Ryan Persadie

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Ryan is an interdisciplinary writer, and award-winning educator, and artist, specializing in the fields of transnational feminisms and sexualities, queer and trans of colour pedagogy, queer Caribbean diasporas, legacies of indenture, performance, and Afro-Asian intimacies. Currently, he is Visiting Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies at Connecticut College.

Ryan holds a Honours Bachelor of Music with specialization in Music Education from the University of Western Ontario, a Bachelor of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, a Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology and Sexuality Diversity Studies and is in the final stages of completing his PhD in Women and Gender Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. Prior to beginning his graduate training, Ryan spent time working as a secondary school educator in the private school system in Toronto, largely working with students of colour through multicultural, anti-colonial, and queer and trans of colour critical pedagogies. Outside the university, he has spent the last ten years working and organizing with multiple community groups including the Caribbean Equality Project based in Queens, NY. In addition, Ryan also performs as a drag artist where he goes by the stage name of Tifa Wine. His most recent work in drag can be seen with his short film “GYAL” (2023), co-produced with Guyanese dance educator and archivist Premika Leo.

Bridging his training in Music Education, Ethnomusicology, Women and Gender studies and transnational feminisms, Ryan is currently at the end stages of completing his doctoral dissertation in Women and Gender Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, entitled: "Sounding Qoolie Diasporas: Queer Indo-Caribbean Performance, Soca Feminisms, and the Politics of Fête in Toronto and New York City." This research explores the transnational itineraries of queer Caribbean diasporas that are made possible through attuning to migratory flows of Anglophone Caribbean popular cultural production, particularly soca music, dance, and vocalities among queer and trans Indo-Caribbean communities. Here, he centers queer and trans aesthetic practices within Caribbean celebratory geographies and party spaces in Toronto and New York City, which he refers to as “queer fêtes”, that move across and between the US-Canada border. In this work, Ryan accounts for how queer and trans Caribbean communities in Toronto and NYC (re)produce the queer fête as a site of critical politics, pedagogy, and methodologies for pursuing queer self-/place-making as a disruptive to nationalist and post-colonial ideologies of (Indo-)Caribbeanness as incompatible with queerness. By turning to sound, dance, and the voice, his research uncovers how transnational feminist mobilizations of being, place, and community that can only be made possible through a queer of colour politics and pedagogy of listening and moving together.

At Connecticut College this year, he will be teaching courses surrounding topics of foundations in Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies, feminist theories and pedagogies, queer theory and activisms, and popular music, sound, dance, and feminist practice. He invites students to reach out to him via email regarding potential and ongoing research, community-engagement projects and intellectual interests.

Selected Publications

2022     "Tanty Feminisms: The Aesthetics of Auntyhood, #Coolieween, and the Erotics of (Post-)Indenture." Journal of Indenture and Its Legacies 2 (1): 59 – 97.

2022     "Mash-Up as Method: Building Community-Based Approaches to Caribbean Feminist Research." In Affirming Methodologies: Research and Education in the Caribbean, edited by Camille Nakhid, Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor, Anabel Fernández Santana, and Shakeisha Wilson-Scott, 58 – 74. London: Routledge. Co-written with Suzanne Narain.

2022     ""Deh Say I’s Ah Madman": Sounding Madness, Disability and Mental Health Stigma in Soca Music." Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 15: 105 – 132.

2021     "Queering "Queer" Toronto Space: Transgressive QTBIPoC Drag Performance and Disrupting Homonormativity." Theatre Research in Canada 185: 22 – 28.

2020     ""Meh Just Realize I’s Ah Coolie Bai": Indo-Caribbean Masculinities, Chutney Geneaologies, and Qoolie Subjectivities." Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies 4(2): 56 – 86.

2020     "Nagara: Indo-Caribbean Sexualities, Erotic Autonomy, and Dance." Thaenpot, November 7. (co-written with Premika Leo).

2019     "Sounding the ‘6ix’: Drake, Cultural Appropriation, and Embodied Caribbeanization." MUSICultures 46 (1): 52 – 80.

Current Courses

GWS103 - Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies
GWS200 (Special Topics) - Queer Diasporas: The Feminist Politics and Practices of Queer and Trans Place-Making
GWS380 - Contemporary Feminist Theory
GWS381 - Queer Theory and Activism

Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:00 am – 1 PM, Blaustein Humanities Center Rm. 316