CJ Gomolka

CJ Gomolka’s main area of research and publication is sexuality and gender in 21st century French and Francophone Cultural Studies. His first book, Queer Kinships: Resisting Erasure, Queering Relation in Contemporary France (Liverpool University Press, 2026), examines how queer individuals and communities in France resist erasure and reimagine belonging through inventive practices of kinship production. Through analyses of conferences, podcasts, digital activism, and the Collages féminicides movement, I introduce the concepts of nomenclatural, techno, and interpellative kinships as frameworks for understanding new forms of affiliation that emerge under conditions of censorship, discrimination, violence, and death. The book demonstrates how queers forge bonds across difference in physical and digital spaces that challenge Republican assimilationist models while also resisting Anglo-American universalizing notions of queer identity. Additionally, it situates these practices within France's longer histories of colonialism, universalism, and state-managed erasure. His second book project, If Feminism Fails: Gender-Critical Discourse in Contemporary France (in progress), turns to the rise of gender-critical discourse within France and its consequences for trans-inclusive feminist politics. Drawing on close readings of media, activist rhetoric, pseudo-scientific treatises, and public controversy, the project examines how gender-critical discourse has reshaped public debates over gender, feminism, and citizenship in France, with significant consequences for trans rights, feminist coalition-building, and the future of inclusive democratic politics.

• Ph.D., Modern French Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2014.
• M.A., French Literature, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2008.
• B.A., French Literature, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2004.
• B.M., Piano Performance, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2004.

• French cultural studies
• queer studies
• gender studies
• feminisms

Publications since 2019
Solo-Authored Monographs

• Queer Kinships: Resisting Erasure, Queering Relation in Contemporary France. Liverpool UP, 2026.
• If Feminism Fails: Gender-Critical Discourse in Contemporary France. In Progress.

Peer-Reviewed Articles/Chapters

• “The Shape of Belonging: Literature, Queer Kinship, and the Limits of the Francosphere.” Routledge Companion to Literatures of the Francosphere, edited by Julia Frengs and Jennifer Boum Make, Routledge, forthcoming 2029.
• “Do You Hear What I Hear: Toward an Acoustics of Gender-Critical Discourse in Contemporary French Feminism.” Sites, forthcoming 2027.
• “The Political Aesthetics of Precarity: Trans-Inclusive Feminism and the Collages Féminicides Movement.” Women in French, special issue, vol. 11, Fall 2025, pp. 111–24.
• “State of Sexual Exception: SARS-CoV-2, HIV/AIDS, and Sexual Citizenship in Pandemic Times.” HIV/AIDS in French Culture: Raw Matters, Lexington Books, 2022, pp. 131–54.
• “The Queer Aesthetics of la PrEP: Iconography, the Pharmacopornographic Regime, and (Safe) Sex in the French Neoliberal Marketplace.” Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 46, no. 2, 2021, pp. 213–31.
• “Queer (Af)filiations: Houria Bouteldja and Decolonial Feminism.” French Cultural Studies, vol. 31, no. 4, 2020, pp. 304–17.
• “(Don’t) Call Me Queer: Transpédégouine, the Global Gay, and the Logics of Western Liberty.” Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 44, no. 4, 2019, pp. 417–43.

Contributions to Edited Volumes

• “Queer Kinship: Toward a Queer Francophone Literary Common(ing)s.” The Cambridge History of Queer Literature in French, edited by Todd Reeser, Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2028.
• “Queer Pedagogy for a Queer(er) Classroom.” Teaching Diversity and Inclusion: Examples from a French-Speaking Classroom, edited by E. Nicole Meyer and Eilene Hoft-March, Routledge, 2021, pp. 1–11."

Conference presentations since 2019

• “Toward an Acoustics of Gender-Critical Discourse in Contemporary French Feminism.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Colloquium, Mar. 2026.
• “Resisting Trans.” RMMLA, Oct. 2025.
• “From #Transmania to #RiposteTrans: Navigating Digital Protest and Gender Justice in the Fight for
• Trans-Inclusive Notions of Republican Citizenship.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Colloquium, Mar. 2025.
• “Silencing Sasha: Listening through the Noise in Sébastien Lifshitz’s Petite fille.” RMMLA, Oct. 2024.
• “The Lives that Bind Us: Creating Kin through Transfeminist Collage.” Women in French International Conference, Mar. 2024.
• “Digital Dystopia or Linguistic Liberation: French Social Media and Queer Denominational World-Making.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Colloquium, Feb. 2024.
• “Calling (Us) Out: Naming an Ethics of Proximity Between Universalism and Communitarianism in the Collages Féminicides Paris Movement.” RMMLA, Oct. 2023.
• “(In)Fertile Terrain? Queer Technokinships, Biotech Activism, and Naming Violence through Collages Féminicides Paris.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Colloquium, Apr. 2023.
• “Biotech Bodies: Living Without Designation.” RMMLA, Oct. 2022.
• “State of Sexual Exception: SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and Sexual Citizenship in Pandemic Times.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium, Mar. 2022.
• “#interdictionde(se)nommer: Twitter France, Empowering Identities, and the Queer Politics of Discursive Disenfranchisement.” MLA (virtual), Jan. 2022.
• “Living Bodies: Transfeminism, Paul B. Preciado and the Queer Politics of (Un)Naming.” RMMLA, Oct. 2021.
• “Decentering French Curriculum, Programming, and Publishing: Queer Thinking as the New Normal and the New Normative.” Roundtable participant. 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium (virtual), Mar. 2021.
• “Rethinking the Rapports Between Earth, Body, and Memory.” Roundtable participant. 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium (virtual), Mar. 2021.
• “Toward a Queer(er) French Classroom.” SAMLA (virtual), Oct. 2020.
• “Queer (Af)filiations: Houria Bouteldja and Decolonial Feminism.” RMMLA, Oct. 2019.
• “Illogical Sexualities – Queer Indigènes and the Progressive Logics of the ‘Global Gay.’” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium, Mar. 2019."