Feels Right

Kemi Adeyemi is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington and coeditor of Queer Nightlife.

• Preface  ixAcknowledgments  xiiiIntroduction  11. Slo ‘Mo and the Pace of Black Queer Life  392. Where’s the Joy in Accountability? Black Joy at Its Limits  623. Ordinary E N E R G Y  96Conclusion: An Oral History of the Future of Burnout  120Notes  143Bibliography  159Index  171

“Adeyemi’s rich ethnographic observations on Black queer women’s parties in Chicago demonstrate why the dance floor is much more than just a utopian promise of happiness within a hostile socio-political environment. . . . Through dancing and choreography, queerness is not only performed but also learned and experienced by people who may not have encountered it before.” - Yener Bayramoglu (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "What is innovative about Adeyemi’s text ... is that she carves out a scholarly field that reflects her interest in queer nightlife in the most expansive definition of the phrase. ... Feels Right is a political project that aims to drive many Black queer women to return to nightlife even if their pleasure is contested on the dance floor and in the city."  - Marietta Kosma (European Journal of American Culture) “This book will be invaluable to anyone working in feminist studies, queer studies, performance studies, Black studies, and Black geographies.” - Naz Oktay (Lateral) "Scholars interested in topics of geography and space making, queer and Black politics, and queer theory will find Feels Right particularly appealing. . . . Throughout Feels Right, Adeyemi presents essential questions about queer nightlife, neoliberal politics, ordinary affects, mobility throughout city spaces (and academia), and experiences of burnout within radical politics and research." - Jordan C. Grasso (GLQ) "By refusing the primacy of the explanatory and explicit event in academic writing, Adeyemi masterfully uses the structure of “feeling right” in Feels Right in Chicago to situate the forms of affect and politics that shape Black queer life at the level of the body and in social space." - Brittnay L. Proctor (Theatre Journal) "Feels Right is an invigorating addition to the growing scholarship elucidating the labor Black queer women perform to sustain and create Black communities. It inserts Black queer women into the scholarship on queer nightlife that largely focuses on white queer men. As a dance studies text, it exemplifies how to dance alongside and do ethnography with care and respect for the people who invite us into their communities. I am thoroughly struck by how Adeyemi rigorously operationalizes the theories she creates to describe the strategies Black queer women deploy to party and navigate within the trappings of neoliberalism throughout Chicago." - Raquel Monroe (Dance Research Journal)