Chandra Nirmala Frank

Dr. Chandra Frank (she/her/hers) is a feminist researcher who works on the intersections of archives, waterways, gender, sexuality and race. Her curatorial practice explores the politics of care, experimental forms of narration, and the colonial grammar embedded within display and exhibition arrangements. Chandra earned a PhD in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies with an emphasis on queer and feminist studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, including Feminist Review, the Small Axe VLOSA catalogue, The Place is Here publication and the collection Tongues. She recently co-edited a special issue on Archives for Feminist Review. Her curated exhibitions include Re(as)sisting Narratives (Amsterdam/Cape Town), Fugitive Desires (London), and Proclamation 73 (Durban) (co-curated with Zara Julius). Chandra curated the 2016 Archives Matter Conference at the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths. She is on the international editorial board of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. In addition, she is the Project Manager of the Experiment Program in International Living, a summer program for US students focused on LGBTQ+ Rights and Advocacy in Amsterdam: https://www.experiment.org/experiment_blog/program-spotlight-the-netherlands-dutch-culture-and-lgbtq-rights/.
Chandra’s dissertation and book project looks at the everyday experiences of the transnational feminist and queer Black, Migrant and Refugee Movement in the Netherlands during the 1980s. Using an innovative methodology based on Dutch colonial water infrastructures, she looks at how water functions as a form of domination, border and control and how, at the same time, it offers a theoretical and methodological framework to look at queer diasporic subjectivities. She frequently is invited to deliver lectures and keynotes at international academic and art institutions. Chandra has taught at Goldsmiths, School for International Training, and California State University Los Angeles. Her areas of teaching include queer and feminist theory, popular culture, visual cultures and critical race studies. Currently, Chandra is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
In Fall 2020, Chandra is teaching COMM 4040: Cultural Studies, cross-listed with WGS 4001: Special Topics: Gender, Sexuality, and Visual Cultures. In Spring 2021, Dr. Frank is teaching WGS 4029/7029: Gender, Sexuality and Culture, with an emphasis on visual cultures. For further information, you can reach Dr. Frank at frankc6@ucmail.uc.edu.