Publication date: Nov 4, 2025 🎉

"Laughter […] lingers in the racialized, sexualized, and gendered spaces of abjection that drive the subject to the edges of meaning" — from our latest issue, read Iván A. Ramos's "Breaking Down, Breaking Together" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

“What is a feminist theory of exhaustion?…We are exhausted from feminism but decidedly not taking a ‘break’ from its demands. We are doing it tired.” Incredible essay by Jennifer C. Nash & Samantha Pinto in @differences.bsky.social. Free to read: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"Kim’s work does not allow us to inhabit the virtual spaces we see before us. Instead, her rendering of space and the various ghosts that haunt those spaces seem to take possession of our bodies" — read Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli's "Spectral Forensics" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

The Weekly Read is "On Exhaustion: Toward a Post-Care Feminism" by Samantha Pinto and Jennifer C. Nash. The article was published in Dossier: Limits of Legibility—Questions of Blackness and Sexuality, a special issue of @differences.bsky.social (36:1). Read the article for free: buff.ly/XDrQAhF

We are delighted to welcome two new Center staff. Scott Jackshaw joins differences as Managing Editor; Erin Perfect joins the archives team as Processing Archivist. Read about Scott : pembroke.brown.edu/news/2025-07... Read about Erin: pembroke.brown.edu/news/2025-05... @differences.bsky.social

To read: this interview of Elizabeth Weed and Elizabeth A. Wilson, differences editors, by Eugenia Zuroski, president of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. www.celj.org/featured-jou.... differences is CELJ's newest featured journal. @differences.bsky.social‬ ‪@elizwilsonemory.bsky.social‬

"Dossier: Limits of Legibility—Questions of Blackness and Sexuality," a special issue of @differences.bsky.social (36:1), is now available! View the TOC and read "Ce n’est pas ça: Blackness, Sex, and the Set of Illegibles" by Lee Edelman, freely available through 9/5: buff.ly/FhdR7Ft

New piece written with my most precious and treasured thinking partner, @samanthapinto.bsky.social. Thinking together about exhaustion, fatigue, and being feminist and bone tired.

differences 36.1 is out now — featuring a dossier of essays from Selamawit D. Terrefe, David Marriott, and Lee Edelman, alongside writing from Jennifer C. Nash, Samantha Pinto, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, Matthew Helm, and Iván A. Ramos: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

We thought we knew tired when we wrote this. Exhausted with @jennifercnash.bsky.social @differences.bsky.social doi.org/10.1215/1040...

Thanks to the panelists and moderator for the second differences colloquium: The Climate of Critique. Video coming soon! @jttremblay.bsky.social @elizwilsonemory.bsky.social

join us in Providence on March 7th for Limits of Legibility: The Climate of Critique — a colloquium featuring Lynne Huffer, Axelle Karera, Dixa Ramírez D’Oleo, and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, moderated by Elizabeth A. Wilson: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...

Join us for The Climate of Critique in two weeks feat. Lynne Huffer, Axelle Karera, Dixa Ramírez D’Oleo, and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, moderated by Elizabeth A. Wilson.

"It was difficult to write Giving an Account of Oneself, since I included very little autobiographical detail" — from our latest issue, read Judith Butler's "Giving an Account: When, Where, for Whom, and Why?" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"If queer theory has struggled to think of narrative in these terms, it is perhaps because we have defined narrative as one line driven toward closure" — read @teaganbradway.bsky.social's "Renarratable Bonds: Queer Relationality in the Scene of Redress" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

Really looking forward to this event. See you there!

join us in Providence on March 7th for Limits of Legibility: The Climate of Critique — a colloquium featuring Lynne Huffer, Axelle Karera, Dixa Ramírez D’Oleo, and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, moderated by Elizabeth A. Wilson: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...

The #WeeklyRead is “On Receiving Accounts from Others” by Sara Ahmed. The article appears in "Unaccountably Queer", a special issue of @differences.bsky.social (35:3) edited by Teagan Bradway Read this article for free through March 31, 2025:

"Another way of cohabitating and coming to justice out of historical conflicts will remain elusive so long as we turn to gender to change the world" — from our latest issue, read Jules Gill-Peterson's "Who Is the Subject of Gender Self-determination?" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

Some things I enjoyed writing—in some cases, a while ago—that were published in 2024 (or just before). (1) In December: "Basically the Same: Todd Haynes's May December," about repetition-compulsion and the “romance of intractability," on @differences.bsky.social's online forum.

This special issue is filled with extraordinary essays and, in response to them, Butler explores more autobiographical territory than is their norm. Brilliantly edited by @teaganbradway.bsky.social. You can read my essay here and I wholeheartedly recommend the entire issue.

It's here!!! I'm extremely excited to share “Unaccountably Queer,” the special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies that I edited in honor of Judith Butler’s groundbreaking “Giving an Account of Oneself." read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

differences 35.3 is out now! — edited by @teaganbradway.bsky.social, "Unaccountably Queer" features essays from Gila Ashtor, Cassius Adair, Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Jules Gill-Peterson, and more: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"To hold, to feel, to touch Black women’s sexualities, we must imagine and reimagine the event horizon of the ship’s hold and, for a moment, speculate" — read Kimberly Bain's "HOLD : SPACE" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"What openings does spacetime provide that the maritime, perhaps, cannot as readily support?" — from our latest issue, read Petal Samuel's "Black Gravity, or a Hidden History of Empire" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

After 35 years of publication, we’re updating our advisory board! The scholars gathered here share the journal’s commitment to critical thinking about difference, and we are thrilled to have their support. Take a look at the new masthead here: differencesjournal.org/about

"Black scientists have been here the whole time" — read @chanda.bsky.social's "The Cosmos Is a Black Aesthetic" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"What does it mean to labor in a field (figuratively and literally) under constant and reoccurring erasure?" — from our latest issue, read Sharon P. Holland's "Black (W)holes: A Problem for Feminist Thought" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

differences 35.2 is out now! — edited by Shoniqua Roach, "Inside the Black (W)hole" features essays from Moya Bailey, Sharon P. Holland, Amber Jamilla Musser, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and more: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"'Black Africa,' as the perimeter of the possible, is that over and against which the metamorphic capacity of the Orient is produced" — read Joshua Falek's "'Everything I Wanted Not to Be': The Specter of Africa in the Trans Travel Narrative" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"I am in favor of faltering. We offer stories, take them back, revise them, start over, or continue in ways that periodically suffer interruption or trail off" — read Teagan Bradway (@teaganbradway.bsky.social)'s conversation with Judith Butler on our forum: differencesjournal.org/writing/quee...

"To rage to the point of imagining or exacting revenge is to encounter the breaking point between respectability and fury" — read Anna M. Moncada Storti (@storti.bsky.social)'s "Racist Intimacies; or, The Femme Alter Ego and Her Retribution" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"This is the secret power of the ignored proton of interest: its ability to direct us one way and simultaneously take us elsewhere" — read Candace Moore's "Piqued: Compounded Interest and the Intersubjective Scene" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"In the end, I see Europa '51 as thinking through its own way of being limited. This has always been the meaning of critique" — from our latest issue, read Ramsey McGlazer's "Rossellini beyond Repair" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"We will not listen to the pastoral lesson. We will not remain at ecocriticism’s educative impasse" — read @stevenswarbrick.bsky.social and @jttremblay.bsky.social's "Ecocriticism against The Wall" on our online forum: differencesjournal.org/writing/ecoc...

An excerpt from NEGATIVE LIFE, out August 15, is up on the @differences.bsky.social website! Many thanks to @scottjackshaw.bsky.social and the journal editors. #envhum #film

An excerpt from NEGATIVE LIFE's intro is now live! Many thanks to @scottjackshaw.bsky.social and the @differences.bsky.social editors. The full polemic, co-written with @stevenswarbrick.bsky.social, is out 8/15 from @nupress.bsky.social.

"We will not listen to the pastoral lesson. We will not remain at ecocriticism’s educative impasse" — read @stevenswarbrick.bsky.social and @jttremblay.bsky.social's "Ecocriticism against The Wall" on our online forum: differencesjournal.org/writing/ecoc...

differences 35.1 is out now! — featuring essays from Ramsey McGlazer, Joseph Darda, Candace Moore, Anna M. Storti (@storti.bsky.social), Joshua Falek (@cathexsis.bsky.social), and dee (dee) c. ardan: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

We are deeply sad to learn of the death of Elizabeth Freeman, author or editor of many books & journal issues with us, and former editor of GLQ. ow.ly/QStZ50S793w

now available online: a recording of "Limits of Legibility: Questions of Blackness and Sexuality," a colloquium featuring Joan Copjec, Lee Edelman, David Marriott, and Selamawit D. Terrefe, moderated by Elizabeth Wilson — watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn4...

"Race and slavery cannot be easily integrated into Marx’s understanding of capitalism without his method, and its undergirding metaphysics, undergoing a significant shift" — read @s-msorentino.bsky.social's "With What Must Slavery Begin?" on our online forum: differencesjournal.org/writing/with...

congrats to Dionte Harris, winner of the GLQ/MLA's "Crompton-Noll Prize for Best LGBTQ Studies Article" for "The Smear: Vibrational Flesh and the Calculus of Black Queer Becoming in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight" — read it here, free for three months: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"The subject of the unconscious is a subject that is out of language, and this does not change after a psychoanalysis" — read Tracy McNulty's "Inviting Catastrophe: The Welcoming of the Act in Psychoanalysis" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

join us in Providence on March 15th for Limits of Legibility: Questions of Blackness and Sexuality — a colloquium featuring Joan Copjec, Lee Edelman, David Marriott, and Selamawit D. Terrefe, moderated by Elizabeth Wilson: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...

i saw this panel at MLA & it was gorgeous — so moving & rigorous & smart, a model of what it means to think with another person across time and even generations. beautiful that this is in the world now

new to our online forum: "Thinking Sex with Jonathan Goldberg," a dossier edited by @elizwilsonemory.bsky.social and Madhavi Menon, featuring essays from Menon, Marcie Frank, Richard Rambuss, @zachsamalin.bsky.social, and Bethany Schneider — read it here: www.differencesjournal.org/writing/jona...

"What can be said of psychoanalysis, of its form of existence, of what it has led to, and of the crossroads it faces? First and foremost, it can be said that psychoanalysis has managed to survive" — read Gustavo Dessal's "The Social Bond Adrift" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"If Freud was correct and the event is not past, but an active, present force, then black nihilism names this present force, the repetition of severing and disrupting" — read Calvin Warren's "Black Transmission: Toward a Hieroglyph-Analysis" here: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...