Nana Adusei-Poku is a visiting doctoral student at the Gender Institute for Michaelmas and Lent Term 2010/11. She holds a master's degree in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College London with a dissertation project on the Visual Representation of Black Feminity on the example of Grace Jones called "Devil Inside?" Since 2009 she is a scholarship holder from the DFG funded PhD Programme "Gender as a Category of Knowledge" at the Humboldt University Berlin. Her research interests are located in the realm of Visual Cultures, Cultural Studies and Critical Race Theory.
She examines in her PhD project "Conditions of Existence" the realm of the visual based on the hypothesis that race and gender are intrinsically tied to each other and fixed in our perception as well as representation. Her trans-disciplinary approach analyses ideas of race and gender in Visual Cultures from a philosophical cultural studies perspective and examines subversions through visual representations by emerging Black artists and their aesthetic interventions. The first research emphasis is located in the conceptualization of the gaze and its philosophical implications. By means, she is in search for a Gaze and Visuals, which understand as well as communicate a moment that can be placed as Post-Identity. Or, is it impossible to visualise/depict the reality of a Black individual without the necessity to work within the realm of (sexual-) politics, fixity and a doctrine imperative? She consequently asks in her second research emphasis for conceptual boundaries of a subversive representation? If arts and aesthetics are able to offer the cultural space for subversive impulses (Gilroy) how is the notion of the Post to be understood and what kind of positive outcomes can be created also in curatorial form for present subject positions?
NanaAduseiPoku@web.de|
N.A.Adusei-Poku@lse.ac.uk|
Publications
Chapters in books
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Nana Adusei-Poku. »White Issues, Italian Vogue's ›all black‹ issue and the visual imaginary« in Perspektive - Medium - Macht. Zur kulturellen Codierung neuzeitlicher Geschlechterdispositionen. Ed. Ann-Krsitin Düber u. Falko Schnicke. Würzburg 2010.
Articles
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Nana Adusei-Poku. »Pop-Porn, Feminismus im Käfig?« in Style and the Family Tunes. Berlin Spread Publishing 2010. 70-79
Editorial Work
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Forth Coming: Reader to the Conference: The Flexible Sex. Gender, Happiness and Crisis in the Global Economy Berlin, October 28th – 30th, 2010 by the Federal Agency for Civic Education Germany [approx. 80 Pages]
Reviews
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»Moritz Ege. Schwarz werden, ›Afroamerikanophilie‹ in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren. Bielefeld Transcript 2007 «. in Journal für Jugendkulturen Nr. 13. Berlin 2008