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Our series Radical Thinkers places radical academics directly in conversation with trailblazing writers, poets, and artists, creating and nurturing two-way dialogues that will interrogate some of the most pressing issues facing Asian and Asian diasporic communities today. Featuring an interdisciplinary lineup of scholars and creatives, these unexpected pairings will center revolutionary discourse and scholarship in an effort to demystify intellectual debates, collapse the divide between the ‘ivory tower’ and the public sphere, and ultimately envision a radical new future.

The next installment of this series will feature author, poet, and translator Rajiv Mohabir in conversation with scholar Kadji Amin on their creative and scholarly practices.

This event will be streamed live on the Asian American Writers’ Workshop YouTube page.

Kadji Amin is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. He is the recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in “Sex” from the University of Pennsylvania and a Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship from Stony Brook University. Amin’s research focuses on the disorienting effects of the queer and transgender past on politicized fields of scholarship. His book, Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History (Duke 2017) won an Honorable Mention for best book in LGBT studies form the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association. He is currently at work on a second book project, tentatively titled “Trans Inheritances,” that critically interrogates the notion of an autonomous gender identity while tethering trans to a range of histories that decenter selfhood and problematize autonomy. He is the coeditor, with Amber Jamilla Musser and Roy Pérez, of a special issue of ASAP/Journal on “Queer Form.” Dr. Amin serves on the Editorial Board for TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and is the Humanities Review Editor for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.

Rajiv Mohabir is the author of Cutlish (2021 Four Way Books, forthcoming), The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press 2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize; Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention 2018) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books 2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (Kaya Press 2019) which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. His memoir received the 2019 Reckless Books’ New Immigrant Writing Prize and is forthcoming 2021. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College, translations editor at Waxwing Journal and poetry editor of Asian American Literary Review.