The black vulva is mired in a complex representational conundrum. This talk asks how we might begin to think about the black vulva by focusing not only on the intimacies and selfhoods produced by the labial, but on the ways that thinking with race and fleshiness through a discourse on proprioception forces us to attend to power asymmetries. 

Amber Musser, Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, has published widely on race and critical theory, queer femininities and race, race and sexuality, and queer of color critique. Her second book, Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), works against the framing of black and brown bodies as sexualized, objectified, and abject.