Many of us are anxious about sleep. Talk of it is everywhere. But are we always really talking about sleep when we talk about sleep? Our podcast is a series of conversations about how cultural preoccupation with sleep is also about masculinity, femininity, sexuality, work, leisure, and time. It approaches sleep as a necessary and valuable part of human life, as well as a proxy for thinking about other things.
In our first series we take deep dives into sleep in fiction and performance art, beauty sleep, sleep coaching, working from bed, sexual violence, night, cultures of fast and slow, and sleepy stereotypes.
Your host Cressida J. Heyes is Professor and HM Tory Chair at the University of Alberta, where they work in political philosophy and philosophy of gender and sexuality. They have written and taught about sleep in popular culture. “Sleep is The New Sex” is their brainchild: it’s a research project, a book-in-progress, and this podcast.
Find out more at cressidaheyes.com
Your co-host Joshua Ayer is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Alberta, where he is completing a dissertation about productivity and degrowth.
Sleep is the New Sex is recorded and produced in the Sound Studio at the University of Alberta with the help of Tom Merklinger, the Program and Technical Coordinator at the Sound Studies Institute.
Our campus is in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan, also known as the city of Edmonton, located on Treaty Six territory and Métis homeland #4, traditional travelling route, gathering place, and home of the Nehiyaw, Denesųłıné, Siksikaitsitapi, Nakota Sioux, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Métis Otipemisiwak and Esikisimu Nunangat peoples. As we talk about the history and meanings that sleep, rest, leisure, and productivity have for us, we also want to recognize the way each of these ideas participates in the history of colonialism that has shaped and continues to shape relations between settlers and First Nations.
Financial support for our first series is gratefully acknowledged from the Support for the Advancement of Scholarship Fund in the Faculty of Arts and the Office of the Vice-President Research General Research Fund at the University of Alberta.