WGSS Invited Guest Talk: Tyler Bradway on Queer Kinship

By Mat Fournier, April 14, 2023

Wednesday, April 19th, at 4:00 pm in BUS 103

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Tyler Bradway on queer kinship, throuples, and narrative plots. Food and refreshments will be served after the talk.

Tyler Bradway (he/they) is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Cortland and author of Queer Experimental Literature: The Affective Politics of Bad Reading (2017). He is co-editor (with Elizabeth Freeman) of Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form (2022) and (with E.L. McCallum) of After Queer Studies: Literature, Theory, and Sexuality in the 21st Century (2019), which won a CHOICEaward. His articles and essays appear or are forthcoming in PMLA, GLQ, MLQ, Textual Practice, College Literature, ASAP/J, Stanford Arcade, Studies in the Fantastic, Mosaic, and The Nation as well as various collections on contemporary literature and queer theory.

WGSS Invited Guest Talk: Tyler Bradway on Queer Kinship

Throuple Plots: Queer Kinship and Narrative Form

This talk examines "throuple plots" in contemporary LGBTQ literature and popular culture, which narrate relationships among three people working together to coordinate sex, desire, and intimacy. Throuple plots challenge foundational cis- and heteronormative narrative structures, such as the love triangle and cheating plot, and innovate forms for non-monogamous bonds across differences in race, gender, and class. Through these texts, I trace how kinship is becoming increasingly queer as the white, middle-class, and heterosexual nuclear family recedes as a cultural ideal.