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...to hear both you and cristina rave about how wonderful suzan-lori parks' presentation was, while simultaneously wondering what exactly it had to do w/ sex and gender....

i guess, to me, parks is one of those interactionists (to appropriate a category kristin gave us y'day for thinking about the ways in which two identities--or identity studies--might intersect): parks deals w/ questions of gender and race and ability, all tumbled up together, w/out policing the boundaries. i first discovered her via her two contemporary versions of Nathanial Hawthorne's 19th century novel The Scarlet Letter: a paired set of plays called In the Blood and Fucking A, in which the "marked" woman is a welfare mom who is ostracized because she keeps on having kids. the plays take an old Puritanical tale and make it vividly (too vividly, for most of my students) relevant, in part by insisting on the pressure that racial roles put on gender roles, gender roles put on (dis)abled ones, etc. etc. etc.