Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 765373 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kyla Wazana Tompkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kyla Wazana |
| FAMILY NAME | Tompkins |
| SIGNATURE | TOMPKINS K W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pomona College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0327-7887 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Ingestion, race et pouvoir. Pour un renouvellement critique des études de l’alimentation
Cet article propose une relecture féministe et postcoloniale de Totem et Tabou de Freud qui interroge la nature du lien social pensé comme contrat commensal entre frères, fondé sur le repas totémique où les fils dévorent le père et s’interdisent mutuellement la violence. L’analyse met en lumière l’effacement symbolique des mères nourricières et du travail reproductif féminin, forclos du récit mythique de la fondation du social. En articulant phil…
Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot
How deviant materials figure resistance Yeast ferments, gelatin jiggles, drugs and alcohol froth and bubble, and flesh from animals and plants actively molds and rots. These materials morph through multiple states and phases, and their movement is imbued with a liveliness that is suggestive of volition. Deviant Matter examines four aesthetic and material categories— gelatinousness, fermentation, putrefaction, and intoxication—to theorize how the …
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The first time I encountered Sydney Mintz's writing on sugar, I actually lost my breath. To my mind, Mintz's work is still the single most important and foundational text to take up the history of food in the context of the Americas. It's probably, too, the book that made me believe that writing about the matter we call "food" might ultimately yield a lifetime of rich material to think with. …
Writing Against the Human in the Humanities
Writing Against the Human in the Humanities Kyla Tompkins (bio) The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century. By Kyla Schuller. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 296 pp. $94.95 (cloth). $25.95 (paper). $15.32 (e-book). Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture. By Britt Rusert. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 320 pp. $99.00 (cloth). $32.00 (paper). $17.60 (e-book).…
You Make Me Feel Right Quare
This article uses two ephemeral patent remedy advertisements from the 1890s to examine an aesthetic-affective category I call white sovereign entrepreneurial terror. Linking the period before the rise of progressivism and New Deal economics to the total collapse and evacuation of those structures following the 2016 election, I detail the qualities of this intoxicated, carnivalesque, free-market affect, outline its affiliation with the aggressive …
On the Limits and Promise of New Materialist Philosophy
A response to the forum, “Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities,” edited by Chris A. Eng and Amy K. King. Kyla Wazana Tompkins questions the structures informing claims of newness posed by discussions of “New Materialism.” She discusses the troubling ways in which these discourses, in turning toward the post- or non-human, can ironically reinforce assumptions about a universal human subject and elide considerations of gender, rac…
Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Queer of Color Critique
On the Visceral 2
This introduction discusses major themes in the eight essays that make up the double issue titled On the Visceral. Focusing on the tensions between viscerality and abstraction, and tracing the connections between gut feeling, alimentary affects, and political sentiment, the essays in this issue by Sianne Ngai, Bethany Schneider, Ewa Macura-Nnamdi, and Ramzi Fawaz treat the gut as a center of queer feeling
Hearty and happy and with a lively, yeasty soul: Feeling right in Louisa May Alcott'sThe Candy Country
This article discusses a short story by Louisa May Alcott in which a young white girl is transported into three parallel worlds: Candy Land, Cake Land and Bread Land. This article argues that Alcott uses these three food nations to both portray the history of US imperial exceptionalism and also to trace out a biopolitical imperative through which whiteness is granted the right to live on, while blackness is instrumentalized in the service of whit…
On the Visceral
In this issue of GLQ, the first of a paired set (20.4 and 21.1), the logics of desire and consumption in (post)colonial circuits reveal the carnal processes through which our bodies are materialized as queer, through which they are racialized. The theoretical pressure that the visceral conjures as the line between subject and object becomes increasingly obfuscated in the neoliberal, postcolonial, and neocolonial, environmentally apocalyptic world…
The Taste of Class: Abstracts
Everything 'Cept Eat Us: The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body
Everything 'Cept Eat Us":The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The Venus [speaks]: Petits Coeurs Rhum Caramel Pharaon Bouchon Fraise Escargot Lait Enfant de Bruxelles (Rest) Do you think that I look like one of these little chocolate brussels infants? Venus: A Play by Suzan-Lori Parks Toward the end of Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, the embattled Saartje Bartman, also known as the Venus Hottentot, is offere…
Literary Approaches to Food Studies: E ating the O ther
In the syllabus that follows I outline a semester-long class that I taught at Pomona College in the fall of 2004. This course was cross-listed with the English Department and with the Program in Women's Studies, where I am jointly appointed. In the future it will also be listed as an American Studies course. I taught this class during my first semester at Pomona in response to the student interest in food studies that was shown during my job talk…
On the Limits and Promise of New Materialist Philosophy
A response to the forum, “Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities,” edited by Chris A. Eng and Amy K. King. Kyla Wazana Tompkins questions the structures informing claims of newness posed by discussions of “New Materialism.” She discusses the troubling ways in which these discourses, in turning toward the post- or non-human, can ironically reinforce assumptions about a universal human subject and elide considerations of gender, rac…
On the Visceral
In this issue of GLQ, the first of a paired set (20.4 and 21.1), the logics of desire and consumption in (post)colonial circuits reveal the carnal processes through which our bodies are materialized as queer, through which they are racialized. The theoretical pressure that the visceral conjures as the line between subject and object becomes increasingly obfuscated in the neoliberal, postcolonial, and neocolonial, environmentally apocalyptic world…
You Make Me Feel Right Quare
This article uses two ephemeral patent remedy advertisements from the 1890s to examine an aesthetic-affective category I call white sovereign entrepreneurial terror. Linking the period before the rise of progressivism and New Deal economics to the total collapse and evacuation of those structures following the 2016 election, I detail the qualities of this intoxicated, carnivalesque, free-market affect, outline its affiliation with the aggressive …
On the Visceral 2
This introduction discusses major themes in the eight essays that make up the double issue titled On the Visceral. Focusing on the tensions between viscerality and abstraction, and tracing the connections between gut feeling, alimentary affects, and political sentiment, the essays in this issue by Sianne Ngai, Bethany Schneider, Ewa Macura-Nnamdi, and Ramzi Fawaz treat the gut as a center of queer feeling
Literary Approaches to Food Studies: E ating the O ther
In the syllabus that follows I outline a semester-long class that I taught at Pomona College in the fall of 2004. This course was cross-listed with the English Department and with the Program in Women's Studies, where I am jointly appointed. In the future it will also be listed as an American Studies course. I taught this class during my first semester at Pomona in response to the student interest in food studies that was shown during my job talk…
Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot
How deviant materials figure resistance Yeast ferments, gelatin jiggles, drugs and alcohol froth and bubble, and flesh from animals and plants actively molds and rots. These materials morph through multiple states and phases, and their movement is imbued with a liveliness that is suggestive of volition. Deviant Matter examines four aesthetic and material categories— gelatinousness, fermentation, putrefaction, and intoxication—to theorize how the …
Everything 'Cept Eat Us: The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body
Everything 'Cept Eat Us":The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The Venus [speaks]: Petits Coeurs Rhum Caramel Pharaon Bouchon Fraise Escargot Lait Enfant de Bruxelles (Rest) Do you think that I look like one of these little chocolate brussels infants? Venus: A Play by Suzan-Lori Parks Toward the end of Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, the embattled Saartje Bartman, also known as the Venus Hottentot, is offere…
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The first time I encountered Sydney Mintz's writing on sugar, I actually lost my breath. To my mind, Mintz's work is still the single most important and foundational text to take up the history of food in the context of the Americas. It's probably, too, the book that made me believe that writing about the matter we call "food" might ultimately yield a lifetime of rich material to think with. …
Hearty and happy and with a lively, yeasty soul: Feeling right in Louisa May Alcott'sThe Candy Country
This article discusses a short story by Louisa May Alcott in which a young white girl is transported into three parallel worlds: Candy Land, Cake Land and Bread Land. This article argues that Alcott uses these three food nations to both portray the history of US imperial exceptionalism and also to trace out a biopolitical imperative through which whiteness is granted the right to live on, while blackness is instrumentalized in the service of whit…
Literary Approaches to Food Studies: E ating the O ther
In the syllabus that follows I outline a semester-long class that I taught at Pomona College in the fall of 2004. This course was cross-listed with the English Department and with the Program in Women's Studies, where I am jointly appointed. In the future it will also be listed as an American Studies course. I taught this class during my first semester at Pomona in response to the student interest in food studies that was shown during my job talk…
Everything 'Cept Eat Us: The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body
Everything 'Cept Eat Us":The Antebellum Black Body Portrayed as Edible Body Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The Venus [speaks]: Petits Coeurs Rhum Caramel Pharaon Bouchon Fraise Escargot Lait Enfant de Bruxelles (Rest) Do you think that I look like one of these little chocolate brussels infants? Venus: A Play by Suzan-Lori Parks Toward the end of Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, the embattled Saartje Bartman, also known as the Venus Hottentot, is offere…
The Taste of Class: Abstracts
Hearty and happy and with a lively, yeasty soul: Feeling right in Louisa May Alcott'sThe Candy Country
This article discusses a short story by Louisa May Alcott in which a young white girl is transported into three parallel worlds: Candy Land, Cake Land and Bread Land. This article argues that Alcott uses these three food nations to both portray the history of US imperial exceptionalism and also to trace out a biopolitical imperative through which whiteness is granted the right to live on, while blackness is instrumentalized in the service of whit…
On the Visceral
In this issue of GLQ, the first of a paired set (20.4 and 21.1), the logics of desire and consumption in (post)colonial circuits reveal the carnal processes through which our bodies are materialized as queer, through which they are racialized. The theoretical pressure that the visceral conjures as the line between subject and object becomes increasingly obfuscated in the neoliberal, postcolonial, and neocolonial, environmentally apocalyptic world…
Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Queer of Color Critique
On the Visceral 2
This introduction discusses major themes in the eight essays that make up the double issue titled On the Visceral. Focusing on the tensions between viscerality and abstraction, and tracing the connections between gut feeling, alimentary affects, and political sentiment, the essays in this issue by Sianne Ngai, Bethany Schneider, Ewa Macura-Nnamdi, and Ramzi Fawaz treat the gut as a center of queer feeling
On the Limits and Promise of New Materialist Philosophy
A response to the forum, “Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities,” edited by Chris A. Eng and Amy K. King. Kyla Wazana Tompkins questions the structures informing claims of newness posed by discussions of “New Materialism.” She discusses the troubling ways in which these discourses, in turning toward the post- or non-human, can ironically reinforce assumptions about a universal human subject and elide considerations of gender, rac…
You Make Me Feel Right Quare
This article uses two ephemeral patent remedy advertisements from the 1890s to examine an aesthetic-affective category I call white sovereign entrepreneurial terror. Linking the period before the rise of progressivism and New Deal economics to the total collapse and evacuation of those structures following the 2016 election, I detail the qualities of this intoxicated, carnivalesque, free-market affect, outline its affiliation with the aggressive …
Writing Against the Human in the Humanities
Writing Against the Human in the Humanities Kyla Tompkins (bio) The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century. By Kyla Schuller. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 296 pp. $94.95 (cloth). $25.95 (paper). $15.32 (e-book). Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture. By Britt Rusert. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 320 pp. $99.00 (cloth). $32.00 (paper). $17.60 (e-book).…
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy
Sweetness, Capacity, Energy Kyla Wazana Tompkins (bio) The first time I encountered Sydney Mintz's writing on sugar, I actually lost my breath. To my mind, Mintz's work is still the single most important and foundational text to take up the history of food in the context of the Americas. It's probably, too, the book that made me believe that writing about the matter we call "food" might ultimately yield a lifetime of rich material to think with. …
Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot
How deviant materials figure resistance Yeast ferments, gelatin jiggles, drugs and alcohol froth and bubble, and flesh from animals and plants actively molds and rots. These materials morph through multiple states and phases, and their movement is imbued with a liveliness that is suggestive of volition. Deviant Matter examines four aesthetic and material categories— gelatinousness, fermentation, putrefaction, and intoxication—to theorize how the …
Ingestion, race et pouvoir. Pour un renouvellement critique des études de l’alimentation
Cet article propose une relecture féministe et postcoloniale de Totem et Tabou de Freud qui interroge la nature du lien social pensé comme contrat commensal entre frères, fondé sur le repas totémique où les fils dévorent le père et s’interdisent mutuellement la violence. L’analyse met en lumière l’effacement symbolique des mères nourricières et du travail reproductif féminin, forclos du récit mythique de la fondation du social. En articulant phil…
Sociology (9 works) · Art (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (4 works)