Dr. Craig Jennex

Dr. Craig Jennex is a scholar of performance, queer politics, and feminist theory whose work explores how participation in music can encourage political coalitions across forms of difference—with particular attention to race, gender, sexuality, class, and generation—for minoritarian social movements.

In his current monograph project, Dr. Jennex analyzes the uses of popular music in the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Canada and articulates how musical sound provides aesthetic space for shared affective experiences of belonging and collective agency.

The assistant professor is currently co-writing a book, Stashing the Evidence: An Archive of Queer Kinship in Canada, that will be published by Figure 1 Publishing in May 2020. Written with Nisha Eswaran, the publication explores how historical materials and ephemera can continue to inform contemporary queer politics and brings the vast collection of material housed at the ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) to a broader audience.

In addition, Dr. Jennex has published in TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Popular Music & Society, GUTS: Canadian Feminist Magazine, among others. He is the co-editor, with Susan Fast, of Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions (Routledge, 2019). 

“I’m excited to teach at Ryerson for a number of reasons: the University’s commitment to community-engaged and collaborative research, the brilliant and dedicated faculty and staff I’ll be working alongside, and the creative and dynamic students that chose to study in the Faculty of Arts.”