Right-wing social movements have made considerable headway in restricting gender and sexual expression in the US. To account for the resiliency and resonance of these campaigns over time, we need to consider the role of emotions. Right-wing movements engineer, circulate, and weaponize emotions through gendered narratives and ritualized performances. To understand these affective repertoires, I present case studies of campaigns against gays/lesbian rights in the 1990s (focusing on my book The Stranger Next Door) and against transgender rights in the 2020s, showing how they convert ordinary unease into public passion and into power.

About the speaker:

Arlene Stein is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. The author or editor of nine books, she received the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities. Her latest book is Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity (Pantheon, 2018). She is also the author of The Stranger Next Door, an ethnography of a Christian conservative campaign against lesbian/gay rights, which explores clashing understandings of religion and sexuality in American culture; it received the Ruth Benedict Book Award. Her book Sex and Sensibility examines generational shifts in lesbian identities. Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Descendants, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness (Oxford, 2014), looks at how children of survivors became narrators of their parents’ stories of genocide. Going Public: A Guide for Social Scientists (J. Daniels, coauthor), is a guidebook for publicly engaged scholars.

📅 Date: Thursday, November 27, 2025

🕑 Time: 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

📍 Venue: Social Sciences Chamber, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Jockey Club Tower

🗣️ Language: English

🔗 Register here: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=103767