Queer
Studies Lecture Series
Spring
2008
All lectures are
open to the public
Location: Rachel Carson Hall 68
Time: Tuesday,
12-12:50 pm
February 12: Ben Peacock, The Private Lives of Dead
Bodies: Mourning Homeless Young Queers
Peacock is a Resident Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Social
Change at UC Berkeley. His talk traces the death of a collective home
for some homeless young queers and the death of Green, a 23-year-old man.
February 19: Mel Y. Chen, Queer Animality in Cultural Imagination
Chen, a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University
of California, Berkeley, will describe the sometimes constructed, sometimes
incidental, relationship of queerness to animality.
February 26: Robert McRuer, National Fantasies & Queer Anti-National
Sexual Positions
McRuer is Associate Professor of English at The George Washington University
in Washington, D.C., where he teaches queer theory, disability studies,
and critical theory. His paper argues that the playful gender trouble
and foregrounding of sexual pleasures in Murderball (2005) allow for the
contingent unraveling of aspects of conventional masculinity.
March 4: State Senator Carole Migden in Conversation
Carole Migden represents the 3rd District in the California State Senate.
She will discuss her groundbreaking role as an out lesbian politician
over decades of political advocacy and activism.
March 11: Holly Near, Storytelling, Activism and Music
For the past 40 years, Near has participated in many major social change
movements. She cut her teeth in the peace movement of the early seventies
and learned her early feminism from women living in war zones. Through
her storytelling, Holly remembers the lessons with grace and humor.
March 18: Cecilia Chung, United ENDA
Transgender Law Center Deputy Director Cecilia Chung will speak on the
recent struggle to prevent the Congressional Democratic leadership from
excluding gender identity from workplace protection laws.
April 8: Lesbians on Ecstasy, Re-Constituting Lesbian Concentrate
Thirty years ago Olivia Records released Lesbian Concentrate, rumored
to be the first album ever released with the word “lesbian”
in the title. In 2007 the Lesbians On Ecstasy released the album We Know
You Know using Lesbian Concentrate as inspiration for exploring second
wave feminism and womyn’s music.
April 15: Andrew Sean Greer, Tales from a Queer Novelist
Andrew Sean Greer, author of three books of fiction, including the national
bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli (2004), will speak about the
craft of fiction writing and the ways in which queerness informs his processes
and content.
April 22: S. Lochlann Jain, Cancer Butch
Jain, a professor of anthropology at Stanford University, will speak on
the challenges for gender nonnormative people confronting breast cancer
and its feminine-gendered meanings within a cultural context saturated
by “pinkwashed” corporate care and advocacy marketing.
April 29: T. Kebo Drew, Reels of Resistance: Film IS Social Justice
Activism
Development & Events Manager for the Queer Women of Color Media Arts
Project (QWOCMAP) T. Kebo Drew manages the Queer Women of Color Film Festival
and develops partnerships with community organizations. She will discuss
how QWOCMAP counters the lack of representative images for queer women
of color in traditional media by making film accessible as an art form
for creative expression and an activist tool for social justice.
May 6: Joshua Grannell (aka “Peaches Christ”), An
Unlikely Career
As an underground drag performer and filmmaker best known for his character
Peaches Christ, Grannell created the outrageously popular multi-city midnight
movie event Midnight Mass and has screened his short films at festivals
internationally. He will share clips from his films and television show
to illustrate the evolution of what was once a queer, transgressive, underground
performance scene that eventually ended up (perhaps accidentally) becoming
phenomenon.
*There is still plenty of enrollment space available for this
class. Come listen to fantastic speakers and increase your knowledge.
Sign up today!
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