Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Cambridge

ABSTRACT:
Recent research in marine biology has documented a vast diversity of sexual behaviours among oceanic creatures, from serial homosexuality to climate-induced transsexuality. Contemporary queer artists have, in turn, drawn on these emerging studies to challenge what counts as ‘natural’ in relation to human sexuality and gender identity, overturning a long and difficult history of aligning queerness with the unnatural.

Yet, how transferable are the terms ‘sexuality’, ‘queerness’ and ‘orientation’ between humans and the organisms of the natural world? And what do their limitations reveal about the anthropocentric ways we have constructed our critical theories of sexuality and gender? This seminar explores the intellectually generative tensions between queer theory, marine biology and the environmental humanities, interrogating how ideas of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’ have circulated between scientific research, cultural practice and political discourse. I argue that the ocean – as both scientific object and cultural imaginary – offers a productive site for recalibrating the relationship between sexuality, knowledge and the non-human world.