Queer Studies Lecture Series

Spring 2009

All lectures are free and open to all
Rachel Carson Hall 68
Tuesdays, 12:00-12:50 pm

2/3 Garza, “Crossing Borders"
Garza, a Latino gay immigrant exploring sexuality as a “T girl” in the USA, will discuss how drag performance can work across borders of care, belonging, and transformation and highlight personal experiences crossing borders of culture and gender in the San Francisco Bay Area.

2/10 Paula Pilecki, “Some of My Best Friends are Gay: Creating a Queer-Friendly Community”
Paula Pilecki is the Executive Director of Spectrum LGBT Center in Marin County. Paula will discuss the assumptions, myths, and stereotypes that are behind resistance in schools, social service organizations, and communities of faith to the active inclusion of LGBT people. She will offer suggestions on how to create a successful grassroots campaign to inspire institutional and community change.

2/17 Amy Sueyoshi, “Homo-coming: Yone Noguchi's Closet and Transnationalism”
SFSU Ethnic Studies and Sexuality Studies Associate Professor Amy Sueyoshi will explore how immigrant poet Yone Noguchi wrote openly about the beauty of male same-sex love at the turn of the century only to declare heterosexuality in later writings. Sueyoshi argues that his life suggests limits and liberations of transnationalism and the power of personal will.

2/24 Stephanie Brill, “Beyond Binaries: Gender Spectrums”
Stephanie Brill is the co-founder and Director of Gender Spectrum Education and Training, a featured speaker on issues of the developmental stages of gender variance in children, and co-author of The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. She will introduce a multi-dimensional framework that seeks to counter the prevailing binary gender system. She will explore how children frequently experience the interrelated notions of biological sex, gender expression, and gender identity.

3/3 Andrea Shorter, “Marriage for All: Race Challenges and Marriage Equality”
Andrea Shorter is the Campaign Director of And Marriage For All, a public education campaign connecting issues of race and marriage equality and the Co-Chair of the Bayard LGBT Rustin Coalition, Northern California’s largest Black LGBT political organization. She will speak on the ways in which race related to Proposition 8 and its aftermath.

3/10 Kyriell Noon, “Only Six Degrees? Sexual Networks and HIV Prevention in Queer Male Communities”
Scholar-activist Kyriell Noon is the Executive Director of STOP AIDS Project, a community-based non-profit that works to prevent HIV transmission in the queer community. This talk will describe how even in major metropolitan areas, queer men are more closely connected to each other through sexual networks than previously thought. Working these networks to guide HIV prevention allows agencies to support existing friend groups, maximize community assets, and shape healthy community norms.

3/17 Jon Ginoli, “My Life in Pansy Division”
Jon Ginoli founded the band Pansy Division in 1991 as a way to combine the two big interests in his life: being a rock musician and being gay. Through eight albums and worldwide touring, it has combined unapologetic lyrics with catchy pop-punk rock. In March, Pansy Division will release their new CD That's So Gay and the DVD of the documentary Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band. Jon has just published a memoir titled Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division. He will talk about the history of Pansy Division, why to form such a band, and its relevance today.

3/24 Steve Toby, “What Does Transition Have to Do with Belonging?”
Steve Toby, an openly female-to-male transgender psychotherapist, will discuss the unique role that belonging plays in compelling compels those of us who identify as transgender to seek hormonal and surgical treatment.

4/7 Jeffery Schwarz, “Adding Value: The World of DVD Extras and How They Can Sometimes be Queer”
Jeffrey Schwarz is the President & CEO of Automat Pictures, a multi-award winning entertainment company widely recognized as one of the industry¹s leading producers of studio EPKs (electronic press kits), DVD content, original television programming, and feature films. He will give a behind-the-scenes talk on content produced for DVD releases of Hollywood films, with an emphasis on titles with queer content.

4/21 Felice Newman, “The Politics of Being Heard: Book Publishing & Queer Literature in the 21st Century"
Felice Newman is a founding publisher of Cleis Press. Her discussion reveals the “pay-to-play democracy” of the U.S. publishing industry and suggests how diverse queer voices break through the barriers of the marketplace.

4/28 Julian Carter, “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease”
Julian Carter, a queer theorist and historian, is currently Chair of the Critical Studies Program at California College for the Arts. Carter describes the ways in which modern U.S. sex education, from its early 20th-century roots, promoted cultural heteronormativity and whiteness through claims to “development” based in ecology and zoology coupled with claims of “contagion” spread by so-called “perverse” sexualities.

5/5 Shine Louise Houston, “Taking Power in Creating Images: Crash Pad Porn”
As the pioneering producer and director of Pink and White Productions, Shine Houston is dedicated to producing sexy and exciting images that reflect today’s blurred gender lines and fluid sexualities. Houston will discuss how Pink and White Productions creates porn that exposes the complexities of queer sexual desire, inviting viewers into a world of butches, bois, femmes, transfolk and more, with a focus unlike any other in the adult industry, focusing on the authentic passion between two (or more) bodies.

The Queer Studies Lecture Series is made possible thanks to the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the SSU Instructionally Related Activities Program.


*There is still plenty of enrollment space available for this class. Come listen to fantastic speakers and increase your knowledge. Sign up today!