[DEV] Podcast: Season 5, Episode 10, “Feel Right” Jessica Lynne and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi

Season 5

The finale of Season 5 features a conversation between writer, art critic, and co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, Jessica Lynne, and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi about her new book Feels Right: Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago (Duke UP, 2022). An “art-adjacent academic,” Adeyemi is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and Director of The Black Embodiment Studio at the University of Washington. Lynne speaks to Adeyemi about writing an ethnography of how Black queer women in Chicago use dance to assert their physical and affective rights to the city. Their conversation looks at the pleasures (and challenges) of working between the classroom and the dancefloor in order to pay a different kind of attention to Black queer women’s lives. “What pleasures are sweeter than talking with your friends about the brilliant things they write, create, and offer to us” says Lynne.

This episode is supported by Cui Jinzhe.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Hosts: Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden

About the Guests

About the Guests, and more

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, the Believer, Frieze, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and Oxford American, where she was a contributing editor. Lynne is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. She is the inaugural recipient of the Beverly Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association. From 2023 to 2025, Lynne was an editor for Momus.
Kemi Adeyemi is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Feels Right: Black Queer Women & the Politics of Partying in Chicago (2022) and co-editor of the volume Queer Nightlife (2021). Her academic essays on black queer life have been published in GLQ, Women & Performance, and QED. Her forthcoming manual, Writing About Black Art, is a 2023 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Kemi founded and directs The Black Embodiments Studio, an arts writing incubator, public programming initiative, and publishing platform dedicated to building discourse around contemporary Black art.

More by the Guests

Because my metier is black … (after Toni Morrison)

August 11–April 17, 2027

Led by Jessica Lynne, and faculty members Erica N. Cardwell, Margo Jefferson, Danielle Amir Jackson, Stefanie Jason, Yaniya Lee, Colony Little, Tarisai Ngangura, Rianna Jade Parker, and Still Nomads (Samira Farah and Areej Nur).

Momus Residency: To Build and Sustain

Residency

August 11, 2025–August 6, 2026

With faculty members Dr. Kemi Adeyemi, Camille Bacon, Sky Goodden, Jessica Lynne, Elisabeth Nicula, and Lauren Wetmore.

Momus Critical Writing Fellowship 2025

Fellowship

January 1–December 1, 2025

With fellows David Ayala-Alfonso, Alexandra Méndez García, Ramona Ngin, and Andrii Ushytskyi and mentors Sky Goodden, Jessica Lynne, Merray Michael Mina, Catherine G. Wagley, and Lauren Wetmore.