty Marks: The Latinx Surfaces of Loving, Becoming, and Mourning.” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 28, No. 1 (March 20, 2018): 67–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770x.2018.1430889.
Please read pages 67–84.