Stephanie Sawah

Stephanie Sawah, a PhD. student in Women and Gender Studies with a Collaborative Specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies, investigates queer diasporic Caribbean people and their contemporary performance aesthetics in queer nightlife spaces like JERK, a self-described queer Caribbean rave in Toronto. She examines how performance aesthetics at JERK — defined as how attendees dance, who they dance with, and the music to which they dance — allow these communities to eke out social relations invested in queer pleasure, looking at how those social relations queer ideas of an “authentic” diasporic Caribbean identity. In undertaking this research, she considers how JERK’s description as a “rave” and not a “carnival fête” problematize claims to an “authentic” Caribbean diaspora inasmuch as queerness also recontextualizes those claims. The tentative title of the project is The Raves, Riddims, and Aesthetics of Queer Diasporic Caribbean Nightlife in Toronto.