Peace And Love El Henson

Lecturer and Black Studies Collaboratory Postdoctoral Fellow

Contact:
E: peaceelhenson@berkeley.edu

Office hours:
654 Social Sciences Building

Peace And Love El Henson is a black feminist urban ethnographer and critical porn studies analyst whose research and teaching lies at the intersection of Black Studies and Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies. She primarily focuses on black queer femmes, state violence, pornography, and ethnography. Peace And Love’s research agenda flows in two streams. The first uses black femmes’ theatrical performances from online interracial pornography to read real-life state policing encounters and vice versa. This research aims to denude the unconscious racialized pornographic BDSM (Bondage and Discipline/Domination and Submission/Sadism and Masochism/Sadomasochism) structured into interracial relations across sites of chattel slavery, professional pornography, public schools, universities, neighborhoods, and beyond. The second stream offers ethnographic case studies on black femmes who use erotic performance as a mode of survival, artistry, and pleasure amid genocide of low-income black neighborhoods in Oakland, CA. Broadly, both streams of research illuminate how these femmes employ erotic mastery and discipline to navigate, negotiate, and rattle the racialized pornographic economy of antiblack policing, captivity, and ultimate genocide. These projects are deeply invested in centering the pain, pleasure and power black queer femmes may find in grappling with this vexed economy, its disciplinary structures, and its symbolic or literal materializations across various settings. Peace And Love received a B.A. in African American Studies and a minor in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She also earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Fun fact: Amidst all the fray, Peace And Love is an intergalactic thinker, writer, and creative who enjoys mastering visual arts, music, poetry and performance.