The Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick is thrilled to host Made to Measure, a two-day graduate conference gathered around the theme of measurement - as it is deployed with and against colonial, imperial, and capitalist desires, in regimes of order and valuation always haunted by their excesses. Across the disciplines of history, English, comparative literature, geography, American studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, ethnic studies, and more, we seek to interrogate the world-making politics of abstraction and accounting as they iterate across the clinic, the archive, the cultural artifact, and land, bodies, and labor. Made to Measure will convene several panels featuring the work of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as a keynote address and hands-on crafting workshop.
Keynote: "The Jungle and the Garden"
Presented Dr. Manu Karuka (American Studies, Barnard College). See event flyer here.
Thursday, April 2, 2026 at 5 pm
Workshop: "DataCraft, Fiber Visualization, and Black Feminist Geometrics"
Hosted by Dr. Brittney Cooper (Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
Friday, April 3, 2026 at 1:30 pm
Please see the full program below. Breakfast and lunch provided. RSVP to attend at bit.ly/MadeToRegister.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Thursday, Apr 2, 2026
9:00 - 9:30 AM | Breakfast
9:30 - 9:40 AM | Opening Remarks by Dean Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui
9:40 - 11:05 AM | Keeping Time: Meter and Measure in Queer Temporalities
Helena Hazel (East Asian Studies, New York University)
Il Mare (2000): An Architecture of Flowing Time, Love, and Precarity
Francisco Cantero Soriano (Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University)
At the Threshold of Death: Exile, Incarceration, and Lyric Measure
Colton Barton (English, Rutgers University)
Accumulations: Encountering History with Samuel R. Delany and Walter Benjamin
Trisha Gupta (English, New York University)
Measured Voices, Calculated Ruptures: Queer Vocality and Sonic Discipline in Vernon Lee's "Ariadne in Mantua"
Moderated by Dana Luciano (English and WGSS, Rutgers University)
11:15 - 12:40 PM | Counting on Form: The Racial Vertigo of Quantity/Quality
Roni Lakin (Comparative Literature, Rutgers University)
With Steady Hands: Gilman and Bittencourt’s (Un)sentimental Feminist Eugenics
Jein Kim (English, Rutgers University)
Log Book and Love Letters: Juxtaposition, Equivalence, and Slavery as Metaphor in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River
Yosan Alemu (Africana Studies, Brown University)
“Was my freedom not given to me to build the world of you, man?”: On Blackness, Form, and Flesh
Andrew Schlager (English, Princeton University)
Spelling Lessons: Blackness, Reform, & Pedagogical Voice
Moderated by Michelle Stephens (English, Rutgers University)
Lunch | 12:40 - 1:40 PM
1:50 - 3:15 PM | Null, Value: Land, Labor, and the Politics of Extraction
Xingyan Guo (Anthropology, Columbia University)
Hollowing the Mountain Into the Cloud: The Stratification of State-Capitalistic Coloniality in Guizhou, China
Javiera Madrid-Salazar (Geography, Rutgers University)
From 'Empty' to ‘Unruly' Lands: Geology, Subsoil Politics, and the (Re)making of Large-Scale Mining in Chile
Jing Hao Liong (Anthropology, Duke University)
(In)Commensurable Ratios: Quantifying Workers in Malaysia's Migrant Labor Regime
Aman Roy (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
Forming the Informal: Baroque Land in Central India
Moderated by Alex Liebman
3:25 - 4:50 PM | Documenting the Wake: Performances Of and Against Archival Orders
Luvuyo Nyawose (Modern Culture and Media & History of Art and Architecture, Brown University)
Chronologies of Capture: Saartjie Baartman and the Politics of Mediated Time
Radhika Marwaha (Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego)
Monstrous Measurements: Energy, Matter, and Excess in the Lifeworlds of Khaleeji Pravasis
Dalia Griñan (History, Rutgers University)
“An anomalous and undefined state”: Rafaela/Encarnación, Perfecta Garcia, and Identities of Unfreedom in Nineteenth-Century Cuba
Tatiane Rangel (Spanish and Portugese, Princeton University)
The Aesthetics of Injury: Measuring Disability in the Angolan Beauty Pageant "Miss Landmine"
Moderated by Marisa Fuentes (History, Rutgers University)
5:00 - 6:00 PM | Keynote
“The Jungle and the Garden”, Dr. Manu Karuka (American Studies, Barnard College)
Friday, Apr 3, 2026
9:00 - 9:30 AM | Breakfast
9:30 - 10:55 AM | Doing Sex and Gender: Power, Control, and Monstrous (Re)Makings
Kal Rivera (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Psychology, Rutgers University)
Decolonial Gender Performance: Disrupting the Coloniality of Gender In the Trans Imaginary
Abigail Librojo (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
The Witchcraft Trials and Biopolitical Control
Madison Goffredo (Animal Science, Rutgers University)
From Farm to Clinic: Comparisons of Reproductive Technology in Agricultural and Human Research
Max Mendez (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
Queer-Disabled Spectatorship and the Enjoyment of Horror Films
Jaiden Radoczy (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
Missionary, Cowgirl, or Doggy Style: Dominance, Submission, and Social Position In Pornography
Moderated by Udodiri Okwandu (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
11:05 - 12:30 PM | The State of the Clinic: Disciplining Sex
Yuting Hu (Literature, Duke University)
Measuring Sexuality and Temporality in Minor Literatures: Distorted Scientism, Biopower, and Doctors in Modern Surrealist Chinese and Polish Fiction
Jinghui Wang (East Asian Studies, New York University)
Calibrating the Womb: Pain, Measurement, and the Socialist Body in 1950s China
Clayton Jarrard (XE: Experimental Humanities, New York University)
Measuring Sex: Psychometrics and the Masculinity-Femininity Test
Moderated by Maya Mikdashi (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
12:30 - 1:30 PM | Lunch
1:30 - 2:50 PM | Hands-on Workshop
“DataCraft, Fiber Visualizations, Black Feminist Geometrics”
with Dr. Brittney Cooper of the Race and Gender Equity (RAGE) Lab
3:00 - 4:25 PM | Making Data, Being Data: Computation Reconsidered
Olivia Curran (English, New York University)
Sleeping with the Machine: Reading Wearable Technologies as Post-Industrial Transitional Objects
Katie Sullivan (Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic University)
In/flux: Making and Measuring Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
Pat Kinley (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
A Lifestyle or a Lifeline? A Genealogy of the Anti-Inflammatory Diet and its Translation to Citizen Science
Joseph Isaac (Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers University)
"Who Buys Bees is a Fool, Who Sells Bees is a Fool"; Indigenous Re/Imaginations of the Algorithm as Recipe
Moderated by Kim Fernandes (Anthropology, Brown University)
4:35 - 6:00 PM | Turning the Times Tables: Laboring Figures and the Mis/Uses of Capitalist Numeracy
Dolma Ombadykow (American Studies, Yale University)
Moving Parts: Visualizing Labor, Extraction, and the Materiality of Work, 1907–1924
Liana Katz (Geography, Rutgers University)
Capitalist Epistemologies: The Rise of Quantification and New Conceptions of Truth
Echo Lyu (Anthropology, Princeton University)
Performance, Numbers, Gain: Theorizing Immediacy in Exchange
Lucie Heron (English, University of Pennsylvania)
In Search of “Spots of Time”: On Work and Boyhood in Wordsworth’s Two-Part Prelude and Holcroft’s The Adventures of Hugh Trevor
Moderated by Mich Ling (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University)
Yosan Alemu • Colton Barton • Francisco Cantero Soriano • Brittney Cooper • Olivia Curran • Kim Fernandes • Marisa Fuentes • Madison Goffredo • Dalia Griñan • Xingyan Guo • Trisha Gupta • Helena Hazel • Lucie Heron • Yuting Hu • Joseph Isaac • Clayton Jarrard • Liana Katz • Jein Kim • Pat Kinley • Roni Lakin • Abigail Librojo • Alex Liebman • Mich Ling • Jing Hao Liong • Dana Luciano • Echo Lyu • Javiera Madrid-Salazar • Radhika Marwaha • Max Mendez • Maya Mikdashi • Luvuyo Nyawose • Udodiri Okwandu • Dolma Ombadykow • Jaiden Radoczy • Kal Rivera • Aman Roy • Andrew Schlager • Michelle Stephens • Katie Sullivan • Jinghui Wang
Please feel free to direct any inquiries to conference co-organizers Lu Biltucci, David Carré, and Jennie Jiang at