Early on in the Sexuality Studies course I'm teaching, we read some extracts from Harvey Milk’s writings, especially where he was defending gay teachers from campaigns that sought to eliminate them from the classroom. Harvey Milk’s work is memorialized - his speeches have been recorded and published for example - but the work of other [...]
Welsh Ladies
I felt very lucky to recently have an opportunity to be interviewed for a program on BBC Radio 4. It was a program created by writer Mab Jones, who had an idea inspired by a series of postcards she collected featuring women in traditional Welsh dress. She started to wonder about what the women would [...]
Fright House: America, Halloween, and the Midterms
I have a new article out today in Wales Arts Review, which tries to capture the strange time before elections in America, when the midterm hype coincides with Halloween. Halloween was not really celebrated in the US until the 1920s, brought over by white immigrants, but it has become a national craze, and far more [...]
F*ck Self-help
I had an essay out last month on The Manifest Station titled 'Fuck Self-help.' It's about all the women I know who have come to me for advice on whether their relationship is abusive, and it also tells something about my own experience of intimate partner violence. What the past has taught me is that [...]
Frankenstein and Reproductive Rights 200 Years On
“If we could perceive death as a part of pregnancy, we might just take women more seriously.” These words are taken from a recent article on ‘Mothers as Makers of Death,’ published by Claudia Dey in the Paris Review, in which she affirms a darker alternative to the Hallmark version of motherhood. Mary Shelley also [...]
Revamped course next semester… on sexuality and violence…
I was recently really pleased to receive an Affordable Learning Exchange grant to revamp my course 'Sexuality and Violence.' Here's how it looks for next semester. ----- Sexuality Studies 5620: Sexuality and Violence Tuesday / Thursday 2.20pm – 3.40pm Ohio State University Spring 2019 ZoëBrigley Thompson thompson.3022@osu.edu Figure 1: Change Mural by Krystal Roig-Palmer, [...]
On Branwen’s Horses
I have been thinking and writing about the Welsh legend of Branwen recently, in this micro-chapbook out with the Poetry Annals, Blind Horse Elegy (cover image by Victoria Brookland), and in the title poem itself which was a runner up in the Hopper Poetry Prize. When I think of the story of Branwen, I think of [...]
On the body, knowledge, and miscarrying
The first time I had a miscarriage, it was "missed." Sometimes they call it a silent miscarriage, because there are no symptoms. The only time you find out is when you lie back to have the ultrasound, but instead of a baby, nothing is there. Though my body and mind missed the miscarriage when it [...]
On Shyness, Dressing Up, and Writing
I have always loved this quotation from Sylvia Plath’s Johnny Panic and The Bible of Dreams: “So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them." I love this box image. I’m sure that the image was very personal [...]
Thoughts After the Solstice on Instinct and Harm
On the summer solstice two years ago, there was a big, beautiful supermoon. It was 2016 – pre-election, pre-Trump. That night, I woke up for no obvious reason, and downstairs I noticed a strange light coming through the glass doors. The moon was up, honey colored, clouds passing in long fingers across its face. I [...]
