MA GNDS 2020
"Hi, I’m Taylor Cenac. I completed my Master of Arts in Gender Studies at Queen’s in September 2020. My research and community work centers how radical loving and caring spaces are fundamental to dreaming toward queer futures. For my MA research, I looked at Black feminist pedagogies using Audre Lorde’s theory of erotic power as a moving metaphysics. I also relied on work by Carole Boyce Davies, M. Jacqui Alexander and NourbeSe Philip to help me articulate the moving desire to find oneself through caring community work. I worked under Dr. Katherine McKittrick to demonstrate how Black women’s loving practices become pedagogies that teach us how to live and grow. I love connecting with people and sharing our dreams for the future, and this need to connect and network with other BIPOC folks has allowed me to grow in unanticipated ways. I recently completed a diploma in social service work at St. Lawrence College. Social service work is about building strong communities of care that seek social justice for those most marginalized among us. I believe youth are central to doing this work because young people dream queer and radical dreams, and this is the vision of community that I seek to cultivate. Kingston was a very new place for me; I am indebted to the faculty, staff, and students at Queen’s and to the young troupes and troupe leaders at Roots and Wings with whom I found community."