Category Archives: Queer

Categories of Resistance

Feminism Queer Race No Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about the tools, methods, and categories that have helped me resist hegemonic strategies, patriarchy, homophobia, and misogyny.  All this thinking has also created questions in my mind.  For example, I use feminist analysis and feminist tools, but am I a feminist?  I utilize queer analysis and methodologies, but am I queer?  I have long resisted categories that seek to stabilize and unify one’s experience.  And so, I’m left with categories of resistance, a box that cannot be ‘checked.’

Is there a word that helps collectively display all of the liberative ways that feminism, queerness, and other methods seek to create moments of openings and liberation for marginalized bodies?  In searching for a ‘new’ word, do we further institutionalize and stabilize the very thing that we’re trying NOT to stabilize?  Do we need to reach back into history to see where we might have gone wrong?  Will history show us something that will help us today?  Or, will history simply reveal the same patterns and motifs that we’ve perpetuated?

I think we need categories of resistance, but I’m not sure that these categories can be housed within normative white methods and standards, because the outcome is that these moments create new models of stability, that thereby fortifies whiteness.  I look toward a more material reality of resistance–bodies, actual physical bodies, resisting.  What is that called?

Faithful Conversations: Envisioning Our Future as the LGBTQ Community and Allies | Denver

Queer Race Religion No Comments

The struggle for inclusion, justice, and care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals in religious communities is a struggle that continues today. An upcoming event hopes to shed light on this issue. “Faithful Conversations: Building Support for LGBTQ People and Allies in Religious Communities” will be held from 1–8 pm. Registration begins at 1 pm and conversations will be held from 2–8 pm.

The conference is a gathering for LBGTQ people of faith, goodwill, and allies to build relationships, engage in challenging conversations, enhance and build skills for advocacy, and empower faith communities to support LGBTQ inclusion. Keynote speakers are: Jay Michaelson, author of the recently-released God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, and Dr. Kate Ott, Assistant Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Drew University Theological School.

There is a $25 registration fee for the event, which includes dinner. Please register by April 17. For more information, please call 720-524-1100.

The event is presented by the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado, One Colorado Education Fund, Keshet, and Nehirim.

CFP: HOMONATIONALISM AND PINKWASHING

Queer Research No Comments

CFP: Homonationalism and Pinkwashing @ The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY Graduate Center

April 10-11, 2013
Keynotes by Jasbir Puar, Judith Butler, Rabih Almmedine, and Haneen MaiKey

Deadline: July 1, 2012

Conference Description

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies is pleased to announce a conference “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing” to be held April 10-11, 2013 at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all configurations around the world have always experienced dramatic differences in representation and power. Today, after generations of sacrifice and organization, some LGBT people have won full legal rights with different degrees of implementation. Once hard to imagine, protection from discrimination, full relationship recognition, and inclusion in representation are now daily possibilities for some. In the United States, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have been invited into an equality defined, not by rights, but by the ability to participate openly in immoral wars. The co-opting of some LGBT people by anti-immigrant and in particular anti-Muslim political forces is widespread and growing. Rutgers Professor Jasbir Puar has coined the term “Homonationalism” to define collusion between LGBT people and identification with the nation state, re-enforcement of racial and national boundary, and systems of supremacy ideology no longer interrupted by homophobia. Homonationalism has spread far from its roots in European xenophobia and US militarism to become an increasingly potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Faced with intensifying criticism and the threat of economic boycott, the Israeli government expanded their marketing plan by harnessing Homonationalism to reposition its global image. The campaign intended “to improve Israel’s image through the gay community in Israel,” The Jerusalem Post quoted one government supporter of the campaign. This deliberate and highly funded program is what anti-occupation activists have named “Pinkwashing.”The campaign not only manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel’s gay rights movement, but it also ignores the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. These groups rightly note that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, a keynote speaker at our conference and the director of Al Qaws:For Gender and Sexual Diversity in Palestinian Society, said in a recent lecture tour in the United States, “When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what the sexuality of the soldier is.”

Homonationalism and Pinkwashing mark a crucial turning point for Queer Scholars and Activists. This conference provides an opportunity to examine Queer Resistance and Complicity globally, in all of their complexities, with a political maturity that acknowledges the responsibility of access, the activism of necessity, the potential and impossible communities, identifications, solidarities, unities and consequential calls for action. Acknowledging these conditions make it imperative for Activists and Scholars to convene and bring together the theoretical and the applied, repositioning our resources to focus on a rejuvenated Queer future, movement, movements, efforts, actions, organizing and focus towards a vision of freedom that finally includes us all.
We invite proposals for papers, panels, workshops, performances or films from all. No institutional affiliation required. Undergraduate submissions are also encouraged.

Possible topics we would love to include but are not limited to:

-Expanding our understandings of Queer Resistance and Complicity
-Emerging Queer Movements Globally
-Hindus, Islamaphobia and Queer Emergence
-Arab Jews (Mizrachis) and Occupation/Pinkwashing/Diaspora
-Iran, Iraq and the Use of anti-LGBT Persecution to Justify Military Assault
-Transfeminism and the Global LGBT
-Race, Sexuality and the US Military
-Queer and The Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions Movement
-Christian Evangelicals: Differing strategies for Uganda and Israel
-The rise of LGBT wings of European Right Wing Movements
-HRC, GLAAD, and the Gay Corporate Auxilliaries
-AIDS, NGO’s and Partnering With Global Pharma
-Homonationalism, Hollywood and Popular Culture
-Pinkwashing and Israeli Queer Cinema

Submissions deadline: July 1, 2012.
Notifications will be emailed by September 1.
Homonationalism and Pinkwashing site

CFP: Queer Indigenous Writers

Queer Research No Comments
Queer Indigenous Writers – Call for Submission [posted by Rosebud]Polari Journal is calling for submissions for a special issue to be published online in October 2012. This special issue will feature the best queer indigenous/aboriginal writing from around the globe. Polari tends towards the shorter forms: short stories, poetry, essays, scholarly papers, one act plays/scripts and reviews. In general, the word limit for fiction, plays and essays is 6000 words. Reviews should not be more than 1500 words. For poetry, the maximum is 100 lines. The Final Date for submission is July 1st 2012.

Send all submissions and questions to: editor@polarijournal.com (Source, VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts FB page)

Please spread the word of this call for sumissions to your networks!

Queer Christianities: A Conference at The New School

Queer Religion No Comments

Check this out! Some of my friends are on this panel doing some really interesting and compelling stuff!

Queer Christianities: A Conference at The New School
Both queerness and Christianity challenge received notions of the good and the natural. While these terms are often depicted as mutually exclusive, queer Christians have been quietly constructing new identities, articulating new understandings of faith, and creating new religious communities. With speakers from across the country, the conference focuses on the history and lived experience, religious practice and theology of three apparently incompatible modes of queer Christian life: Celibacies, Matrimonies, and Promiscuities.

Friday, March 23, 4:30-8:30

Panel of Undergraduate and Alumnae/i Research
The New School, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510
Karen Bray (Eugene Lang College ’05, Drew University), Respondent

Here, Queer, Christian
First Presbyterian Church of New York, 12 West 12th Street, Great Hall
Jon Walton (Senior Pastor, First Presbyterian Church), Queer in the Church: Opening Up the Closet
Winnie Varghese (Priest in Charge, Church of St. Mark in the Bowery), Respondent

Saturday, March 24, 10:00-5:30
Theresa Lang Center, 55 West 13th St, 2nd Floor

Keynote: Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt University)
Sex was Good until it became Natural, and then it became Moral

Panel I: Celibacies
David Hunter (University of Kentucky), On the Emergence of Celibacy as an Ideal Among the Earliest Christians
Anthony Petro (New York University), Contemporary Christians and Celibate Desire
Sister Carol Bernice (Community of the Holy Spirit), How Queer is “Celibate”?
Kathleen Talvacchia (New York University), Moderator

Panel II: Matrimonies
William E. Smith III (Indiana University), Christian Monogamy, What’s That?
Heather White (New College of Florida), Gay Rites and Religious Rights: New York City’s First Same-Sex Marriage Controversy
Teresa Delgado (Iona College), Marriage Beyond Procreativity: Solidarity Between LGBTIQ Catholics and their Catholic Heterosexual Allies
Mark Larrimore (Eugene Lang College), Moderator

Panel III: Promiscuities
Michael Pettinger (Eugene Lang College), A Queer Theology of Sin
Elijah Nealy (Columbia University), Transgender Realities, Theologies and Mutualities
Boon Lin Ngeo (Boston University). Blessed are Those Who are Horny: Rethinking Christian Sexual Ethics
Karen Bray (Drew University), Moderator

Closing Reflection
Kathryn Lofton (Yale University)

For registration and further details, see http://www.newschool.edu/lang/queer-christianities-conference/

Queer Christianities: A Conference at The New School

Queer Religion No Comments

Queer Christianities: A Conference at The New School

Both queerness and Christianity challenge received notions of the good and the natural. While these terms are often depicted as mutually exclusive, queer Christians have been quietly constructing new identities, articulating new understandings of faith, and creating new religious communities. With speakers from across the country, the conference focuses on the history and lived experience, religious practice and theology of three apparently incompatible modes of queer Christian life: Celibacies, Matrimonies, and Promiscuities.

Friday, March 23, 4:30-8:30

Panel of Undergraduate and Alumnae/i Research
The New School, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510
Karen Bray (Eugene Lang College ’05, Drew University), Respondent

Here, Queer, Christian
First Presbyterian Church of New York, 12 West 12th Street, Great Hall
Jon Walton (Senior Pastor, First Presbyterian Church), Queer in the Church: Opening Up the Closet
Winnie Varghese (Priest in Charge, Church of St. Mark in the Bowery), Respondent

Saturday, March 24, 10:00-5:30
Theresa Lang Center, 55 West 13th St, 2nd Floor

Keynote: Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt University)
Sex was Good until it became Natural, and then it became Moral

Panel I: Celibacies
David Hunter (University of Kentucky), On the Emergence of Celibacy as an Ideal Among the Earliest Christians
Anthony Petro (New York University), Contemporary Christians and Celibate Desire
Sister Carol Bernice (Community of the Holy Spirit), How Queer is “Celibate”?
Kathleen Talvacchia (New York University), Moderator

Panel II: Matrimonies
William E. Smith III (Indiana University), Christian Monogamy, What’s That?
Heather White (New College of Florida), Gay Rites and Religious Rights: New York City’s First Same-Sex Marriage Controversy
Teresa Delgado (Iona College), Marriage Beyond Procreativity: Solidarity Between LGBTIQ Catholics and their Catholic Heterosexual Allies
Mark Larrimore (Eugene Lang College), Moderator

Panel III: Promiscuities
Michael Pettinger (Eugene Lang College), A Queer Theology of Sin
Elijah Nealy (Columbia University), Transgender Realities, Theologies and Mutualities
Boon Lin Ngeo (Boston University). Blessed are Those Who are Horny: Rethinking Christian Sexual Ethics
Karen Bray (Drew University), Moderator

Closing Reflection
Kathryn Lofton (Yale University)

For registration and further details, see http://www.newschool.edu/lang/queer-christianities-conference/

CFP: A QUEER GAZE: MEDIA AND THE GLOBAL LGBT COMMUNITY

Queer No Comments

Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell are seeking articles for their upcoming anthology, A QUEER GAZE: MEDIA AND THE GLOBAL LGBT COMMUNITY. We are looking for essays of about 15-20 pages that address how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered communities are represented both in the U.S. and around the world. We would like to hear from scholars and activists about how these communities are silenced or given voice through the media. Please send all abstracts and inquiries to Theresa Carilli, Department of Communication and Creative Arts, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN 46323 by Feb 1, 2012. Final articles are due by June 1, 2012.
Theresa Carilli
Department of Communication and Creative Arts
Purdue University Calumet
Hammond, IN 46323
(219) 989-2628
Email: carilli@purduecal.edu

The Transgender Roundtable @ Pacific School of Religion’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion & Ministry

Queer Religion No Comments

Well, I’ve just had my 1st conference call with members of the CLGS’s Transgender Roundtable.  I’m honored to be a apart of this very engaged group and look forward to the work we will do together.  If you are reading this blog, then perhaps you can leave a comment on what work this Roundtable should do!  I’d like to hear from folks in the community who have concerns about the visibility of Transgendered folks, how ever Trans is materialized.

Please consider commenting, and keep in touch on this blog to hear of what the Roundtable will do!