Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe
- Program and Practicum Director, Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Womens Studies
- Associate Professor, Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Womens Studies
Are you the profile owner?
Sign in to editContact information
Availability:
Website:
ORCID:
Biography
Bio
Natalie Kouri-Towe/NKT is an Associate Professor of feminism and sexuality at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. Her research has been published in both academic and non-academic venues on topics related to affect theory, solidarity, kinship, queer activism, trigger warnings, gender and sexuality pedagogies, masculinity, and responses to war in the Middle East.
Her edited collection, Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom, is forthcoming (Fall 2024) with Concordia University Press. Along with Myloe Martel-Perry, she has also published an open access teaching guidebook, Better Practice in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework, available through Concordia Pressbooks. She is currently working on a book manuscript on feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism titled Solidarity at Risk.
Education
Research Interests
Affiliations
RéQEF: Réseau Québécois en Études Féministes
https://reqef.uqam.ca
Awards and Grants
SSHRC Insight Grant 2024 Competition (PI)
Project Title: Transformative Encounters: Gender and Sexuality Pedagogies in Canada
SSHRC Insight Grant 2020 Competition (Co-investigator)
Project Title: Triggering Education: Relational Readings of Trigger Warnings in the Canadian Post-Secondary Classroom
SSHRC Connection Grant 2020 Competition (Co-applicant)
Project Title: Departures, Encounters, and Arrivals: Feminist Approaches to Migration and Mobility Justice Studies
Team: Gada Mahrouse (PI), Natalie Kouri-Towe (co-applicant)
SSHRC Insight Development Grant 2019 Competition (PI)
Awards
Dean’s Award for Excellence in Academic Service 2020
Faculty of Arts and Science, Concordia University
Teaching activities
Current Courses
SSDB 492: Seminar in Advanced Topics in Sexuality I - Transnational Sexuality Studies (Winter 2020; Fall 2023)
Research activities
Book Projects
Solidarity at Risk (in progress) examines the friction of feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism and the attending risks placed on contemporary practices of transnational solidarity through the convergence of global capitalism, human rights discourses, and shifting ideologies of selfhood. I contend that we must reconsider how solidarity in the21st century is formulated in order to effectively understand the relationship between contemporary projects for social transformation and new practices of governance in an era shaped by globalization. The book traces the history of solidarity and its debates in transnational feminist theory and politics to consider how ruptures in social movements emerge temporally and ideologically across the late 20th and early 21st century. Turning to debates in feminist activism and social movements, such as the #MeToo movement, the book interrogates how sexuality and subjectivity have emerged as markers of feminist and queer activism and proposes a way forward beyond fragmentation for social movements organizing today.
Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom (forthcoming in Fall 2024 with Concordia University Press) is an edited book featuring leading gender and sexuality scholars from across Canada. The book invites readers across disciplines into the conversations happening within our field's classrooms on topics ranging from foundational learning, to applied learning, tackling racism within our courses, and tackling requests for trigger warnings.
Graduate Supervision
Supervision: I am taking on a limited number of graduate students under my supervision working in areas closely related to one of my current research projects.
- gender and sexuality pedagogies;
- gender and sexuality in responses to war in the Middle East;
- queer social movements and activism;
- sexuality and kinship.
- a description of your research project and how your project fits within one of the areas of research focus outlined above;
- a short explanation of what kind of role you'd like me to take on your committee;
- the name and contact information of your primary supervisor;
- a timeline of your graduate program.
Publications
Refereed Books
Natalie Kouri-Towe (ed). (forthcoming 2024). Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom. Montreal: Concordia University Press.Pre-order 20% Discount Code: ROOM2024
Teaching Guide
Kouri-Towe, Natalie and Myloe Martel-Perry. 2024. Better Practices in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework. Montreal: Concordia University Library Pressbooks.Refereed Publications
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2020. Solidarity at a Time of Risk: Vulnerability and the Turn to Mutual Aid. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 41: 190-198.
Carastathis, Anna, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley. 2018. Introduction to special issue “Feminist Interventions in ‘Crisis’: Intersectionality, Refugees,and Migration.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. 34(1): 3-15.
Edited Collections
Mahrouse, Gada and Natalie Kouri-Towe (eds). 2023. “Departures, Encounters, and Arrivals: Feminist Geopolitical Approaches to Studying Human Mobilities and Borders.” Special issue, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 22(4).Carastathis, Anna, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley (eds). 2018. Feminist Interventions in ‘Crisis’: Intersectionality, Refugees, and Migration. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. 34(1).
Book Chapters
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2022. “Affective Pedagogies, and Pedagogies of Affect: Gender, Solidarity, and the Classroom in the Trigger Warning Debates.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect. Ed. Todd Reeser. London: Routledge.Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. “Queer.” Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle. Eds. Kelly Fritsch, Clare O’Connor, and AK Thompson. AK Press: 335-341.
Book Reviews
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. Ethical Imperatives in Transnational Solidarity. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 35: 213-216.Roundtables
Public Writing
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2020. “Uncanny Sexuality in the Playground of the (un)Real.” Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Tommy Bruce: Real Problems” shown at AC[2]: Albuquerque Contemporary Art Center & the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 6-16.
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. Textured Activism: In-Between Liberation and Oppression. OpenDemocracy: Transformations. (December 27). https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/natalie-kouri-towe/textured-activism-in-between-liberation-and-oppression
Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2012. Trending Homonationalism. No More Potlucks. 19 (January-February). http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/trending-homonationalism.
Artistic performances
dir. Sharlene Bamboat (40min), 2024
Art Gallery of York University (off-site installation), Toronto, Ontario, October 16-30, 2013