A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Kirin Wachter-Grene

Assistant Professor

Contact

Personal Statement

Kirin Wachter-Grene is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the First Year Seminar Program in the Department of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington with a focus on 19th -21st century African American literature and gender and sexuality studies. She joined SAIC in 2018, having taught previously at New York University, Bard College, and the University of Washington. She teaches classes on Black feminism, BIPOC literature, sexuality, censorship, and spectatorship.

Dr. Wachter-Grene was the 2017-18 Visiting Scholar at the Leather Archives and Museum (LA&M). While at the LA&M she conducted research into Black women’s historical, manifold involvement with leather, kink, and fetish communities. Her LA&M research informed At the Limits of Desire: Black Radical Pleasure, a special issue of The Black Scholar she guest-edited in honor of the journal’s 50th Anniversary (50.2). She is currently co-editing a special followup, double-issue titled Unsafe Words: Black Radical Pleasure II (53.3/4, 2023). Dr. Wachter-Grene currently sits on the Active Editorial Board of The Black Scholar. She has published peer-reviewed articles and reviews in scholarly journals including African American Review, The Black Scholar, Callaloo, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and Feminist Formations, and she occasionally writes on Chicago-based arts events for Sixty Inches from Center. Currently, she is working on her manuscript titled Black Kenosis: The Erotic Undoing of African American Literature (under contract with Fordham University Press).

Writing Samples

"Teaching Three Copies of 'Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe'"

Iola Leroy's "Long, Long Ago" Song

"Black Radical Pleasure"

"Caretaking in So Many Ways: A Conversation with Mistress Velvet"

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course addresses sexuality and the erotics of interclass contact from the end of the 1960s through the present, with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ within a historical nexus of urban life, architecture, law, and struggles for civil rights. In what ways are our sexual lives produced, mediated, and disciplined by publics (and what are 'publics'?). Readings include Samuel R. Delany, Lauren Berlant, Michael Warner, Pat Califia, Gayl Rubin, David Wojnarowicz, Michel Foucault, Jeffrey Weeks, Laud Humphries, Tim Dean, Mireille Miller-Young, and more. We will also learn from guest speakers involved in the leather, kink, and fetish communities. Students can expect to read between 50-75 pages of critical and theoretical material per week and to write about and discuss texts in depth. Students will also take turns as discussion leaders.

Class Number

1729

Credits

3

Description

Toni Morrison¿s 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is an undeniable tour de force, with an impact nearly impossible to describe. Blending historical truth with literary innovation, realism with the supernatural, Morrison creates a work of critical fabulation that constructs a searing portrayal of slavery¿s lasting wounds. With writing that is both lyrical and harrowing, the novel is a landmark in American literature and a vital work for understanding the legacy of slavery in the present. In other words, there is a reason why this book remains one of the most banned and challenged in American classrooms, as we will discuss. The novel¿s powerful exploration of slavery¿s psychological and generational impact, its innovative narrative style, and its profound engagement with the persistence of history and memory make it a staggering literary work to return to again and again with careful, sustained attention. We will slowly and deeply engage with Beloved over the course of the semester, attending to its nonlinear storytelling, stream-of-consciousness narration, shifting perspectives, and breakdown of language, all while situating the novel within social, political, literary critical, and cultural contexts, including Black feminist theory. Students should expect to read, on average, 75 pages of combined fiction and critical secondary materials per week and to write about and discuss them in depth.

Class Number

1541

Credits

3

Description

What happens when science fiction literature encounters architecture? Worlds Collide! Whether as setting, character, or plot element, the architecture of cities, buildings, and spaces carry forward key themes of the genre including ecology and climate change; technology, bodies, and artificial intelligence; and migration and encounters with the Other. Considering the architecture of science fiction informs understanding of the complex cultural contexts in which both buildings and literature get made. Course readings will focus on selections from major works by authors Stanislaw Lem, Larissa Lai, and Charlie Jane Anders. Secondary material may include short stories, critical essays, art, architecture, film, and other contemporaneous cultural production. Course work will comprise close readings of major texts focusing on both literary and architectural analysis; in-class writing and student-led class discussion; and site-based installation projects.

Class Number

2236

Credits

3

Description

What happens when science fiction literature encounters architecture? Worlds Collide! Whether as setting, character, or plot element, the architecture of cities, buildings, and spaces carry forward key themes of the genre including ecology and climate change; technology, bodies, and artificial intelligence; and migration and encounters with the Other. Considering the architecture of science fiction informs understanding of the complex cultural contexts in which both buildings and literature get made. Course readings will focus on selections from major works by authors Stanislaw Lem, Larissa Lai, and Charlie Jane Anders. Secondary material may include short stories, critical essays, art, architecture, film, and other contemporaneous cultural production. Course work will comprise close readings of major texts focusing on both literary and architectural analysis; in-class writing and student-led class discussion; and site-based installation projects.

Class Number

2237

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2351

Credits

3 - 6