2024 Mergen-Palmer Distinguished Lecture // Prof. Karen Tongson

GW American Studies Department

In this lecture, Professor Karen Tongson discusses her new book "Normporn"

2201 G St NW

"Just When You Think It's Over: On Normporn and Neverending Bereavement" In this lecture, Professor Karen Tongson discusses her new book Normporn, a meditation on letting go of grief that began on an intimate scale of (self) examination and expanded to a broader political and cultural inquiry into the television that soothes queer viewers—sometimes against our better aesthetic and political judgment. In the wake of the book's release, however, new traumas both personal and global emerged, posing a challenge to the author's cruel optimism about the "end" of cycles of loss and bereavement. The presentation is an honest assessment of the world bound by the book, and what shattered its resolutions. Karen Tongson is the author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (2023), Why Karen Carpenter Matters (one of Pitchfork’s best music books of 2019), and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (2011). In 2019, she was awarded Lambda Literary’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. She directs the Mellon-funded Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture at USC, where she is also Chair of gender &amp; sexuality studies, and Professor of gender &amp; sexuality studies, English, and American studies &amp; ethnicity. She is also co-editor of the award-winning book series, Postmillennial Pop with Henry Jenkins at NYU Press, and cohost of the podcasts Waiting to X-Hale with Wynter Mitchell-Rohrbaugh, The Gaymazing Race with Nicole J. Georges, and the limited series Angels International: A 2023 Women’s World Cup Digest with Jennifer Doyle. <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479843992/normporn/" title="https://nyupress.org/9781479843992/normporn/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us</a> is available via NYU Press.

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2024 Mergen-Palmer Distinguished Lecture // Prof. Karen Tongson

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2024 Mergen-Palmer Distinguished Lecture // Prof. Karen Tongson

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