QUILTING POINTS:

For our first session, we will be discussing the second chapter of Sara Ahmed's second monograph, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (2000). A PDF is accessible via Google Drive here . (Further reading: Audre Lorde's essay 'Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger*' from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches which Sara Ahmed uses as an epigraph to 'Embodying Strangers.' A PDF is accessible via Google Drive here ). In 'Embodying Strangers,' Ahmed crystallises how 'the stranger' comes into being through a visual and tactile economy. The essay deals with construction of the stranger as, following Georg Simmel, both far and near (see Simmel, 1950, p.402), as well as the significance of touch and contact in the formation of relations of strangeness. Event details: Tuesday 3rd October, 5pm-6:30pm, LHRI, Room 1. All welcome!

Quilting Points returns for a sixth year with a new focus on Sara Ahmed. We’re delighted to announce the return of Quilting Points, an interdisciplinary, critical and cultural reading group and seminar series at the University of Leeds. This year we'll be facilitating a year-long discussion on the work of Sara Ahmed, one of the most prolific and influential contemporary thinkers currently working in the UK. Examining her monographs, essays and  blog entries  we'll look at how Ahmed has shaped the fields of postcolonial studies, feminism, queer theory, ethic studies and critical race theory. As an independent scholar and writer who scrutinises the operations of power in every day life, as well as institutions like the university, Ahmed's critical and intellectual range only looks set to widen in the future. As a group, we're looking forward to discussing and reading Ahmed while her critical project is still ongoing and we welcome individuals from across the universit