Publications

Academic Journal Articles

“Why “Political”? Blackness and Queer Urban Geographies in Toronto and San Diego” MUSICultures Vol. 48 (2021) QUEER MUSICKING/MUSIQUER/MUSIQUEER. Pgs. 29–59. Published 2022-02-23. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MC/article/view/32762

Abstract: This article exhumes the spatial, political, and aesthetic origins of queer spaces. Queer activism seeks to reinvigorate a North American gay popular culture that became depoliticized following the gay liberation movement. Contemporarily, antiracism is considered essential for a space to be queer. However, both scholars and participants question whether queer spaces have made progress in that regard. Attention to the sonic foundations of punk, and the crucial role of queercore subculture in carving out queerness as a coalition of identities, reveals how queer spaces often generate the divisions along lines of race which they labour to solve.

“Disorienting guitar practice: an alternative archive” Critical Studies in Media Communication  Volume 33, 2016 - Issue 1: Queer Technologies. Pages 95-108. Published online: 11 Apr 2016. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1129061.

Abstract: This paper critically examines the gendering of electric guitar technique in its limited scholarly reception. Focus is given to the work of Steve Waksman, specifically the “technophallus,” a coinage through which he engages feminist scholarship to interrogate the electric guitar's masculine performative identity. This paper offers a counter-archive of punk guitarists whose work, when approached with a queer analytic, problematize the pairing of virtuosity with heteromasculinity. Synthesizing the work of José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam on queer failure and virtuosity, I offer disorienting guitar practice as a critical lens which can materialize efforts at refusing the linearity of guitar technique as well as guitar hero worship. Consideration is given to St. Vincent's pairing of a disorienting virtuosity with her extension of the guitar's sonic possibilities through effect pedals.

Journalism

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ and lip-syncing: A once controversial practice is no longer taboo. The Conversation Canada. Published: August 31, 2021 3.46pm EDT.