Pizza and Prof To Present “Monogamy, Anti-Monogamy, and Critical Relationality”
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Professor Angie Willey will present her talk, “Monogamy, Anti-Monogamy, and Critical Relationality,” at the Commonwealth Honors College series Pizza and Prof on March 24 at 5:30 p.m. in the CHC Events Hall. Willey is chair of the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department at UMass Amherst and is an associate professor of feminist science studies at the Five College Consortium.
Q: What do you hope students will take away from your talk?
A: That monogamy is about more than sexual exclusivity—it's a naturalized system of belonging through which rights and resources are distributed and shared privately. More importantly, I hope [students understand] that resistance to compulsory monogamy is about more than polyamory. I hope they leave feeling curious about how things might be different if we learned to value and attend to friendship, community, and our broader interconnectedness as we have romantic partnerships.
Q: Why are you interested in feminist science studies?
A: Among other things, feminist science studies (FSS) helps give concrete meaning to the [idea of] race, gender, and sexuality… [being] both contingent and interconnected. These concepts… share histories in the biosciences and have developed in relation to one another in contexts of colonization and slavery. FSS helps us to understand where stories about differences that undergird the way lives are valued differently now actually come from. By highlighting the contexts in which scientific knowledge is produced, it arms us with the tools to challenge stories that naturalize injustice.
Q: What are you studying in your current research? What inspired your current project?
A: I'm collaborating on a project on interdisciplinary biologies, thinking about [how] archives of body-knowledge [might influence] more robust understandings of who and what we are (like activism, poetry, performance, etc.) and how we might integrate that into biology education at every level. I'm currently thinking about genealogies of critical materialism in queer and feminist writing about the erotic. I believe that if we understand our nature differently, we are capable of being a lot more imaginative about possibilities for structuring our lives and worlds.
Q: What’s your advice to students about how to identify a subject they are passionate enough to research?
A: I would advise students to notice their reactions to things they read and experience and get curious about how they feel. What insights and commitments are you bringing to the table? Where do they come from? To whom do you feel accountable, who do you imagine are your people? I'd also advise to think about where you feel moved to say something, where you feel you might have an impact on a conversation. As researchers, we're participating in huge conversations…that happen in a lot of different ways in different spaces. Each of us chooses to amplify certain stories and challenge others when we decide what to research and how. Research is storytelling, stories shape our worlds. I'd suggest you ask yourself who's fighting for what you want and see what you can contribute to the stories they are telling. Be open to that curiosity!