Research
My research considers how re-centering relationality may help us to theorize intimate platonic relationalities as alternative political alliances, or other ways to resist white coloniality to imagine otherwise. My expertise focuses on asexual, aromantic, and platonic intimacies within queer Asian North American lifeways, examining how these forms of connection challenge normative structures and open possibilities for collective liberation.
Publications
“Pandemic Asexuality, or Compulsory Sexuality in Risky Times.”
Kenney, Theresa N. “Pandemic Asexuality, or Compulsory Sexuality in Risky Times.” In Little Deaths: Politics and Psychoanalysis in the Age of Pandemics, edited by Ricky Varghese, University of Regina Press, 2025. Forthcoming.
“‘Networked Togetherness, I Guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯’: Subverting the Academic Zoom Chat through the Subcultural Collective”
Kenney, Theresa N. and Alexis-Carlota Cochrane,“’Networked Togetherness, I Guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯’: Subverting the Academic Zoom Chat through the Subcultural Collective.” In “You’re Muted” Performance, Precarity, and the Logic of Zoom, edited by Mark Nunes and Cassandra Ozog, Bloomsbury, dx.doi.org/10.5040/9798765108260.0017.
“#PlatonicIntimacy: Asian North American Asexualities and Their Fairytales.”
Kenney, Theresa N. “#PlatonicIntimacy: Asian North American Asexualities and Their Fairytales.” In Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, Revised and Expanded Ten-Year Anniversary Edition, edited by KJ Cerankowski and Megan Milks, Routledge, 2024, doi:10.4324/9781003178798-26.
“Constellations of Community, Care, and Knowledge: A Collection of Vignettes from Pandemic Times.”
Kenney, Theresa N., Emily Goodwin, Alexis-Carlota Cochrane, Linzey Corridon, Maddie Brockbank, and Sarah Paust. “Constellations of Community, Care, and Knowledge: A Collection of Vignettes from Pandemic Times.” Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH), vol. 3, no. 4, doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.760119d3.
“Ingat Ka Ha?”
Kenney, Theresa N. “Ingat Ka Ha?” in E-Zine 3: Translate Me Not: New Filipin/x Writing and Art, decomp Journal, no. 3, UBC, 2021, decompjournal.com/t-kenney-ingat
“Thinking Asexually: Sapin-Sapin, Asexual Assemblages, and the Queer Possibilities of Platonic Relationalities.”
Kenney, Theresa N. “Thinking Asexually: Sapin-Sapin, Asexual Assemblages, and the Queer Possibilities of Platonic Relationalities.” Feminist Formations, vol. 32 no. 3, 2020, p. 1-23. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ff.2020.0038.
Public Scholarship
“RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant, Maddy Morphosis, sparks conversations about cishet inclusion and queer discomfort.”
“Jamie Chai Yun Liew in conversation with Theresa N. Kenney at Hamilton Public Library”
“Episode 2: Not Having It” for CBC Gem
Thesis Project
My dissertation, Queerly Platonic: Constellating an Asian North American Critique of Compulsory Sexuality, examines twenty-first-century Asian North American literary, visual, and digital cultures to trace platonic intimacies within queer Asian North American relational practices. Across four chapters, I offer a queer Asian North American critique of compulsory sexuality, which asexuality studies identifies as a normative logic, a motive for alliances, and a tool of violence. I illustrate the difficult and challenging yet generative and meaningful ways the queerly platonic offers us a reading strategy, a structure of feeling, a queer archive, and a basis for solidarity infrastructures within inter-Asian (diasporic) organizing, but also within Asian, Brown, Black, and Indigenous collective liberation movements.
Ongoing Projects
Queerly Platonic: a book-length project aimed to extend my dissertation to consider a range of poetics, sonics, visuals, affects, and embodied practices of the queerly platonic.
Sour Asian Diasporas: a three-pronged research project focused on employing “gastropoetics” (Roy 2002) as a framework to examine the intersections of food, eating, and queer diasporic histories, archives, and lifeways.
THERESA N. KENNEY 