s3, e3, "boundaries" | Gina Athena Ulysse WRITING HOME

“You don’t really know a boundary until you’ve pushed against it.” – Gina Athena Ulysse

Trouble-making wonder Gina Althena Ulysse gives Kaiama and Tami a glimpse into the boundless whirl of her creative (and) scholarly practices.

Gina Athena Ulysse is an artist-anthropologist and Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An interdisciplinary methodologist, her research questions engage geopolitics, historical representations, and aesthetics in the dailiness of Black diasporic conditions to confront the visceral in the structural. Her work and artistic practice are rooted in what she calls Rasanblaj – a gathering of ideas, people, things, and spirits, not necessarily in that order! She is the author of several books and articles, including; Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post Quake Chronicle (2015), and Because When God is too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD (2017)- a collection of photographs, poetry, and performance texts. It was long-listed for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award and awarded the 2018 Best Poetry Connecticut Center for the Book Award. Gina edited "Caribbean Rasanblaj," a double issue of e-misférica, NYU's Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics journal. Her creative work and non-fiction writing have appeared in American Ethnologist, AnthroNow, Feminist Studies, Interimpoetics, Gastronomica, Journal of Haitian Studies, Liminalities, PoemMemoirStory, Meridians, Souls, Third Text, and Transition Magazine. Her latest publication WoodsWork Rasanblaj is part of her current project an exploration of land-based connections to nature, desires and vertigo. More info: ginaathenaulysse.com