Cancelled: “Office Hours” Trashy Romance as Critical Theory

This talk is now cancelled.

The blurb: New professor Aamanee Haq is outraged by Xavier Thorn, an arrogant CEO attending her gender studies class solely for PR purposes. To make matters worse, he arouses not just her anger, but a deeply unwanted desire. Surely she can resist. Giving into his charms would mean betraying her feminist ethics and violating the University’s Sexual Misconduct policy — a policy she helped create.

Set against the backdrop of university politics, Office Hours explores themes of consent, gender scripts, racialized desire, safe space, family duty, and the personal at odds with the political. As both metafiction and escapism, it features academic concepts, relevant media articles and real-life controversies woven into an enemies-to-lovers plot. Through the romance genre — often maligned by the mainstream and certain feminist sectors — Office Hours taps into the pleasures of taboo fantasies, while grappling with the politics of desire.

Ummni Khan is an Associate Professor in Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. Her writing focuses on law, sexuality and critical differences. She is particularly interested in embodied knowledge and creative methodologies. Ummni has published in a wide variety of academic journals, from Feral Feminisms to The University of Toronto Law Journal. Her insights are quoted in popular magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated. Her scholarship has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.