Nathalie Batraville

Associate Professor, Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Womens Studies

Contact information

Email:

nathalie.batraville@concordia.ca

Biography

Nathalie Batraville is a scholar, artist, and educator. Working as an associate professor at Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute, she teaches in the areas of Black feminisms, queer theory, and prison abolition. In doing so, she seeks to generate and illuminate frameworks that challenge both state violence and interpersonal violence. Dr. Batraville’s scholarship has appeared in scholarly publications such as The Journal of Haitian Studies, The CLR James Journal(Special issue: Black Canadian Thought), and Tangence, in addition to other media sources like Canadian Art, Spirale, and Ricochet. Her first book, Disruptive Agency: Towards a Black Feminist Anarchism, is forthcoming with Duke University Press. In it, she rethinks notions of agency from a Black feminist perspective. Through her ceramic art practice, she explores storytelling, Black liberation, plant life, and rebellion.

Education

PhD, Yale University

MA, Queens University

BA, McGill University

Research activities

Black feminist theory and praxis

Queer of color critique

Prison abolition

Decolonization

Teaching activities

WSDB 291 - Introduction to Contemporary Concerns in Women’s Studies

This course explores a range of current issues and debates within feminism. Using interdisciplinary feminist theories that consider how systems of power such as patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and heterosexism constitute one another, it examines particular local and global topics of interest/concern which may include Black and Indigenous feminisms, feminist archives, body politics, pleasure, policing and incarceration, and environmental justice.

WSDB 498 - Ending Sexual Violence

Examining the intersections of race and gender is key to understanding the function of sexual violence in our society. In this course, we will approach the task of ending sexual violence as one that must be taken on by simultaneously addressing other categories of systemic harm. As we read and reflect on critical theory, community organizing, and supporting survivors, our focus will largely be on the abolition of prisons and criminalization as a way to approach creating a less violent society. Drawing primarily on the work of Black feminist scholars and organizers, we will study theory in the first half of the course and praxis in the second.

WSDB 491 - Feminist Perspectives on Culture

In this course, we will study some of the cultural productions of Black women, while offering some tools for analyzing this body of work. We will engage with history, trauma, identity, spirituality, aesthetics, pleasure, and politics, and learn about some of the major political and aesthetic stakes of Black women’s art and literature. Authors and artists include Dionne Brand, Toni Morrison, Tourmaline, Zanele Muholi, and Alice Diop, while theorists and critics include Hortense Spillers, Afua Cooper, Charmaine Nelson, Dora Santana, and Audre Lorde.

SSDB 492 - Kink

Commonly defined as “unconventional” sexual behaviour, kink represents an open ended set of sexual fantasies, fetishes, practices, rituals and lifestyles around intimacy and connection, which may not be reflected or accepted in dominant culture. In this course, we will examine some of these non-normative desires and practices, while focusing in particular on BDSM and its relationship to race, capitalism, history, agency, and healing. We will study theoretical, literary, and artistic perspectives on bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, as well as other kinks, in ways that seek to illuminate the complexities, limitations, and possibilities these practices offer.