Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe

Bio

Natalie Kouri-Towe/NKT is an Associate Professor of feminism and sexuality at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. Her research has been published in both academic and non-academic venues on topics related to affect theory, solidarity, kinship, queer activism, trigger warnings, gender and sexuality pedagogies, masculinity, and responses to war in the Middle East. 

Her edited collection, Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom, is forthcoming (Fall 2024) with Concordia University Press. Along with Myloe Martel-Perry, she has also published an open access teaching guidebook, Better Practice in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework, available through Concordia Pressbooks. She is currently working on a book manuscript on feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism titled Solidarity at Risk.

Education

Research Interests

Affiliations

Awards and Grants

Current Courses

Book Projects

Solidarity at Risk (in progress) examines the friction of feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism and the attending risks placed on contemporary practices of transnational solidarity through the convergence of global capitalism, human rights discourses, and shifting ideologies of selfhood. I contend that we must reconsider how solidarity in the21st century is formulated in order to effectively understand the relationship between contemporary projects for social transformation and new practices of governance in an era shaped by globalization. The book traces the history of solidarity and its debates in transnational feminist theory and politics to consider how ruptures in social movements emerge temporally and ideologically across the late 20^th and early 21^st century. Turning to debates in feminist activism and social movements, such as the #MeToo movement, the book interrogates how sexuality and subjectivity have emerged as markers of feminist and queer activism and proposes a way forward beyond fragmentation for social movements organizing today.

Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom (forthcoming in Fall 2024 with Concordia University Press) is an edited book featuring leading gender and sexuality scholars from across Canada. The book invites readers across disciplines into the conversations happening within our field's classrooms on topics ranging from foundational learning, to applied learning, tackling racism within our courses, and tackling requests for trigger warnings. 

Graduate Supervision

• gender and sexuality pedagogies;
• gender and sexuality in responses to war in the Middle East;
• queer social movements and activism;
• sexuality and kinship.

• a description of your research project and how your project fits within one of the areas of research focus outlined above;
• a short explanation of what kind of role you'd like me to take on your committee;
  
• the name and contact information of your primary supervisor;
• a timeline of your graduate program.

Refereed Books

Natalie Kouri-Towe (ed). 2024. Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom. Montreal: Concordia University Press.

Open Access version: https://press.library.concordia.ca/projects/reading-the-room

Teaching Guide

Kouri-Towe, Natalie and Myloe Martel-Perry. 2024. Better Practices in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework. Montreal: Concordia University Library Pressbooks.

Refereed Publications

Edited Collections

Mahrouse, Gada and Natalie Kouri-Towe (eds). 2023. “Departures, Encounters, and Arrivals: Feminist Geopolitical Approaches to Studying Human Mobilities and Borders.” Special issue, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 22(4).

Carastathis, Anna, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley (eds). 2018. Feminist Interventions in ‘Crisis’: Intersectionality, Refugees, and Migration. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. 34(1).

Book Chapters

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2022. “Affective Pedagogies, and Pedagogies of Affect: Gender, Solidarity, and the Classroom in the Trigger Warning Debates.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect. Ed. Todd Reeser. London: Routledge.

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. “Queer.” Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle. Eds. Kelly Fritsch, Clare O’Connor, and AK Thompson. AK Press: 335-341. 

Book Reviews

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. Ethical Imperatives in Transnational Solidarity. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 35: 213-216.

Roundtables

Public Writing