04/14/2026
Behind Our Backs: Feminized Poetry and Capitalist Abstraction
Wed., April 15th, 4pm – Campus Center 03-3540
The CHCS welcomes Dr. Amy De'Ath, who will be speaking about her new book Behind Our Backs: Feminized Poetry and Capitalist Abstraction. In this daring study, Dr. De'Ath develops a new type of feminist literary criticism attuned to the way our lives are shaped by capital's impersonal compulsions – by what happens "behind our backs." Through close readings of works by Kay Gabriel, Bernadette Mayer, Bhanu Kapil and others, Behind Our Backs explains how capital’s gendering inversions are felt and critiqued in the poetic experiments of trans, q***r, Indigenous, and diasporic writing.
Dr. De'Ath is Assistant Professor of English at Tufts University and a poet. She has published widely on poetry, gender, and social reproduction. She is also the author of several poetry collections, most recently Not A Force of Nature (Futurepoem, 2024), which was listed as one of Artforum’s Best of 2025 Books. She is also the editor of “Total Sexual Difference,” a dossier forthcoming from Mediations journal in Spring 2026. She lives in Boston, on the unceded territories of the Massachusee and the Mashpee Wôpanâak First Peoples.
Light refreshments will be served.
