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Shaka McGlotten

Professor of Media Studies

Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies and Global Black Studies Programs. Their work stages encounters between black study, queer theory, media, and art. They have written and lectured widely on networked intimacies and messy computational entanglements as they interface with qtpoc lifeworlds.

They are the author of Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality, published by SUNY Press in 2013. They are also the co-editor of two edited collections, Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones). Their book Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life and their current project, Black Data, have been supported by Data & Society, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and Creative Capital | The Andy Warhol Foundation.

Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life. Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life.
Credit: Cover concept and image by Raafat Hattab. Drawing by Jakob Lorenzo.

More About Me

You can find me on Instagram and Twitter @shakaz23 and @shaka_laka_zulu on TikTok

Research Interests

  • Queer and Gender Studies
  • Black Studies
  • Art and Technology
  • Virtual Publics
  • Emergent Media
  • Critical Data Studies
  • Pornography
  • Affect

Representative Courses

  • The Image: Between Queer Theory and Black Study
  • The Drag Class
  • Genres of Affect
  • Queer Cinema and Theory
  • Queer Media Convergence
  • Media Ethnographies
  • Media Institutions and Forms
  • Computers and Culture
  • New Black Ethnographies

Publications

BOOKS

2021 Dragging, Or in the Drag of Queer Life. New York: Routledge.

2013  Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality. Albany: SUNY Press

EDITED VOLUMES

2014  Zombie Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead. Co-edited with Steve Jones. Jefferson: McFarland Press

2012  Black Genders and Sexualities. Co-edited with Dana-Ain Davis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

REFEREED WRITING

2019  “Streaking.” TDR: The Drama Review 63:4 (Winter), 152-171.

2018  “Life in the Network.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 28(2): 161-169.

2018  “Porn Fast” in I Confess, Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo, eds. Montreal: McGill University Press, forthcoming.

2016  ”Poop Worlds: Material Culture and Shit (or, Toward a Shitty Turn)“ with Scott Webel, Scholar and Feminist Online 13:3-14:1.

2015  “The Political Aesthetics of Drag,“ Metropolitics: A Critical Online Journal of Urban Issues, October 13, 2015.  

2015  “The Élan Vital of DIY Porn,Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 11(1): 1-20.

2014  “Zombie Porn: Necropolitics, Sex, and Queer Sociality,” Porn Studies 1(3): 360-377.

2014  “A Brief and Improper Geography of Queerspaces and Sexpublics in Austin, Texas,” Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 21(4): 471-488.

2013  “Zombie Porn 1.0: Or, Some Queer Things Zombie Sex Can Teach Us.” Co-authored with Sarah VanGundy, Qui Parle 21(2): 101-125.

2013  “Dry and Limp: Aging Queers, Zombies, and Sexual Reanimation.” Co-authored with Lisa Jean Moore, Journal of Medical Humanities 34(2): 261-268.

2012  “Ordinary Intersections: Speculations on Difference, Justice, and Utopia in Black Queer Life,” Transforming Anthropology 20(1): 45-66.

2009  “No Beached Whales” (co-authored with Dana-Ain Davis and Vanessa Agard-Jones), Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 11(2): 87-93.

2009  “Spatial Articulations” (co-authored with Dana-Ain Davis and Vanessa Agard-Jones), Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 11(3): 225-229.

CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES

2020 “’The Most Hated Woman in Israel’: Natali Cohen Vaxberg” in Digital Lives in the Global City: Contesting Infrastructures. Deborah Cowen, Alexis Mitchell, Emily Paradis, and Brett Story, eds. Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 186-193.

2020  “TumPorn is Dead, Long Live TumPorn” in A-Tumblr-Book, Allison McCracken, Louisa Stein, Alexander Cho, eds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 158-163.

2019 “Porn Fast” in I Confess, Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo, eds. Montreal: McGill University Press, 353-369.

2018  “Lessons in Cruising,“ The Avery Review 29 (February 2018).“The Most Hated Woman in Israel’”: Natali Cohen Vaxberg” in Digital Cities, Deborah Cowen, ed., 2017, forthcoming.

2018  “I Just Can’t Even,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 24(1): 39-42.

2018  “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” in The Networked Self: Love, Zizi Papacharissi, ed. New York: Routledge, 230-252.

2018 . “Intimate Immanence: A Conversation between Shaka McGlotten and Katherine Sender,” First Monday 24:7 (July).

2018  “Smartphone Apps,” Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, Howard Chiang (editor in chief), Anjali Arondekar, Marc Epprecht, Jennifer Evans, Ross Forman, Hanadi al-Samman, Emily Skidmore, and Zeb Tortorici, eds. New York: Palgrave, 1228-1233.

2017  “Unlearning/Ethnography, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 4(1): 180-188. 

2015  “Remote” in Abseitiges: An den Rändern der Kulturanthropologie, Katrin Amelang and Silvy Chakkalakal, eds. Berlin: Berliner Blätter, 126-128.

2012  “Always Toward a Black Queer Anthropology” (guest editor’s introduction), Transforming Anthropology: The Journal for the Association of Black Anthropologists 20(1): 3-4.

2012  “Pornography: Gay and Lesbian” in Encyclopedia of Gender in Media, Mary Kosut and Geoffrey J. Golson, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012: 275-276.

2012  “Breaching Barriers Between Work and Play” in Fantasy Media in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching with Film, Television, Literature, and Video Games, Emily Dial-Driver, Sally Emmons, and Jim Ford, eds. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 123-137.

2011  “Dead and Live Life: Zombies, Queers, and Online Sociality” in Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture, Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz, eds. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 182-193. 

2007  “Virtual Intimacies” in Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality, David Phillips and Kate O’Riordan, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 123-137.

SELECTED OTHER WRITING

2020 “Guanyu Xu: Temporarily Censored Home,” Foam: International Photography Magazine (The Talent Issue) 55:247-248.

2018  “Sometime Last Summer,” Schloss Post. Akademie Schloss Solitude, January 10.

2017  “Knitting and Knotting Love in the Network,” Studio Visit. Schloss Post. Akademie Schloss Solitude.

2016  “Orlando,” American Anthropological Association Blog, July 7.

2015  “We are Not a Family,” Anthropology News 56(11-12): 32-33.

2013  “Queer Media Convergence” in Queer Zines, Vol. 2, ed. AA Bronson (Shapco: Minneapolis): 252.

SELECTED REVIEWS

2017  Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness in The American Journal of Sociology 122(4): 1305-1307.

2017  Jeffrey McCune’s Sexual Discretion, C. Riley Snorton’s Nobody is Supposed to Know, and Jane Ward’s Not Gay, “On Glass Closets and Not-Gay Gay Sex”  in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 23(4): 589-597.

2013  Jamie Heckert’s and Richard Cleminson’s (eds.) Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships, and Power in Cultural Studies 27(4) (2013): 653-656.

2012  Daniel Miller’s Tales from Facebook in Journal of Anthropological Research 68:2 (2012): 298-299.

MEDIA

2018  “AnthroBites: Affect,” AnthroPod: The Society for Cultural Anthropology Podcast (forthcoming).

2018  “Imagine Otherwise: Shaka McGlotten on the Passion of Inquiry,” Imagining Otherwise, Ideas on Fire.

MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION

Black Data: Queer of Color Critique Meets Network Culture Studies 

Presentations / Conferences

INVITED KEYNOTES

2019  “Black Data” Fuchsbau Festival. Hannover. August 10.

2019  “Knitting and Knotting Love in the Network; Or, What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Transmediale. January 31-February 3. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

2018  “Streaking.” Digital Intimacies 4: Porousness and Permutations. Curtin University Perth. December 5-7.

2018   “Pleasuremore.” Pleasureless. Yale University. March 30-31.

2017   “Porn Fast.” Ordinary Media Conference. Northwestern University. May 18.

2017   Keynote: Dialogue with Shaka McGlotten.” Queer Internet Symposium. University of Pennsylvania. February 17.

2016   “On Play and Failure.” Extending Play. Rutgers University. September 29-October 1.

2015   “Sensate.” WTF Affect. Lancaster, PA. October 14-17.

2015   “Black Data: Against the Hegemony of the Transparent.” III European Geographies of Sexuality Conference. Rome, Italy. September 16-18.

2015   “Black Data.” Ethnic and Third World Literatures Conference. University of Texas-Austin. April 9.

INVITED PAPERS

2020 “Racial Chain of Being.” Northumbria University. Newcastle. April 17.

2019  “Streaking.” Revi(ualis)ing Intersectionality. DeZim. Berlin. December 18.

2018   “Streaking.” Mediated Masculinities: Sex and Intimacy Conference. City University London. April 27.

2018   “Hard Feelings.” Transmediale. Berlin. February 3.

2017   “Black Data.” Parr Center for Ethics. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. October 26.

2017   “Black Data: Vogue Time Down.” Reed College. March 30.

2016   “Porn Fast.” Paper presentation. Affect Project. University of Toronto. October 21.

2015   “Black Data.” LGBTQ Studies. University of Chicago. March 5.

2014   “The Political Aesthetics of Drag.” Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture and Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. Manchester University. November 17; University of Sussex. Sussex Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence and Sussex Center for Cultural Studies. November 19; Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin. October 15.

2014   “Black Data.” Wandering Scholars Conference. Chinese University of Hong Kong. May 28-30; iSchool, University of Toronto. February 13.

2014   “Zombie Porn: Necropolitics, Sex, and Queer Socialities.” Transmediale, Berlin. January 30.

2014   “Intimacy as Method.” Institute for European Ethnology. Humboldt University, Berlin. January 23.

2013   “On Not Hooking Up.” Grinnell College. Grinnell, IA. February 6.

2013   “Hacking Homonationalism in Michael Lucas’ Men of Israel.” With Amit Gilutz. Abriendo Brecha: Activist Scholarship. University of Texas at Austin. February 15.

PANEL PRESENTATIONS

2019 “Capitalist Casualties: Gender, Technology, and the Virtual Body.” Queens Museum. New York. February 10.

2018  “Streaking.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Toronto. March 14-18.

2017  “Black Data: Against the Hegemony of the Transparent.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Washington D.C. November 29.

2016 “Black Data: Against the Hegemony of the Transparent.” Queer Circuits in Archival Times: Experimentation and Critique of Networked Data. May 20.

2016   “Porn Fast.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Atlanta, GA. March 30-April 2.

2015   “Queer(y)ing Palestine.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Denver, CO. November 21.

2015   “Roundtable.” Queering Anthropology. Yale University. February 13.

2013   “Hacking Homonationalism in Michael Lucas’ Men of Israel” with Amit Gilutz. Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference. Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY. April 10-12.

2012   “So Close, So Far: On Gay Men, Social Media, and Not Hooking Up” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. November 14-18.

2012   “Zombie Porn: Necropolitics, Sex, and Queer Socialities.” Sexual Cultures-Onscenity Conference. Brunel University, London. April 20-22; The Affect Factory Conference, NYU. February 10-11; Lavender Languages. American University, Washington, D.C. February 10-12.

2011   “How is a Queer Body Like a Zombie Body?” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada. November 16-20, 2011; International Body Image Conference. CUNY Graduate Center. April 8-9.

2010   “Feeling Black and Blue: Virtual Gay Sex Publics and Black Affects.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. New Orleans, LA. March 10-March 13.

PANELS ORGANIZED

2017   “Digital Deception and the Queer Life of Data.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. November 29-December 3.

2012   “Queering the Social: Internet as a Technology of Stranger Sociality.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. November 14-18.

2008   “The Movement of Queer Affect” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. San Francisco, CA. November 19-21.