Charles McDonald
Charles McDonald is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pace University in New York City. He previously held a Visiting Assistant Professorship at New York University and Postdoctoral Fellowships at Northwestern University and Rice University. He received his PhD in anthropology and historical studies at the New School for Social Research in 2019.
He is currently finishing his first book manuscript, "Return to Sepharad: Citizenship, Conversion, and the Politics of Repair," an experimental ethnography that pursues “return” as an ethnographic object, a political concept, and a mode of self-transformation.
He is also in the research phase of a second ethnographic project, "Queer Nightlife Ecologies: Arts of the Underground in the Era of COVID" which examines how the COVID pandemic has affected queer workers and communities in the underground house and techno music scenes.
McDonald's broader interests include the anthropology of race and religion; citizenship and mobility; kinship and inheritance; subjectivity and ethics; liberalism and multiculturalism; empire and colonialism; queer studies; and experimental ethnography. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Wenner-Gren Foundation, Center for Jewish History, and the Posen Foundation. He has held visiting research positions at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Since 2015, he has been the Managing Director of the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at the New School for Social Research, a residential fellowship that each year brings together an international cohort of sixty junior and senior scholars for a week-long master class with three distinguished thinkers. For more information, see https://www.criticalsocialinquiry.org/.
He is currently finishing his first book manuscript, "Return to Sepharad: Citizenship, Conversion, and the Politics of Repair," an experimental ethnography that pursues “return” as an ethnographic object, a political concept, and a mode of self-transformation.
He is also in the research phase of a second ethnographic project, "Queer Nightlife Ecologies: Arts of the Underground in the Era of COVID" which examines how the COVID pandemic has affected queer workers and communities in the underground house and techno music scenes.
McDonald's broader interests include the anthropology of race and religion; citizenship and mobility; kinship and inheritance; subjectivity and ethics; liberalism and multiculturalism; empire and colonialism; queer studies; and experimental ethnography. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Wenner-Gren Foundation, Center for Jewish History, and the Posen Foundation. He has held visiting research positions at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Since 2015, he has been the Managing Director of the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at the New School for Social Research, a residential fellowship that each year brings together an international cohort of sixty junior and senior scholars for a week-long master class with three distinguished thinkers. For more information, see https://www.criticalsocialinquiry.org/.
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“Exodus and Return: Populism, Migration, and Europe's Jewish Citizenship Laws,” To be presented on panel, ““Legal Matters: Unexpected Affordances of Law, Citizenship, and Im/Mobility,” American Ethnological Society Conference: Bridges/Borders, Austin, TX, March 26-28.
“The Road to Modernity: Anthropology, Sephardic Jews, and Racial Regeneration in Spain,” at American Anthropological Association Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, November 22, 2019. Discussant: Michael Ralph (NYU).
Paper to be presented on panel, “Pragmatics of Inclusion: Ethnographies in an Authoritarian Age,” at American Anthropological Association Meeting, San José, CA, November 14-18, 2018. Organizers: Charles A. McDonald (New School), Sharika Thiranagama (Stanford), and Valentina Ramia (Stanford). Discussant: Thomas Blom Hansen (Stanford).
“Rancor and Nostalgia: An Affective History of the Return to Sepharad,” Paper presented on panel, “Spain’s Recent Law of Sephardic Return: Refractions of Memory in Modernity” at Association for Jewish Studies Meeting, Washington, D.C., December 17-19. Discussant: Michal Rose Friedman (Carnegie Mellon University).
Discussant: Carole McGranahan (University of Colorado-Boulder).
Discussant: Jennifer Cole (Chicago)
“Exodus and Return: Populism, Migration, and Europe's Jewish Citizenship Laws,” To be presented on panel, ““Legal Matters: Unexpected Affordances of Law, Citizenship, and Im/Mobility,” American Ethnological Society Conference: Bridges/Borders, Austin, TX, March 26-28.
“The Road to Modernity: Anthropology, Sephardic Jews, and Racial Regeneration in Spain,” at American Anthropological Association Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, November 22, 2019. Discussant: Michael Ralph (NYU).
Paper to be presented on panel, “Pragmatics of Inclusion: Ethnographies in an Authoritarian Age,” at American Anthropological Association Meeting, San José, CA, November 14-18, 2018. Organizers: Charles A. McDonald (New School), Sharika Thiranagama (Stanford), and Valentina Ramia (Stanford). Discussant: Thomas Blom Hansen (Stanford).
“Rancor and Nostalgia: An Affective History of the Return to Sepharad,” Paper presented on panel, “Spain’s Recent Law of Sephardic Return: Refractions of Memory in Modernity” at Association for Jewish Studies Meeting, Washington, D.C., December 17-19. Discussant: Michal Rose Friedman (Carnegie Mellon University).
Discussant: Carole McGranahan (University of Colorado-Boulder).
Discussant: Jennifer Cole (Chicago)
Over the course of our five sessions together, we will ask how such queer ecologies are produced and sustained, and what flourishes (or doesn’t) within them. How is queer nightlife being reshaped to accommodate yet another virus that thrives on physical contact, that is hardier than HIV, that dwells on surfaces and infuses the air with its reproductive needs? Which spaces and infrastructures are threatening or nourishing in this moment? Which are being rethought, harnessed, or built? How do queers calculate and reason with risk? How has queer nightlife adapted to hostile and indifferent nature/cultures? How does inequality operate in underground nightlife, and how is it being challenged? How are transformations of the self and the social sought and realized? What kinds of intimacy and care are fostered on the dancefloor? What technologies and aesthetics does nightlife afford or demand? Which practices of pleasure and survival might be good to think with now? Our readings are resolutely interdisciplinary, intended to equip us with theories, methods, and vocabularies with which we might construct a history of queer nightlife’s present.
This resolutely interdisciplinary course will draw on scholarship within and across the fields of history, anthropology, political theory, and literary theory. This will be supplemented by various forms of media, including film and music, as well as the unpredictable unfolding of events related to the modern and contemporary Mediterranean in journalism and cultural criticism (for this, we will especially rely on your sense of what is relevant in your weekly presentations and commentaries).
While we cannot, in fifteen weeks or ever, hope to fully do justice to the complexity of the Mediterranean and the peoples and places associated with it, the readings are arranged to offer both breadth and depth. In terms of geography, our itineraries both reflect and transcend what has been humanly possible (points of departure, arrival, and detention include Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, France, Syria, Italy, Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Albania, and Israel/Palestine). Although our focus is on the modern and the contemporary, we will frequently attend to the ways that deeper histories inform and are produced in the present.
Over the course of our five sessions together, we will ask how such queer ecologies are produced and sustained, and what flourishes (or doesn’t) within them. How is queer nightlife being reshaped to accommodate yet another virus that thrives on physical contact, that is hardier than HIV, that dwells on surfaces and infuses the air with its reproductive needs? Which spaces and infrastructures are threatening or nourishing in this moment? Which are being rethought, harnessed, or built? How do queers calculate and reason with risk? How has queer nightlife adapted to hostile and indifferent nature/cultures? How does inequality operate in underground nightlife, and how is it being challenged? How are transformations of the self and the social sought and realized? What kinds of intimacy and care are fostered on the dance floor? What technologies and aesthetics does nightlife afford or demand? Which practices of pleasure and survival might be good to think with now? Our readings are resolutely interdisciplinary, intended to equip us with theories, methods, and vocabularies with which we might construct a history of queer nightlife’s present.