Newsletter with Article

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CLAGS
FALL 2 0 1 2
news
THE CENTER FOR LESBIAN AND GAY STUDIES
T H E
G R A D U A T E
C E N T E R
|
T H E
C I T Y
U N I V E R S I T Y
O F
N E W
Y O R K
UPCOMING EVENTS
Radically Gay: The Life and Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay
“Performing Que(e)ries” - New Queer Performance Series
Book Launch - Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay
Seminars in the City: Queering the Frame
CLAGS UPDATES
Events and Outreach
Development, Memberships and Fellowships
International Resource Network
FEATURING
Interviews with Martin Duberman and Paul Vitagliano
Lambda Literary Awards
Fall Events Calendar
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
James Wilson
CLAGS Executive Director
without saying, each element required a
good deal of time, effort, and care from the
participants, organizers, CLAGS staff members, and our friends at the Graduate Center.
On behalf of the CLAGS Board, I would like to
express our enormous gratitude.
As I complete my first year as CLAGS Executive Director, all I can think is what a ride
it has been. The summer break has allowed
some time to put the clutch in neutral, idle,
and look back on the trip. Hindsight can let
one enjoy the view, appreciate the mostly
smooth drive, and occasionally say, “Wow!
That was a close one.”
by church pastors and government officials,
it was comforting to have a bit of really good
news for a change. The inevitable backlash
followed, and the cacophonous noise included the usual chorus of mean-spirited
talkshow hosts, all-but forgotten Hollywood
personalities (Kirk Cameron, anyone?), and
the voices of political and religious doom.
First, the “close one”: We ended last year
in an extremely precarious financial position with our grants all but dried up and our
funding drastically cut. The Board, the staff,
and our incredibly generous donors and
members rallied, and we entered the spring
term bolstered and ready to dig in and face
new (and some of the same old) challenges.
And what a spring it was.
While this debate—including the accompanying and often cynical probing of the timing
of the President’s announcement—played
itself out in the blink-of-an-eye news cycle,
CLAGS was rolling along, committing our
few resources and talented labor to helping
teachers refine and develop queer curricula,
sharing cutting-edge scholarship on gender and sexualities, and hosting roundtable
discussions on LGBT history, activism, and
the arts. Those events and initiatives are
described at some length in the following
pages, and I hope that even though we have
the space to provide the briefest snapshots, Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a heck
we are able to convey the richness of the of a ride. spring programming. While it probably goes
In May we were heartened, of course, by
President Obama’s statement of support for
same-sex marriage. In the midst of continuing coverage of LGBT teen suicide, votes to
amend state constitutions thereby limiting
LGBT rights, and threats to the physical wellbeing of presumed LGBT children and adults
Looking ahead, the itinerary seems even
more ambitious. Just around the corner we
have a major conference celebrating the life
and legacies of Harry Hay. Along the way,
we have a book launch, a series on queer
performance in the twenty-first century, a
seminars-in-the-city focused on queer arts
throughout the city, and our fall culminates
in the presentation of the Kessler Award
to historian, playwright, activist (and did I
mention CLAGS’s founder?) Martin Duberman. I can assure you that the CLAGS office
is buzzing with activity in preparation for our
ambitious fall calendar.
Matt Brim, English Department, College
of Staten Island, CUNY
Michelle Billies is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Social-Personality Psychology program of CUNY
Graduate Center. Based in part on a three-year
research project in partnership with Queers for
Economic Justice, Billies’ dissertation, entitled
“Let Me See Your ID: Surveillance Threat and the
Construction of Human Security and Insecurity,”
critiques everyday policing as a site of struggle
over bodies, space, and knowledge, fueled by
accelerating forms of affective control. Concentrating on the integration of theory, critical research methods, and liberatory pedagogies, Billies writes with and through participatory action
research (PAR) approaches; homonationalism;
black geographies; transgender studies; transnational feminisms; and affect theory. Billies is
outgoing Co-Chair of QUNY, the LGBTQ chartered
student organization of CUNY Graduate Center,
participates as a member of CUNY Graduate Center’s Public Science Project, and was recently
awarded a dissertation fellowship by IRADAC, The
Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in
the Americas and the Caribbean. A Brooklyn resident for 18 years, Billies maintains a private Gestalt psychotherapy practice, loves African dance
class and birding, and lives in a fantastic house
called Queer Study Hall.
SUJAY PANDIT MEMBERSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS COORDINATOR
Sujay Pandit is a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. His work focuses on the
interplay between space/place, architecture, human rights and philosophy. He completed his B.A. in Philosophy and Politics at Sarah Lawrence College and his M.A. in Performance Studies at New York University. He
is also keenly interested in digital and new media. Outside of the academy, Sujay has worked as a graphic
designer, digital archivist/photographer and multimedia specialist for multiple media outlets including:
Scientific American Magazine, PBS’ Art:21, the NYU Afghan Digital Library, and various corporations.
KALLE WESTERLING MEDIA AND DESIGN INTERN
Out Of The Ivory Closet: Scholars And Activists On The Frontlines The celebration of
CLAGS twentieth anniversary continued with the
Kessler Conversation between Susan Stryker,
Kessler Lecturer in 2008, and Urvashi Vaid, Kessler Lecturer in 2010. This conversation opened
up a dialogue on the important link between
scholarship and activism with two activists/
scholars who have been on the frontline of LGBT
politics for more than twenty years.
In Fall 2011, Kessler speakers included:
Edmund White in conversation with fiction writer Rakesh Satyal on the changing
face of queer fiction; American cultural
anthropologists Esther Newton, Gayle Ru- Urvashi Vaid is the Director of the Engaging
bin, and Carole Vance discussed the value Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and
of ethnographic methodologies within the Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. She was
study of sexual subcultures in the U.S.; the Executive Director of the National Gay and
and lastly, in memory of late Kessler Lesbian Taskforce from 1989-1992 and again
Susan Stryker is an Associate Professor of
Gender and Women’s Studies and the Director
of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona. She was the Executive Director
of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
Stryker’s most recent book is Transgender History (Seal Press 2008). She is also the co-editor
of The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge
2006), which has won a Lambda Book Award.
She won an Emmy Award for the documentary
film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s
Cafeteria (Frameline/ITVS 2005).
from 1997-2000, and built it to become the na-
RABIH ALAMEDDINE
HANEEN MAIKEY
onalism and
ng
CUNY Graduate Center, New York
April 10–13, 2013
For more information on these events,
or to access recordings, please contact:
[email protected].
Rainbow Book Fair Kickoff – Assaracus:
A Celebration of Gay Poetry To kick off
the Rainbow Book Fair, CLAGS and Sibling
Rivalry Press presented poets from the first
six issues of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay
Poetry—the world’s only print journal dedicated to the gay poet. Poets read together,
legend alongside rising star; established
artist next to emerging artist. The event
showcased the collective voices of some of
gay poetry’s brightest contemporary writers
in one place, at one time, and featured the
launch of Assaracus: Issue 06.
Endowed Lecture: Scenes from a Jamaican Childhood Thomas Glave (SUNY
Binghamton) gave the 2011 Audre Lorde/
Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture. This
lecture is meant to commemorate the lives
of the American poets Audre Lorde (1934
-1992) and Essex Hemphill (1957 -1995), as
well as encourage exciting scholarship and
This page contains advertisements.
Benjamin Gillespie (BG) You were recently awarded an honorary doctoral
degree from Amherst College for your prolific and groundbreaking career, as
well as your passion for honoring the pasts of those that live in the “margins
of our society.” In your keynote address, you critiqued the assimilationist focus
of the national gay rights agenda, which features marriage and the military as
its central components, and—paraphrasing your words—ignores the needs of
the lower economic factions of queer society within the American corporate
capitalist system. Seeing as Amherst is a liberal institution, how was this
critique received?
POSITIONING THE RADICAL
AN INTERVIEW WITH
MARTIN DUBERMAN
KESSLER AWARD
RECIPIENT 2012
Martin Duberman (MD) I had wondered whether or not there would be
some hostility, but anyone who said anything—at least subsequent to the
speech—was positive about it and agreed with me. One young guy said, “it’s
amazing that someone as old as you are would have radical ideas!”
Benjamin Gillespie (CLAGS Events and Outreach Coordinator,
PhD. student in theatre) interviews Professor Martin Duberman
about his life as a historian, playwright, scholar, and activist;
BG I think another word they could have used was ‘radical.’ You often
distinguish between liberal and radical political positions, identifying yourself
as a radical because you are someone who has struggled and continues to
fight to substantially restructure the system itself, rather than push for
LGBT integration into the system as it currently exists. Can you say anything
more about this distinction and how it has influenced your career as a gay
historian?
CARIBBEAN IRN RECEIVES GRANT
TO CREATE SEXUALITIES COURSE
BY ROSAMOND S. KING
CO-CHAIR OF THE CARIBBEAN IRN REGIONAL BOARD
Y RÜSTEM ERTUG ALTINAY
To participate in our projects, to learn the latest news and opportunities in the
field of sexuality studies, and to communicate with other individuals and groups
that are active in the field, please visit our website: www.irnweb.org.
The Advanced Sexuality Studies Short Course (ASSC) consists of a variety
of course modules on various sexuality topics freely available through
open source technology at www.sexualitystudies.net. IASSCS developed
the ASSC with funding from the Ford Foundation in response to a growing
recognition of the need for graduate-level training in critical sexuality
studies in the global South; the project was piloted in sites including
South Africa and Vietnam. The Caribbean IRN’s course will not only combine the considerable expertise of faculty from the IRN board and UWI’s
IGDS, it will also utilize webconferencing technology and web-based
materials (including the IRN’s Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean
collection and our online archive at http://www.dloc.com/icirn). This
collaboration will encourage Caribbean students’ study of and research
on sexuality and will facilitate connections among faculty in this field at
UWI and in the USA. Because the teaching faculty will commit to teach-
ing the course material over the next several years, and because the final
course materials will be available on the internet, this project will also
strengthen the growing field of Caribbean sexuality studies both in the
region and around the world.
The Caribbean region of the IRN was created in 2008 and connects
academic and community-based researchers, artists, and activists around
the Caribbean and in the diaspora in areas related to diverse sexualities
and genders. The Caribbean IRN highlights and promotes activism and
creative work, as well as different kinds of engaged scholarship which
seek to question, provoke and illuminate various ways of thinking about
same-sex desire and sexual minorities.
The IRN is an internet-based project created by the Center for Lesbian
and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York in 2002. The
purpose of the IRN is to link researchers, activists, artists, and teachers
from both academic and community bases in areas related to diverse
sexualities. It strives to be a central internet location (at www.irnweb.org)
for people interested in approaching sexual rights and human rights from
the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer studies,
or who are interested in surveying research on particular sexual minority
issues around the globe. Over many years, the IRN has received generous
support from the Ford Foundation to build this project.
The Caribbean Region of the IRN
The Caribbean Region of the IRN is a resource for people and organizations whose work focuses on issues
related to diverse genders and sexualities in the Caribbean. The Caribbean IRN serves as a network among
Page 5
Angelique V. Nixon, Women’s Studies,
University of Connecticut
City focused on creating safe schools for LGBT
youth. In 2005, she founded the New York Independent Schools LGBT Educators Group, providing educators professional development and networking opportunities. At the Little Red School
House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in
New York City, she offers electives on feminism,
LGBT literature, Toni Morrison, and writing memoir. Ileana is also an associate faculty member
at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking. Founder and sole blogger at Feminist Teacher, feministteacher.com, she received her B.A. in
English Literature at Smith College, and an M.A.
in English Literature at Middlebury College.
Darnell L. Moore is a queer, anti-racist, profeminist writer and activist who lives in Brooklyn,
NY. He presently serves as the Director of Educational Initiatives at the Hetrick-Martin Institute
and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study
of Gender and Sexuality at NYU. He is also a Fellow at the Global Justice Institute. He was appointed as the inaugural chair of the City of Newark’s Advisory Commission on LGBTQ Concerns by
Mayor Cory A. Booker and is the co-coordinator,
along with Beryl Satter, of the Queer Newark Oral
History Project. His primary research interests
wanted to change the institutions.
Rather than being allowed to join
the military, we wanted to challenge
the whole idea of war and state-
inside and outside the Caribbean.
— The Caribbean IRN Digital Archive on the Digital Library of the Caribbean: dloc.com/icirn
— Special Archive collections, including the Digital Archive of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica: dloc.com/icirngfm
— Multimedia Collection, Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean: caribbeanhomophobias.org
— Online Networking and Resources through the IRN website, the Caribbean IRN listserv, and the Caribbean IRN Facebook Page.
For more information, visit irnweb.org, email [email protected],
or join the Facebook Group Caribbean IRN
010
COMING UP
sanctioned killing. The whole war
weren’t eager to put on the uniform.
The same is true of marriage. As gay people, we learned a great deal about
relationships that perhaps mainstream America didn’t know or wasn’t willing
to acknowledge, in terms of the roles people play in a partnered relationship.
The studies that have been done make it very clear that gay relationships
(and I mean gay inclusively—lesbian, trans, queer, etc.) tend to be much
more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. Also, there is the whole issue of
monogamous marriage. I think that there is a wide spectrum of different kinds
of gay relationships: some are monogamous; some are “open”; some are
sexual for a time, but then become companionable.
Radicals still don’t accept that institutions currently structured are in any
sense universal or maximally indicate human needs. In our point of view, we
don’t want to join up. Yes, we want all the rights everybody else has. But at
the same time, we want the right to challenge traditional institutions. The
original GLF differed much from today’s politics. We don’t want merely to be
good patriotic citizens because there is a lot wrong with national values and
national policies and we want to challenge those.
BG Let’s move to something more personal. To quote you in Cures: A Gay
Man’s Odyssey, you state, “It was easier for me to harangue the country about
changing its ways than to change my own; perhaps because—a notion I can
only entertain in retrospect—the country really did need to remake itself,
whereas I did not.” Here, you were referring to having an optimistic viewpoint
when it came to the country’s politics, but a more negative opinion of your own
struggle with a gay identity that you hadn’t yet accepted.
Looking at this experience retrospectively here, you point out your own guilty
conscience, which essentially pushed you to want to conform (at that time)
to mainstream heterosexual value systems and beliefs. Thinking about your
talk at Amherst, this still seems to me to be a prevalent problem—that is, gay
assimilationism and the guilty conscience of queer radicalism.
Positioning the Radical: Interview with Martin Duberman
Events Calendar Fall 2012
Born This Way: Q&A with Paul Vitagliano
A Queer Library Collection
Seminar in the City Fall 2012: Queering the Frame
Performing Que(e)ries
REPORTS FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL RESOURCE NETWORK
activists, scholars, community organizers, writers, artists, and community-based researchers, among others,
Resources and projects include:
001
IN REVIEW
Coming Up
termined to contribute to the emergence of new queer voices in the region,
N Asia developed a variety of new projects. “In Search of Queer” is an online
ital library that will compile and introduce selected queer studies and sexuty studies texts to China, especially those from the rest of Asia. The website
l include translated articles, resources, book reviews, original articles,
ecial opinion columns written by sexuality studies scholars, and interactive
ojects where community members can submit photos and short posts. The
oject aims to promote the articulation of a native discourse by Chinese LGBT
ivists. “On the Margins” reading group focuses on the marginalized people
d issues within the sexual minority communities in Asia. The group reads
th classic works of queer theory and newer, creative works, mainly from the
gion. IRN Asia also co-sponsored one of the first lesbian non-fiction books
blished in China, where implicit rules prevent such books from official
blication. The Lace Dictionary unearths the history of same-sex love between
men in China and re-tells their forgotten stories. Another publication by IRN
a is the China queer women’s activism map. This project features a map of
eer women’s activism in China, including background and contact informan for each organization. The map will be available in print and online. IRN
In the meantime, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East regions
of the IRN continued to develop their projects. IRN Caribbean launched the
publication Theorizing Homophobia in the Caribbean, an edited collection bringing together works which reflect on the complexities of homophobia(s) in the
Caribbean to expand awareness about Caribbean LGBT lives, experiences, and
activism in the region and its diaspora. The collection is available online. IRN
Caribbean also expanded the Digital Archives of the Activist and Related Work
in the Caribbean project. There are three established collections in this digital
archive: a general one presenting a variety of relevant material from the region,
the collection of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica, and the collection of
the Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas. IRN Latin America developed two new
issues of Sexualidades, an e-journal featuring essays in the field of sexuality
studies in the Americas. IRN Middle East continued to expand Turkey’s Queer
Lives: An Oral History Project. Implemented in collaboration with Bogazici
University’s Department of History, Turkey’s Queer Lives collects oral history
accounts from LGBTQ people to be published as an edited volume. IRN Middle
East’s Transnational Peer Review Network (TPRN) continued to serve the needs
of students and researchers. TPRN is a free online network designed to provide
pro bono peer reviewing services for students, scholars and independent
researchers working in the field of Middle Eastern sexualities. The service is
available in English, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. For more information, please
contact R. Ertug Altinay: [email protected].
The Caribbean Region of the International Resource Network (IRN) is
pleased to announce the receipt of a $20,000 grant from the International
Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture, and Society (IASSCS) to
create and present an Advanced Sexuality Studies Short Course. The
course will be presented during the summer of 2013 in Trinidad through
a collaboration with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies
(IGDS) at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Trinidad &
Tobago) campus.
Alyssa Nitchun, Creative Time
In Review
e Africa region of IRN launched two new projects, the Digital Library of
ica and Voices in the Shadows. The Digital Library of Africa is a web project
nnected to the IRN website. The project will feature material documenting
ica’s queer history. Voices in the Shadows is a radio drama series dealing
h issues facing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) comnities in Kenya, developed primarily by and for LGBTI Kenyans who still face
titutionalized and social discrimination. IRN Africa has also co-sponsored
e International Day against Homophobia (IDAHO) events organized by the Gay
d Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, and the queer e-magazine Identity Kenya. IRN
ica has also prepared a new issue of Outliers, an e-journal featuring essays
tten by scholars and activists whose work is focused on African sexualities.
issues of Outliers are available on the IRN website.
Asia also sponsored one day of Chinese Lala Alliance’s bi-annual international
conference, where speakers and workshop trainers from India, the Philippines,
Taiwan, and Hong Kong discussed about the connection between queer and
feminist theory and sexuality activism. In order to encourage young scholars
and students interested in sexuality studies in the region, IRN Asia is now
organizing a competition to support the work of students with the best project
proposals in the field. Another major project of IRN Africa was the digital storytelling workshops implemented in China. The workshops teach participants
how to make short videos on their personal stories, capturing their oral history
through image and sounds, with the ultimate goal of sharing the videos with a
wider audience. The project also involves developing a training manual for the
workshops to be made available to other groups.
Letter from the Executive Officer
Office Staff
Founder & Board of Directors
Major Donors List
Jen Mitchell, English Department, The
Graduate Center, CUNY
Introductions & Recognitions
e first six months of 2012 was a particularly active and fruitful ped for the International Resource Network (IRN), a global network of
searchers, activists, artists, and teachers sharing knowledge about
verse sexualities, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
r organization continued to grow with new projects and alliances,
rving the needs of scholars, activists, artists and students worldde.
institutions; it was rather that we
Page 35
It does seem to me that being allowed “in” to
mainstream culture is not the goal that the Gay
Liberation Front (GLF) originally aimed at. It wasn’t
that we wanted to become accepted members of
established institutions; it was rather that we
wanted to change the institutions. Rather
than being allowed to join the military, we
wanted to challenge the whole idea of
CLAGS Newsletter Fall 2012
MD
PDATE FROM THE
NTERNATIONAL
ESOURCE
NETWORK
It wasn’t that we wanted to become
accepted members of established
war and state-sanctioned killing. The whole war machine was our target and
we weren’t eager to put on the uniform.
Certainly. But that’s hardly surprising. It has always been that way.
BG And this was the first time Amherst awarded an honorary doctorate
to a “marginalized person,” correct? In the description I quoted earlier, it is
interesting how they never mention gay or queer, but use the language of
“marginalizaton.” Do you have any thoughts on this?
Christopher Adam Mitchell, History
Department, Rutgers University-New
Brunswick
CLAGS Fellowships
CLAGS Events and Outreach 2012
Rainbow Book Fair
Visiting Scholars
Lambda Literary Awards
Seminar in the City: Queering the Curriculum
machine was our target and we
MD I think that it is all code for gay. Well, not all gay. Back in 1963, I wrote
a play called “In White America” about being black in white America, which
continues to be performed. When they say, “live on the margins,” I think the
reference is also to race, not just sexual orientation.
QUEER VOICES,
QUEER WORLDS
Ileana Jiménez has, for the past fifteen years,
been a leader in the field of social justice education. A 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching, her research in Mexico
MD Sure. It was, of course, a self-selected audience. And Amherst is
liberal—even more than it used to be. Its outgoing president, Anthony Marx,
has recently been named head of the library system in New York. In the past, he
made sure that a number of Africans received scholarships to Amherst College.
It was interesting how many of the students that were there were minorities. It
wasn’t that long ago that it was completely white and male.
MD
awarded the 2012 Kessler Award.
Chris A. Eng is a graduate student in the PhD
program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
He is interested in questions of knowledge, institutionality, and the body, working particularly with Asian/American cultural productions
through theorizations of queer discourses and
critical ethnic studies.
BG Radical ideas are something you have had for a long time. Perhaps the
audience at Amherst appreciated your critique more than some gays, who are
pushing instead for assimilation and integration.
BG That is another part of your critique, isn’t it? That the assimilationist
agenda is generally geared toward the upper-middle-class white male?
his recent honorary degree from Amherst College; and being
Randall Chamberlain is an immigration lawyer
in private practice, with a focus on immigration
issues facing LGBT people. Previously, he worked
in fundraising for international nonprofits, including Human Rights Watch, Action Against
Hunger, and EngenderHealth. He is on the advisory committee for the LGBT Rights Division at
Human Rights Watch, the LGBT Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of
New York, and the board of directors of Team New
York Aquatics. He studied public policy at Brown
University; economic and political development
at Columbia University’s School of International
and Public Affairs; and law at the University of
California, Hastings College of the Law. In Review
SPECIAL EVENTS IN SPRING 2012
The Homonationalism and Pinkwashing conference
will examine global queer resistance and complicity
in international relations. Activists and scholars will
convene and bring together theoretical and applied
perspectives, focusing on queer future, movements,
and efforts.
Neil Meyer, English Department, The
Graduate Center, CUNY
Coming Up
SPRING 2012
to increase these numbers through our Many who attend our events are Graduate
multiple outreach programs, which include Center students and faculty; however, we
social networking resources, our newly re- also attract academics from surrounding
designed website, and our bi-annual news- universities and members of the LGBTQ
letter, all helped us reach this goal.
community. CLAGS welcomes all to our free
events and we are committed to maintain an
CLAGS continues to increase communica- open dialogue with the public we serve.
tion with its members and seeks feedback
in order to improve our events. Feedback I look forward to another exciting year and
given for the 2011/12 year was resoundingly hope to see you at all of our events, entering
positive and many people who attended our into the stimulating discourse taking place
events have now become CLAGS members. I in LGBTQ studies at CLAGS.
encourage anyone reading this letter to contact me with any feedback you might have,
or proposals for events. If you are interested
in proposing an event, you can visit our webappy to report that site, where information on this process is
events have doubled listed, or email to [email protected].
d our ongoing goal
tion’s pre-eminent lgbt rights organization. She
has worked at the Ford Foundation and served
as Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation
from 2005 to 2010. She is the author of Virtual
Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. Later this year, Magnus Books
will publish her new book, Irresistible Revolution: Race, Class and the LGBT Imagination.
Vaid was a Visiting Senior Fellow with the City
University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center’s
Department of Sociology during the 2010-2011
academic year. In April 2009 Out magazine
named her one of the 50 most influential people
in the United States.
CLAGS Newsletter Fall 2012 Page 15
Kalle Westerling is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at CUNY Graduate Center, and in Performance Studies at Stockholm University, where he also got his M.A. in Performance Studies. Currently, he is
working on two primary projects, one being his Swedish dissertation about aesthetic and affective
resistance against heteronormative power and norm structures in contemporary drag show. The
other is an investigation of the New York City burlesque scene in the 1920s and 1930s.
award winner Monique Wittig, New York
artists Chitra Ganesh, Simone Leigh and
curator Dean Daderko discussed making
work in today’s art world that embodies
the uncompromising spirit of pioneers like
Wittig. For more information on speakers
and lecture topics, please see CLAGS’s
Spring 2012 Newsletter.
Daniel Hurewitz, History Department,
Hunter College, CUNY
CLAGS NEWS is published twice a year by the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. All submissions related to
the study of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual experiences are
welcome. Please address all inquires to CLAGSnews, The Graduate
Center, The City of New York, Room 7115, New York, NY 10016 Phone:
212.817.1955 or email: [email protected].
022
034
STAFF
Executive Director
James Wilson
Global Coordinator for IRN
Rüstem Ertug Altınay
Events and Outreach Coordinator Benjamin Gillespie
Financial and Administrative Director
Jasmina Sinanovic
Memberships and Fellowships Coordinator Sujay Pandit
Media and Design Intern
Kalle Westerling
Newsletter Editor
Benjamin Gillespie
Newsletter Design
Kalle Westerling
JASMINA SINANOVIC FINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR
Jasmina Sinanovic teaches at the Communications Department at the Bronx Community College and Women
Studies Department at the City College by day and is a performance/burlesque/theatre artist by night. Her
research interests are in queer, performance and postcolonial theory as well as the study of the idea of
Balkanism. She holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University and M.A. in Theatre from CUNY.
The Kessler Conversations celebrated
20 years of the Kessler Lectureship and
were spread across the 2011/12 academic
year. The award was initiated in 1991 by
Dr. Martin Duberman, CLAGS’s Founding
Director (who will be receiving the award
this fall) and with the financial support
of David Kessler. In place of an award,
CLAGS thought it would be valuable to
have multiple past Kessler Award winners
speak on emergent LGBTQ issues and the
history of queer studies in their individual
fields. This series also brought in emerging researchers and practitioners to help
evaluate where we have been and where
we are going in the field of LGBTQ studies.
James Green, History Department, Brown
University
INCOMING CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS
BENJAMIN GILLESPIE EVENTS AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR
KESSLER CONVERSATIONS 2012
Jeffrey Escoffier, Independent Scholar
Coming Up
Jason Baumann, Coordinator of Collection
Assessment and LGBT Collections, New
York Public Library
In Review
Chair: Jennifer Gaboury, Political
Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, Hunter College, CUNY
CLAGS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CLAGS Newsletter Fall 2012
Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History, Lehman College and The Graduate Center (CUNY)
Benjamin Gillespie is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. Benjamin holds an M.A. in
Theatre Studies from York University in Toronto, where he also received his B.A. with honors. His research
focuses around related interests in queer theatre/theory; performance art; nostalgia, memory, and materiality; the theatrical Avant-Garde; and intersections of U.S. and Canadian performance. Benjamin has presented
for multiple conferences in Canada and the U.S. and has been published in the Canadian Theatre Review,
the anthology TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work/Body of Art from Intellect Press, and has
forthcoming reviews in Theatre Survey and Theatre Journal.
at CLAGS has been
events and outreach
year. Despite a dire
limited resources,
vibrant calendar of
partner with many
nity creating a chalorm for intellectual
ations surrounding
edium of colloquia,
fellowships and
lecture series. The
showcases CLAGS’s
academic, artistic,
alike.
ITH BUTLER
CLAGS FOUNDER
James Wilson is Professor of English and Theatre at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York. Areas of research include queer theatre and performance, African American
theatre, and pedagogy. His articles have appeared in Urban Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year
College, and Theatre History Studies. His essay, “’Ladies and Gentlemen, People Die’: The Uncomfortable
Performances of Kiki and Herb,” appeared in an anthology of lesbian and gay theatre and performances in
Fall 2008. He is co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, which is published by the Martin E.
Theatre Segal Center (CUNY Graduate Center). His book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race,
Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, was published by University of Michigan Press in
2010, and a paperback version was made available in 2011.
Rüstem Ertug Altınay is the general coordinator and the Middle East regional coordinator of the International
Resource Network (IRN). Under the IRN, he isalso coordinating the Turkey’s Queer Lives oral history project
and the Transnational Peer Review Network for research on Middle Eastern sexualities. Ertug is a Ph.D.
candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. His main area of research is
gender, sexuality and body politics in Turkey. His work appeared in academic journals including Women’s
Studies Quarterly, Feminist Media Studies, the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, and
the Journal of Women’s History as well as various edited volumes. Ertug is also the project manager of the
Istanbul-based theater company, Theater Painted Bird.
BY BENJAMIN GILLESPIE
JAMES WILSON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
RUSTEM ERTUG ALTINAY GLOBAL COORDINATOR FOR IRN
EVENTS
TREACH
INTRODUCTIONS & RECOGNITIONS
CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS
CLAGS STAFF
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CLAGS STAFF
JAMES WILSON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
James Wilson is Professor of English and Theatre at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. Areas of research include queer theatre and performance, African American theatre, and pedagogy. His articles have appeared in Urban Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and Theatre History Studies. His essay, “’Ladies and Gentlemen,
People Die’: The Uncomfortable Performances of Kiki and Herb,” appeared in an anthology of lesbian and gay theatre and performances in Fall 2008. He is co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, which is published by the Martin E. Theatre
Segal Center (CUNY Graduate Center). His book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the
Harlem Renaissance, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2010, and a paperback version was made available in 2011.
RUSTEM ERTUG ALTINAY GLOBAL COORDINATOR FOR IRN
Rüstem Ertug Altınay is the general coordinator and the Middle East regional coordinator of the International Resource Network
(IRN). Under the IRN, he isalso coordinating the Turkey’s Queer Lives oral history project and the Transnational Peer Review Network
for research on Middle Eastern sexualities. Ertug is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. His main area of research is gender, sexuality and body politics in Turkey. His work appeared in academic journals including
Women’s Studies Quarterly, Feminist Media Studies, the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, and the Journal
of Women’s History as well as various edited volumes. Ertug is also the project manager of the Istanbul-based theater company,
Theater Painted Bird.
BENJAMIN GILLESPIE EVENTS AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR Benjamin Gillespie is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. Benjamin holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies from York
University in Toronto, where he also received his B.A. with honors. His research focuses around related interests in queer theatre/
theory; performance art; nostalgia, memory, and materiality; the theatrical Avant-Garde; and intersections of U.S. and Canadian
performance. Benjamin has presented for multiple conferences in Canada and the U.S. and has been published in the Canadian Theatre Review, the anthology TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work/Body of Art from Intellect Press, and has forthcoming
review in Theatre Survey.
JASMINA SINANOVIC FINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR
Jasmina Sinanovic teaches at the Communications Department at the Bronx Community College and Women Studies Department at
the City College by day and is a performance/burlesque/theatre artist by night. Her research interests are in queer, performance and
postcolonial theory as well as the study of the idea of Balkanism. She holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University and
M.A. in Theatre from CUNY.
SUJAY PANDIT MEMBERSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS COORDINATOR Sujay Pandit is a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. His work focuses on the interplay between space/
place, architecture, human rights and philosophy. He completed his B.A. in Philosophy and Politics at Sarah Lawrence College and
his M.A. in Performance Studies at New York University. He is also keenly interested in digital and new media. Outside of the academy, Sujay has worked as a graphic designer, digital archivist/photographer and multimedia specialist for multiple media outlets
including: Scientific American Magazine, PBS’ Art:21, the NYU Afghan Digital Library, and various corporations.
KALLE WESTERLING MEDIA AND DESIGN INTERN
Kalle Westerling is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at CUNY Graduate Center, and in Performance Studies at Stockholm University, where
he also got his M.A. in Performance Studies. Currently, he is working on two primary projects, one being his Swedish dissertation
about aesthetic and affective resistance against heteronormative power and norm structures in contemporary drag show. The other
is an investigation of the New York City burlesque scene in the 1920s and 1930s.
ALLI LINDNER DEVELOPMENT, MEMBERSHIPS, AND FELLOWSHIPS INTERN
Alli Lindner has been the Development, Memberships, and Fellowships intern at CLAGS since January of 2012. She is currently a
senior at Hunter College majoring in Women and Gender Studies. She will graduate with her bachelor’s degree in May of 2013. She
is also a senior fellow in the Young People For program and a key organizer of QRASH Course: Queers Resisting All Street Harassment.
CLAGS FOUNDER
Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, Lehman College and The Graduate Center (CUNY)
CLAGS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Chair: Jennifer Gaboury, Political Science
and Women’s and Gender Studies, Hunter
College, CUNY
Jason Baumann, Coordinator of Collection
Assessment and LGBT Collections, New York
Public Library
Thomas Glave, English, SUNY Binghamton
(On Leave)
James Green, History Department, Brown
University
Christopher Adam Mitchell, History
Department, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS
Alyssa Nitchun, Creative Time
Daniel Hurewitz, History Department,
Hunter College, CUNY
Angelique V. Nixon, Women’s Studies,
University of Connecticut
Matt Brim, English Department, College of
Staten Island, CUNY
Beck Jordan-Young, Women’s Studies
Department, Barnard College
Dagmawi Woubshet, English, Cornell
University
Jeffrey Escoffier, Independent Scholar
Neil Meyer, English Department, La Guardia
Community College, CUNY
Chris A. Eng is a graduate student in the PhD
program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
He is interested in questions of knowledge, institutionality, and the body, working particularly
with Asian/American cultural productions through
theorizations of queer discourses and critical ethnic studies.
Darnell L. Moore is a queer, anti-racist, profeminist writer and activist who lives in Brooklyn,
NY. He presently serves as the Director of Educational Initiatives at the Hetrick-Martin Institute
and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study
of Gender and Sexuality at NYU. He is also a Fellow
at the Global Justice Institute. He was appointed
as the inaugural chair of the City of Newark’s Advisory Commission on LGBTQ Concerns by Mayor
Cory A. Booker and is the co-coordinator, along
Ileana Jiménez has, for the past fifteen years,
been a leader in the field of social justice education. A 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Ful-
In Review
bright Award in Teaching, her research in Mexico
City focused on creating safe schools for LGBT
youth. In 2005, she founded the New York Independent Schools LGBT Educators Group, providing
educators professional development and networking opportunities. At the Little Red School House
& Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) in New York
City, she offers electives on feminism, LGBT literature, Toni Morrison, and writing memoir. Ileana is
also an associate faculty member at Bard College’s
Institute for Writing and Thinking. Founder and
sole blogger at Feminist Teacher, feministteacher.
com, she received her B.A. in English Literature at
Smith College, and an M.A. in English Literature at
Middlebury College.
Randall Chamberlain is an immigration lawyer
in private practice, with a focus on immigration
issues facing LGBT people. Previously, he worked
in fundraising for international nonprofits, including Human Rights Watch, Action Against Hunger,
and EngenderHealth. He is on the advisory committee for the LGBT Rights Division at Human
Rights Watch, the LGBT Rights Committee of the
Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and
the board of directors of Team New York Aquatics.
He studied public policy at Brown University; economic and political development at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs;
and law at the University of California, Hastings
College of the Law. Michelle Billies is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Social-Personality Psychology program of CUNY
Graduate Center. Based in part on a three-year research project in partnership with Queers for Economic Justice, Billies’ dissertation, entitled “Let
Me See Your ID: Surveillance Threat and the Construction of Human Security and Insecurity,” critiques everyday policing as a site of struggle over
bodies, space, and knowledge, fueled by accelerating forms of affective control. Concentrating on
the integration of theory, critical research methods, and liberatory pedagogies, Billies writes with
and through participatory action research (PAR)
approaches; homonationalism; black geographies;
transgender studies; transnational feminisms; and
affect theory. Billies is outgoing Co-Chair of QUNY,
the LGBTQ chartered student organization of CUNY
Graduate Center, participates as a member of CUNY
Graduate Center’s Public Science Project, and was
recently awarded a dissertation fellowship by
IRADAC, The Institute for Research on the African
Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. A
Brooklyn resident for 18 years, Billies maintains
a private Gestalt psychotherapy practice, loves
African dance class and birding, and lives in a fantastic house called Queer Study Hall.
Coming Up
INCOMING CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS
INCOMING CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS (CONT’D)
with Beryl Satter, of the Queer Newark Oral History
Project. His primary research interests include constructions and performances of sexual identity and
gender expressions within African-American religious spaces. His essays, poetry, op-eds and interviews examining theses issues have been published
in peer-reviewed and professional periodicals like
Trans-scripts: An Interdisciplinary Online Journal in
the Humanities, Theology & Sexuality, Black Theology: An International Journal, Pneuma: Journal for
the Society of Pentecostal Studies, Transforming
Anthropology, Mary: A Literary Quarterly, Lambda
Literary, TheBody.com, and Arts & Understanding.
He also is a contributing writer on Huffington Post,
PrettyQueer.com, Mondoweiss, and UrbanCusp, and
he is an Editorial Collective Member of The Feminist
Wire. Nick Salvato is Assistant Professor of Theatre and
a member of the graduate faculty of English at Cornell University. His first book, Uncloseting Drama:
American Modernism and Queer Performance (Yale
University Press, 2010), is part of the series Yale
Studies in English. His articles have appeared in
such journals as Camera Obscura, Journal of Dra-
matic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, and Modern
Drama, where he guest-edited a special issue on
“Gossip” and where he is the book review editor. His
essay, “Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the
Wooster Group,” which won Modern Drama’s award
for Outstanding Essay of 2007, was recently reprinted in Reading Modern Drama (University of Toronto
Press, 2012). His current book project, “Obstruction,” investigates the value to intellectual work of
putatively impedimental experiential phenomena
like embarrassment, laziness, cynicism, slowness,
and exhaustion.
John-Paul Sanchez, MD, MPH has focused his
research on the health needs of the LGBT community in the areas of medical education, sexually
transmitted diseases, and smoking cessation. He
is a founding Board Member of the Bronx Lesbian
and Gay Health Resource Consortium (currently
the Bronx Community Pride Center). He currently
serves as the Chairperson of the Einstein LGBT
Steering Committee of the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine and is charged with building a supportive institutional climate to support the personal and
professional development of students. Clinically,
he practices emergency medicine at Montefiore
Medical Center, Bronx, NY.
Andrew Spieldenner earned his Ph.D. in Communication & Culture from Howard University with
an emphasis on health. Dr. Spieldenner has held
positions at the NYC Department of Health, Black
AIDS Institute, the Latino Commission on AIDS and
the National Association of People with AIDS. He is
currently Assistant Professor in the Department of
Speech Communication, Rhetoric and Performance
Studies at Hofstra University. Dr. Spieldenner is
openly living with HIV and a long-time community advocate with twenty years serving high-risk
populations including racial/ethnic minorities, gay
men and people living with HIV/AIDS. His research
focuses on HIV stigma and disclosure, intercultural
communication, health communication, cultural
studies and sexuality.
The Caribbean Region of the International Resource Network Proudly Introduces:
Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean:
Complexities of Place, Desire and Belonging
An online multi-media collection including activist reports, creative writing,
critical essays, film, interviews, music, and performance and visual arts; a project
reflecting on the complexities of homophobias in the Caribbean, while also
expanding understanding of Caribbean sexual minority experiences and activism
in the region and its diaspora.
Towards greater understanding and deeper reflections of Caribbean Sexualities,
this collection features engaging scholarly work and highlights of exciting
activism across the region, alongside dynamic artistic expressions.
Edited by the Caribbean Regional Board
Co-Chairs Rosamond S. King and Angelique V. Nixon
Board Members: Natalie Bennett and Colin Robinson,
along with co-ordination consultant Vidyaratha Kissoon
Visit www.caribbeanhomophobias.org for the virtual launch
Honor Roll — $100–249
Anthony Allacino
Kelly Anderson
Mark Blasius & Rico Barbosa
Terry Boggis
Marilyn Neimark & Alisa Solomon
Richard Picardi
Thomas Rini
Richard Robertson
Marc Rogers
Bruce Rosen
Dianne Rubenstein
Alan Sabal
Sarah Schulman
Larry Schulte
Mark Schulte
Laurence Philip Senelick
James Shields
Michael Sonberg
Arthur Spears
Marc Stein
Joseph Strauss
Dara Strolovitch
Carl Sylvestre
Polly Thistlethwaite
John Treat
Randolph Trumbach
Charles Upchurch
Carmen Vazquez
Edward Weber
Amanda Wilson
Evan Wilson
Kevin Brooks Winkler
Hugh Young
Institutional Support and
Foundations
Robert Giard Foundation
Ford Foundation
CUNY Graduate Center
EMERGENCY ASK FUNDRAISER
ERRATA
In December of last year, CLAGS initiated the Emergency Ask Fundraiser to provide financial support at a time
when the organization was facing harsh budget cuts. We are pleased to report that our Emergency Ask raised
more than $25,000. It was truly heartwarming and reassuring to hear from so many of our members, new and
old, and to receive their financial help at time when CLAGS needs it most. Thanks to the generosity of those
who support CLAGS, we can continue to provide all the resources, tools and fellowship support that makes
CLAGS an invaluable part of the LGBT community. If you did not get a chance to donate to the Emergency Ask,
please consider making a donation, in any amount, on our website www.clags.org. We thank you!
In our last newsletter, we incorrectly identified Mark Blasius and
regretfully omitted Bec JordanYoung.
In Review
Anonymous
Diane Bernard & Joan Heller
Glenn Burger & Steven Kruger
Sarah Chinn
Jill Dolan & Stacy Wolf
Jack Drescher
Martin Duberman & Eli Zal
Lisa Duggan
Jeffrey Escoffier
Katherine Franke
James Green
Daniel Hurewitz
Bec Jordan-Young
David R. Kessler
Loring McAlpin
Judith Milhous
Christopher Adam Mitchell
Jonathan Ned Katz
Pam Parker
Colin Smith
Urvashi Vaid
Martha Vicinus
Joseph Wittreich Jr. & Stuart
Curran
Boaz Adler
David Allyn
Dennis Barnes
Judith Butler
Carol Chinn
David Eng
Milt Ford
Jennifer Gaboury
Larry Gross
Arnold Grossman
Eric Hartman
James Holmes
David Jones
Regina Kunzel
Arthur Leonard
C. Richard Matthews
Robert McCullough Jr.
Weston Milliken
Fred Moten
Rosemary Palladino
Nancy Rabinowitz
David Serlin
Thomas Spear
Susan Stryker
Carole S. Vance
James Wilson
Dagmawi Woubshet
Perry Brass
Matt Brim
Michael Bronski
Diane Bruessow
Howard Carlin
Lee Ross Chambers
Ahuva Cohen
Margaret Cruikshank
Paisley Currah
Dennis Debiak
Muriel Dimen
Ann Fitzgerald
Chris R. Ford
Adam Geary
Steven H. Haeberle
David Jones
Louis Kampf
Arnold Kantrowitz
Charles Kloth
Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes
Paul Lauter
Ronnie Lesser
William D. Lubart
Wahneema Lubiano
Harry Lutrin
Hermes Malea & Carey Maloney
Harriet Malinowitz
Douglas Mao
Joanne Meyerowitz
Bob Meyers
Karen Miller
Michael J. Miller
Jennifer Mitchell
Virginia Mollenkott
Amy Moran
Presidential Circle — Over
$500
Dean’s List — $250–499
The following generous
CLAGS members have
donated $100.00 or more to
our organization between
July 1st 2011 and June 30th
2012.
Coming Up
MAJOR DONORS
This page is an ad.
CALL FOR PAPERS: WERK IT—GAY FOR PLAY
The LGBTQ Focus Group of the Association for Theatre
in Higher Education (ATHE) invites panel, performance,
roundtable, seminar, “text-and-response,” working group,
and related proposals for ATHE 2013 in Orlando, FL. Although presentations on all topics related to theatre and
performance in general and to LGBTQ issues in particular
will be considered, we encourage participants to develop
ideas related to the conference theme, “P[L]AY: Performance, Pleasure, and Pedagogy.”
Provocatively leaping the gap between pleasure and labor,
play and political economy, the conference theme “P[L]AY”
invites a wide range of interventions from queer theorists,
critics, performers, and performing theorists with (a critical) attitude. The LGBTQ Focus Group is therefore interested in sessions exploring the ways in which work and
leisure collide and collude in queer experience, aesthetics,
and activism. We hope our sessions will attend to the theatrical, historical, geographical, and cultural dimensions
of the specific roles that queer persons occupy in play-aswork and work-as-play economies. Questions to be considered may include:
— How do queerness and labor intersect in local and global economies of pleasure? Specific sites of investigation
might include sex work; drag performers as tourist attractions; worker efficiency as werk; unique expectations upon
queers in service industries (food service, tourism, beauty
care, interior design, etc.); the marketization of comingout narratives in solo drama, reality television, and tabloid journalism.
— In what ways do theatre and entertainment for young
people, particularly (but not only) from Disney and its
subsidiaries, deliver “scriptive things” that shape the consciousness of queer youth?
— How does play become an imperative for art students,
whether in conservatories or liberal arts colleges, and
what effects does this imperative have upon queer youth
and queers aspiring to be artists? By extension, how does
the institutionalization of play as pedagogy create its own
challenges for students learning to play in the real world?
— How is queerness managed in professional sports,
whether in recruiting practices, journalistic coverage, or
team dynamics? What sorts of queer interventions are at
play when sports are placed on stage or otherwise made to
feel theatrical?
— What potential do playful dramaturgies of protest—
from Brecht to Boal to Butler; from deep play to dark play
to camp play—continue to hold amidst the changing demands placed upon queer activism, locally and globally, by
neoliberalism and the decline of liberal democracy?
— What forms of gender play and playful sexual expression have yet to be discovered in the representations and
narratives of the dramatic canon, not only in authors more
friendly to queer readings (Shakespeare, Stein) but also in
those more seemingly resistant (Goethe, Chekhov)?
We also invite session coordinators to think “queerly”
about the kinds of sessions that they propose and the disciplinary diversity of the colleagues in those proposed sessions (though a certain number of traditional panel proposals are, of course, welcome). How, for instance, might
we profit from a series of participants’ short assessments
of a single, guiding performance or text? What kind of
conversation would emerge in a seminar whose members
(scholars, artists, and others) circulated pre-written papers to generate discussion questions for the conference?
How might a session take advantage of the conference’s
local tourist attractions to craft site-specific performance
interventions? What more radical alternatives to the traditional panel have yet to be conceived?
For more information, contact conference organizer Jason
Fitzgerald ([email protected]). Consultation with the
LGBTQ conference planner well in advance of the November 1 deadline is recommended and appreciated. Complete
sessions are strongly encouraged, but individual paper proposals may also be submitted.
In order to be considered, individual proposals must be
submitted by October 1, 2012. Abstracts (250 words) must
include the presentation title and the submitter’s contact
information and must specify any A/V needs. Individuals
wishing to identify colleagues with whom to create sessions prior to the November 1 deadline may use the LGBTQ
listserv to circulate questions or possible session topics ([email protected]). ATHE does not accept individual paper
submissions: do not submit your individual proposal on
the ATHE website.
Session coordinators with proposals that encompass the
interests of multiple focus groups to pursue a multidisciplinary session are especially encouraged.
LGBTQ FOCUS GROUP | ASSOCIATION FOR THEATRE IN HIGHER EDUCATION (ATHE) CONFERENCE
AUGUST 1-4, 2013, HYATT REGENCY (GRAND CYPRESS), ORLANDO, FL
This page is an ad.
SEPTEMBER 27–30, 2012
NEW YORK CITY
CUNY Graduate Center
NYU Kimmel Center
The LGBT Center
365 Fifth Avenue
60 Washington Square South
208 West 13th Street
radically
CLAGS & The Harry Hay Centennial Committee present
GAY
The Life & Visionary
Legacy of Harry Hay
Conference Keynotes:
Bettina Aptheker
Cheryl Clarke
John D’Emilio
Will Roscoe
Performance hosted by the New York
(dis)Order of the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence
For more information, to register or purchase tickets, go to:
http://tinyurl.com/Harry-Hay
social
&
cultural
analysis
In honor of the one hundredth anniversary of Harry Hay’s birth, this four
day conference and evening of performance will examine Hay’s life and
ideas and explore the multiple facets
of LGBT life that Hay pioneered.
Through film, panels, papers, oral histories and experiential workshops, the
conference will focus on the themes of
LGBT arts, political activism, spirituality and sexual identities as they
developed over the span of Hay’s life
and as they evolve into the future.
An actor, Communist labor organizer, musicologist, gay theoretician
and political activist, Harry Hay left
a lasting mark that continues well
into the 21st century. He was active
in the Los Angeles avant-garde arts
movement of the 1930s; participated
in the San Francisco General Strike of
1934; fought against Fascism, racism
and Anti-Semitism in the 1940s. In
1948, he conceived of and created the
first sustained, gay activist group in
America, the Mattachine Society. In
the 1970s, he was central to the founding of the Radical Faeries.
CLAGS
FELLOWSHIPS
BY SUJAY PANDIT
This past year, CLAGS offered five fellowships: The Martin
Duberman Fellowship, The Robert Giard Fellowship and the
Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay
Studies, the CLAGS Fellowship Award and the Paul MonetteRoger Horwitz Dissertation Prize. We were impressed by the
number of applications and strength of all our candidates!
For The Robert Giard Fellowship, for instance, we received
applications from artists, filmmakers and scholars from
as far as Cairo, Egypt and Beirut, Lebanon. Our fellowship
winners are profiled in this newsletter and on our website.
Please check out our winners to read more about their
scholarship and artistic endeavors!
film or video of no more than 30 minutes in length. This
award will support a directed project, one that is new or
continuing, that addresses issues of sexuality, gender, or
LGBTQ identity.
The Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship supports
research by a junior scholar (graduate student, untenured
university professor or independent researcher) and a
senior scholar (tenured university professor or advanced
independent scholar) into the impact of lesbians and/or
gay men on U.S. society and culture. Scholars conducting
research on lesbians are especially encouraged to apply. It
is open to researchers both inside and outside the academy
and is adjudicated by the Joan Heller–Diane Bernard
Fellowship committee in conjunction with CLAGS. The
winner may be asked to participate in CLAGS’s colloquium
series the following academic year to present her/his
research project.
The Martin Duberman Fellowship is an endowed fellowship
named for CLAGS founder and first executive director,
Martin Duberman, this fellowship is awarded to a senior
scholar (tenured university professor or advanced
independent scholar) from any country doing scholarly
research on the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer
Fall 2012, we will be offering these fellowships again, so
(LGBTQ) experience.
please visit http://www.clags.org for instructions on how
The Robert Giard Fellowship is an annual award named for to apply.
Robert Giard, a portrait, landscape, and figure photographer
whose work often focused on LGBTQ lives and issues, this
award is presented to an emerging, early or mid-career
artist from any country working in photography, photobased media, video, or moving image, including short-form
The Passing the Torch Award
A $2,000 award to be given annually for a graduate student, an academic, or an
independent scholar for work on a dissertation, first, or second book related.
The fellowship is open to intellectuals who have demonstrated a significant
contribution to the field of gay and lesbian studies. Intended to give the
scholar the most help possible in furthering her or his work, the fellowship
will be able to be used for research, travel, or writing support.
This award recognizes the achievements and promise of an emerging scholar
in LGTBQ Studies. The awardee is chosen annually by the CLAGS fellowships
committee from a list of nominations made by our national advisory board of
distinguished scholars in the field.
The Martin Duberman Fellowship
This award, which honors the memory of Rivera, a transgender activist, will be
given for the best book or article to appear in transgender studies during the
year. Adjudicated by the CLAGS fellowships committee.
Graduate Student Paper Award
Each year, CLAGS sponsors a student paper competition open to all graduate
students enrolled in the CUNY system. A cash prize is awarded to the best
paper written in a CUNY graduate class on any topic related to gay, lesbian,
bisexual, queer, or transgender experiences.
An annual award named for Robert Giard, a portrait, landscape, and figure
photographer whose work often focused on LGBTQ lives and issues, this award
is presented to an emerging, early or mid-career artist from any country
working in photography, photo-based media, video, or moving image, including
short-form film or video of no more than 30 minutes in length. This award will
support a directed project, one that is new or continuing, that addresses issues
of sexuality, gender, or LGBTQ identity.
Undergraduate Student Paper Award
The Kessler Award
Each year, CLAGS sponsors two student travel awards open to all graduate
students enrolled in the CUNY system. A cash prize is awarded to a student
presenting subject matter that addresses gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer,
or transgender issues in their respective field. Presentations can be for
conferences held in the U.S. or abroad.
The Kessler award is given to a scholar who has, over a number of years,
produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on
the field of GLBTQ Studies. The awardee, who is chosen by the CLAGS Board of
Directors, receives a monetary award and gives CLAGS’ annual Kessler Lecture.
Each year, CLAGS sponsors a student paper competition open to all
undergraduate students enrolled in the CUNY or SUNY system. A cash prize is
awarded to the best paper written in a CUNY or SUNY undergraduate class on
any topic related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, or transgender experiences.
Student Travel Award
More information: http://www.clags.org
Coming Up
The Robert Giard Fellowship
This award, which honors the memories of Monette, a poet and author, and his
partner, Horwitz, an attorney, will be given for the best dissertation in LGTBQ
Studies, broadly defined, by a PhD candidate within the City University of New
York system. The dissertation should have been defended in the previous year.
Adjudicated by the fellowships committee of the Center for Lesbian and Gay
Studies.
In Review
This fellowship supports research by a junior scholar (graduate student,
untenured university professor or independent researcher) and a senior
scholar (tenured university professor or advanced independent scholar) into
the impact of lesbians and/or gay men on U.S.society and culture. Scholars
conducting research on lesbians are especially encouraged to apply. It is open
to researchers both inside and outside the academy and is adjudicated by the
Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship committee in conjunction with CLAGS.
The Paul Monette–Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize
The Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship
The Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies
An endowed fellowship named for CLAGS founderand first executive director,
Martin Duberman, this fellowship is awarded to a senior scholar (tenured
university professor or advanced independent scholar) from any country doing
scholarly research on the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer (LGBTQ)
experience.
CLAGS Fellowship Award
AWARD
WINNERS
ABEL SIERRA MADERO
CARY CRONENWETT
MARTIN DUBERMAN FELLOWSHIP
GIARD FELLOWSHIP
Abel Sierra Madero holds a PhD in History from the University of Havana (2009). Over
the last ten years, he has worked in the fields of sexuality and gender and their links
to nation-building and nationalism. He has lectured widely in universities in the
US, Spain, UK, Italy, Israel and Mexico. He has been awarded the prize Casa de las
Américas for his book Del otro lado del espejo. La sexualidad en la construcción de
la nación cubana (2006). He has been also been awarded an Erasmus Mundus visiting
fellowship and a research grant from Ford Foundation/SEPHIS. He is a member of the
Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC).
Cary Treadwell Cronenwett received the Bay Area Guardian Goldie Award for Local
Discovery after the release of his 2009 film, Maggots and Men (55min). His first
short film, Phineas Slipped (2002) played extensively in the international LGBT film
festival circuit. Currently based in Los Angeles, he is pursuing an MFA in the Film/
Video program at CalArts, but is on exchange at Universtät der Kunst in Berlin. He
is in post-production on a documentary/fiction hybrid set in Haiti, which is loosely
based on the novel, Kathy Goes to Haiti, by Kathy Acker.
Abel Sierra Madero’s third book entitled From the “New Man” to the Transvestism of
the State: Heteronormative Nationalism in the Cuban Revolution, studies the role of
heteronormative nationalism in the construction of the ‘revolutionary’ consciousness and the implementation of policies regarding sexuality at the beginning of the
Revolution and nowadays. By focusing on “heteronormative nationalism”, he aims to
explore the ways the connections between nationalism and heteronormativity have
been an integral part of processes of “revolutionary engineering” and politics. This
time, his efforts in historicizing the Cuban nation incorporate a transnational line of
inquiry that he has not explored previously. Although the Cuban Revolution has promoted the myth of its political exceptionalism and cultural independence, he illustrates how transnational models of social engineering travelled across the socialist
bloc and fed a model of both traditional masculinity and socialist morality embodied
in the concept of the New Man, in vogue during the first decades of the Revolution.
The second part of the book contrasts such initial moments with the (local) state’s
reactions to the new challenges that (global) queer scholarship and activism introduced through the framework of “sexual diversity.” To that end, he will analyze
the contemporary discourses and policies of the state’s National Center of Sexual
Education (CENESEX) regarding sexual diversity and trans identities. His working
hypothesis is that such interventions can be understood as manifestations of what
he defines as “transvestism of the state,” a new set of discursive and policy adjustments to the global framework of cultural and sexual “diversity” that translate
locally into the state’s co-optation of sexual and political claims.
Go with Flo is a personal essay film that describes Cronenwett’s relationship with a
close friend and creative partner, Flo McGarrell, and revolves around a dream McGarrell had, which caused him to have a realization of his transgender identity and
ultimately brought them together.
The film is a non-traditional love story that spans the time from when Cronenwett
first met McGarrell in 2004 to McGarrell’s memorial service in 2010. Cronenwett is
recreating the story from memory with the intent of creating an archival document
that solidifies their relationship. The first person narration will be punctuated by
dates, which suggest that parts of the text are excerpts from diary entries. Archival
footage from a variety of sources piece together a document of visual evidence of
their work as individuals and as creative partners. Go with Flo will stand on its own
as a short work (with a run time of 20 minutes), and will eventually be screened as
a companion piece to Kathy Goes to Haiti, which is a documentary/fiction hybrid that
revolves around the incomplete narrative (based on the 1978 novel, Kathy Goes to
Haiti, by Kathy Acker) McGarrell and Cronenwett were co-directing together at the
time of McGarrell’s death. This short, experimental narrative film was intended to
be part of a longer work based on Acker’s complete novel, which was scheduled for
completion in summer of 2011, but less than three weeks after wrapping production
on the short, McGarrell died in the earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010.
Go with Flo investigates McGarrell’s impact on the lives of artists, particularly queer
artists, at FOSAJ art center in Jacmel. A context for interpreting McGarrell’s contributions to the queer community in Jacmel will be created through lesbian, gay, and
transgender Haitians discussing life for queer people in Haiti.
MARLON BAILEY
HELLER–BERNARD FELLOWSHIP 2012
Coming Up
EMILY THUMA
HELLER–BERNARD FELLOWSHIP 2012
Thuma is currently revising her dissertation into a book manuscript. The
project writes a history of U.S.-based feminist opposition to intimate and
state violence against women in the 1970s and 1980s that emphasizes
antiracist and queer initiatives. By investigating the collective actions of
radical women of color and white women, lesbian women, and institutionalized and imprisoned women, Thuma shows that the mainstreaming
of gendered violence as a target of law enforcement and mental health
In Review
Emily Thuma received her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in September 2011. Her research and teaching focus in gender
and sexuality studies and modern U.S. social and cultural history, with
particular emphasis in the politics of violence, citizenship, and social
movements. The completion of her dissertation, “‘Not a Wedge, But a
Bridge:’ Prisons, Feminist Activism, and the Politics of Gendered Violence,
1968-1987,” was supported by the American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women and the NYU Dean’s Dissertation
Fellowship. She currently teaches Queer Studies and Comparative Ethnic
Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
interventions was a far more contested and uneven process than has previously been considered. She asks how activists’ differential relationships
to systems of incarceration and policing, and to movements for prisoners’
and mental patients’ rights, gay and lesbian liberation, and racial justice,
shaped how they organized around violence and imagined ideas of safety,
justice, and redress.
In “I Like it Raw:” Black Gay Sex in the Age of AIDS, Marlon seeks to understand why and how Black gay men engage in raw sex despite the pervasive stigma associated with them and their sexual practices in this time
of high prevalence of HIV among communities of Black gay men and men
who have sex with men (MSM). He wants to know if and how raw sex
practices serve as a means through which Black gay men/MSM pursue
sexual pleasure on their own terms despite the stigma associated with
it. Furthermore, he wants to understand the kind of sex that Black gay
men/MSM have and the logics that undergird these practices to develop
more sex positive and effective HIV prevention strategies. Drawing from
what M. Jacqui Alexander refers to as erotic autonomy and Cathy J. Cohen’s notion of deviance as resistance, he theorizes how Black gay men’s
engagement in raw sex might constitute a pursuit of sexual autonomy
despite the stigmatizing gaze of public health and the larger society. This
project is a combination of ethnography and discursive analyses. The ethnographic dimension will consist of interviews with Black gay men who
claim to engage in raw sex in order to learn about their practices and the
contexts, situations and spaces in which they occur. This project also
includes analyses of raw sex pornography and Black, gay, sexual/social
networking sites. Ultimately, he intends for this research to contribute to
HIV/AIDS prevention studies by highlighting the pursuit of erotic and raw
sexual pleasure as an autonomous practice, whereby Black gay men negotiate between pleasure and risk, but they are not expected to substitute
pleasure for “safe sex.”
Marlon M. Bailey is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and American Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington. His is also a Visiting
Professor at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) in the Department of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. Marlon
holds a PhD in African American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in
Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California-Berkeley.
His forthcoming book manuscript, Butch Queens up in Pumps: Gender, Performance and Ballroom Culture in Detroit, is a performance ethnography
of the House/Ball community and will be published by the University of
Michigan Press. Marlon’s most recent essay, “Gender/Racial Realness:
Theorizing the Gender System in Ballroom Culture,” appears in Feminist
Studies (2011).
CLAGS EVENTS
AND OUTREACH
2012
BY BENJAMIN GILLESPIE
social networking resources, our newly re- also attract academics from surrounding
designed website, and our bi-annual news- universities and members of the LGBTQ
community. CLAGS welcomes all to our free
letter, all helped us reach this goal.
events and we are committed to maintain an
CLAGS continues to increase communica- open dialogue with the public we serve.
tion with its members and seeks feedback
in order to improve our events. Feedback I look forward to another exciting year and
given for the 2011/12 year was resoundingly hope to see you at all of our events, entering
positive and many people who attended our into the stimulating discourse taking place
events have now become CLAGS members. in LGBTQ studies at CLAGS. I encourage anyone reading this letter to
contact CLAGS with any feedback and/or
proposals for events. If you are interested in
proposing an event, you can visit our webIn the past year, I am happy to report that site, where information on this process is
attendance rates at our events have doubled listed, or email to [email protected].
from previous years, and our ongoing goal
to increase these numbers through our Many who attend our events are Graduate
multiple outreach programs, which include Center students and faculty; however, we
I am very proud of what CLAGS has accomplished through our events and outreach
programs over the past year. Despite a dire
financial situation and limited resources,
CLAGS offered a vibrant calendar of events
as we continued to partner with many members of the community in order to create a
challenging and diverse platform for intellectual leadership and conversation surrounding LGBTQ issues in the medium of
colloquia, seminars, conferences, fellowships and awards ceremonies, and lecture
series.
JASBIR PUAR
JUDITH BUTLER
RABIH ALAMEDDINE
HANEEN MAIKEY
The Homonationalism and Pinkwashing conference
will examine global queer resistance and complicity
in international relations. Activists and scholars will
convene and bring together theoretical and applied
perspectives, focusing on queer future, movements,
and efforts.
Homonationalism and
Pinkwashing
CUNY Graduate Center, New York
April 10–13, 2013
Out of the Ivory Closet: Scholars and Activists on the Frontlines
The celebration of CLAGS twentieth anniversary
continued with the Kessler Conversation between Susan Stryker, Kessler Lecturer in 2008,
and Urvashi Vaid, Kessler Lecturer in 2010. This
conversation opened up a dialogue on the important link between scholarship and activism with
two activists/scholars who have been on the
frontline of LGBT politics for more than twenty
years.
Urvashi Vaid is the Director of the Engaging
Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and
Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. She was
the Executive Director of the National Gay and
Susan Stryker is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Director of
the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University
of Arizona. She was the Executive Director of
the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
Stryker’s most recent book is Transgender History (Seal Press 2008). She is also the co-editor
of The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge
2006), which has won a Lambda Book Award.
She won an Emmy Award for the documentary
film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s
Cafeteria (Frameline/ITVS 2005).
SPECIAL EVENTS IN SPRING 2012
For more information on these events,
or to access recordings, please contact:
[email protected].
Rainbow Book Fair Kickoff – Assaracus: A
Celebration of Gay Poetry To kick off the
Rainbow Book Fair, CLAGS and Sibling Rivalry
Press presented poets from the first six issues of
Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry—the world’s
only print journal dedicated to the gay poet.
Poets read together, legend alongside rising star;
established artist next to emerging artist. The
event showcased the collective voices of some
of gay poetry’s brightest contemporary writers in
one place, at one time, and featured the launch
of Assaracus: Issue 06.
Endowed Lecture: Scenes from a Jamaican
Childhood Thomas Glave (SUNY Binghamton)
gave the 2011 Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill
Memorial Lecture. This lecture is meant to commemorate the lives of the American poets Audre
Lorde (1934 -1992) and Essex Hemphill (1957
-1995), as well as encourage exciting scholarship
and literary production within the communities to
whom their poetry and prose spoke. Co-sponsored
by CLAGS, the CUNY Center for the Humanities, and
the NYPL.
Coming Up
SPRING 2012
Lesbian Taskforce from 1989-1992 and again
from 1997-2000, and built it to become the nation’s pre-eminent lgbt rights organization. She
has worked at the Ford Foundation and served as
Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation from
2005 to 2010. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. Later this year, Magnus Books will publish her new book, Irresistible Revolution: Race,
Class and the LGBT Imagination. Vaid was a
Visiting Senior Fellow with the City University of
New York (CUNY) Graduate Center’s Department
of Sociology during the 2010-2011 academic
year. In April 2009 Out magazine named her one
of the 50 most influential people in the United
States.
In Review
In Fall 2011, Kessler speakers included:
Edmund White in conversation with fiction writer Rakesh Satyal on the changing
face of queer fiction; American cultural
anthropologists Esther Newton, Gayle Rubin, and Carole Vance discussed the value
of ethnographic methodologies within the
study of sexual subcultures in the U.S.;
and lastly, in memory of late Kessler
award winner Monique Wittig, New York
artists Chitra Ganesh, Simone Leigh and
curator Dean Daderko discussed making
work in today’s art world that embodies
the uncompromising spirit of pioneers like
Wittig. For more information on speakers
and lecture topics, please see CLAGS’s
Spring 2012 Newsletter.
The Kessler Conversations celebrated
20 years of the Kessler Lectureship and
were spread across the 2011/12 academic
year. The award was initiated in 1991 by
Dr. Martin Duberman, CLAGS’s Founding
Director (who will be receiving the award
this fall) and with the financial support
of David Kessler. In place of an award,
CLAGS thought it would be valuable to
have multiple past Kessler Award winners
speak on emergent LGBTQ issues and the
history of queer studies in their individual
fields. This series also brought in emerging researchers and practitioners to help
evaluate where we have been and where
we are going in the field of LGBTQ studies.
KESSLER CONVERSATIONS 2012
KESSLER CONVERSATIONS (cont’d)
Aids/Activism/Art: Looking Backward/
Looking Forward
The final installment of CLAGS Kessler Conversations series was able to bring together
past Kessler Lecturers Douglas Crimp (2007)
and Sarah Schulman (2009) along with critic
and curator Nathan Lee. Moderated by CLAGS
Board Director Daniel Hurewitz, the panelists
discussed the AIDS crisis, AIDS activism, and
the political role of art in organizing the LGBT
community and creating awareness of the epidemic’s impact and promoting the LGBT community’s response to historical trauma of AIDS.
Both Crimp and Schulman were active in ACT UP
and contributed their skills as writers, critics,
journalists and artists to the AIDS movement.
Douglas Crimp is a critic and queer theorist who
served as the editor of October, a leading journal of cultural and art criticism from 1977 to
1990. As an editor of October, Crimp published
a special entitled “AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism,” which helped to articulate the
political and cultural challenge of the AIDS crisis. In 1990, he published (with Adam Rolston)
AIDS Demo Graphics, which illustrated the role
artists had in creating an increased public
awareness of the stigma and social inequities
that AIDS created. In 2002 Crimp published
Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS
and Queer Politics exploring, among other topics, the link between artistic representations
of mourning and militant activism. Since 1991,
Crimp has taught in the visual and cultural
studies program at the University of Rochester
where he is now the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History.
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, essayist, playwright and filmmaker. She has written on AIDS
since the beginning of the epidemic. The author
of popular and well-received novels such as After Delores, People Trouble, and Rat Bohemia, in
1995 she published My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, a
collection of her journalism that chronicles the
years of conservative disregard for LGBT issues
and includes coverage of the evolution of the
AIDS crisis. Since 2001, Schulman has worked
with Jim Hubbard, with whom she founded the
New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film
Festival (now called MIX) to establish the ACT
UP Oral History Project and has produced (with
Hubbard) a feature-length documentary entitled United in Anger: The History of ACT UP
based on oral history archives. Schulman is a
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at
the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
Nathan Lee is a critic and a curator of the moving image. A former critic of the New York Times,
the Village Voice and NPR, he is a contributing
editor of Film Comment. Among his curatorial
projects have been Buddy List, at Space 414,
Brooklyn; Picturing the Shoah at the YIVO Center for Jewish Research in New York; and A/B
Machines: A Cautionary Tale at the Black Door
in Istanbul. He is also a program associate at
Platform Garanti in Istanbul.
Aids/Activism/Art: Looking Backward/Looking Forward Panel Participants, Picture: Kalle Westerling.
SPECIAL EVENTS IN SPRING 2012 (cont’d)
Retro(Per)spectives: Alisa Solomon and Split
Britches in Conversation Renowned queer
performance group Split Britches were honored
as the recipients of the Edwin Booth Award,
bestowed each year to an individual or organization who has made a substantial contribution to
American theatre and performance in New York.
CLAGS hosted a panel discussion with renowned
theatre scholar and journalist Alisa Solomon
(and past CLAGS Executive Director) and Peggy
Shaw and Lois Weaver of Split Britches in order
to discuss the impact of their past work and
their continual influence on queer performance
across the globe. Co-sponsored by CLAGS, the
Doctoral Theatre Student’s Association (DTSA), the
Doctoral Student’s Association, and Mise en Scene.
2012 RAINBOW BOOK FAIR: EVEN
BIGGER AND BETTER
Our goal for 2013 is to reach out more successfully to mainstream and larger university presses, who have backed away from
queer writers and readers since the “golden
age” of queer publishing in the early 1990s. As this year’s RBF shows, there’s a large and
enthusiastic audience for LGBT books. Planning for the 5th Rainbow Book Fair is already
underway: we’ll see you next March! In Review
lisher Perry Brass. And for the first time the
RBF included a panel on comics and graphic
novels. We were lucky enough to have artists
who were among the founders of the queer
comix movement, Jennifer Camper and Ivan
Velez, as well as contemporary web comix
artists A.K. Summers, Chuck McKinney, and
Chino. And Nathaniel Siegel and Regie Cabico
reprised their hugely popular Poetry Salon, in
which dozens of poets read from their work.
The Rainbow Book Fair is the largest queer
book expo in North America and is now
spawning similar events around the U.S.,
most recently the OutWrite Expo in Washington, DC. Designed to provide space for
the diversity of queer, trans, and gendernonconforming writers and publishers -- especially small and academic presses -- the
RBF’s main event is its two exhibition halls. Exhibitors ranged from the much-beloved
Bluestockings Bookshop to a bevy of LGBT
romance publishers to small poetry presses
like Bench Press Books and Sibling Rivalry
Press.
Fairgoers also had the opportunity to hear
major queer and trans writers read from and
talk about their work. Christopher Bram,
Justin Vivan Bond, Laurie Weeks, Paul Russell, and James Earl Hardy all read from new
work and participated in lively question and
answer sessions. Equally compelling was the
roster of panels spotlighting writers, publishers, and scholars on a variety of topics. We partnered with Visual AIDS to organize
a groundbreaking panel on contemporary
AIDS writing, and photographer Reed Massengill curated a panel on Queer Art Books
that featured such influential authors as
Vince Aletti, the renowned photography critic
and Chris Steighner, a senior editor at Rizzoli Books. The room holding the panel on
Queer Latinidad was packed -- not surprisingly, considering the participants: : Charles
Rice-Gonzalez, Miguel Angel Angeles, Yoseli
Castillo Fuertes, Karen Jaime, and Charlie
Vazquez. Our panel on Queer Literary New
York was equally star-studded: Chris Bram,
Edmund White, and Steve Watson, moderated by long-time gay poet, novelist, and pub-
Almost 100 vendors, taking up almost the
entire LGBT Community Center; rooms filled
with books, panels, readings, poetry; thousands of people browsing, reading, talking,
and listening: that’s what you would have
seen if you’d wandered into the Center this
past March 24th and found yourself in the
middle of the Fourth Annual Rainbow Book
Fair. CLAGS has been sponsoring the Fair for
the past three years, and it has grown significantly over that time.
Coming Up
BY SARAH CHINN
VISITING
SCHOLARS
SERIES
The Visiting Scholars Series was developed out of the plethora of exciting
proposals we received from U.S.-based
and international scholars and researchers who wanted to present their
work through CLAGS. Three scholars
were chosen to present on widely varying topics in divergent fields of study,
drawing together a diverse group of
scholars, artists, and community
members.
“Queer Inhumanism”
Chrysanthi Nigianni
In her presentation, Chrysanthi Nigianni
mobilized queerness as primarily an act
of jeopardizing our poststructuralist convictions and our theoretical and political
edifice grounded on secured notions of
freedom, radicalism, difference, and margins (the latter sustaining a humanist
philosophical tradition), calling for the escape from queer’s normalization within the
For more information on how to become routes of the inhuman, the a-subjective, the
a CLAGS Visiting Scholar, visits our pre-personal as alternative scripts standing outside the Law of Language, the Law
website or email [email protected].
of the Father, and the the Law of the HuMan. Rather than making claims for broader
PRESENTATIONS
participation, or for wider recognition, a
“Word Is Out and the Gay Liberal Turn” “becoming-minoritarian,” Nigianni argued,
will create a space for the singular to be
Greg Youmans
voiced and heard.
Queer film scholar Greg Youmans (UC Santa
Cruz) presented a lecture about the ground- “Doubting Sex: How bodies Changed
breaking 1977 gay and lesbian documentary and Selves Appeared in NineteenthWord Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. Century Hermaphrodite Case Histories”
Youmans discussed the role Word Is Out Geertje Mak
played in the gay-rights struggles of the
In her lecture, Geertje Mak showed that
late 1970s and the contributions of the film
hermaphroditism itself changed profoundly
to the rise of a U.S. gay national imaginary
over the course of the nineteenth century,
and the consolidation of gay liberalism
noting that until the 1860s, in cases of
during the era, as well as its relationship
doubt, a person’s sex was medically examto other queer media projects of the 1970s
ined on the basis of outer appearance and
that took different aesthetic forms and had
the patient’s own statements mainly. In the
conflicting political aims.
first half of the century, policies of secrecy
and containment prevailed, protecting a
person’s initial inscription as man or woman
in society in order to avoid social disorder
and dislocation. Increasingly, an urge to reveal the ‘inner truth’ of the body emerged.
This had to be understood and ‘managed’ in
its relation to an interiorized sex of the self.
The physician’s role thereby transformed
from being an expert arbiter in cases in
which doubtful sex caused a social problem, into offering medical-psychological
advice and therapy concerning the individualized problem of the relation between body
and self.
Lypsinka , Picture courtesy of Lambda Literary Awards
Butterfield 8, and Caged. Not to be outdone
by the proceedings onstage, Lypsinka concluded her performance accepting her own
Academy Award.
What awards show would be complete without swag? Guests received a bag full of
books on their way out of the ceremony and
were plied with hours of summer reading
selections.
The after-party, featuring drag superstar
Lady Bunny, went into the wee hours at
Midtown Manhattan’s popular hotspot Slate.
This award-show enthusiast went home to
read. Olympia Dukakis and Armistead Maupin, Picture
courtesy of Lambda Literary Awards
Charles Busch , Picture courtesy of Lambda Literary
Awards
Coming Up
On hand to offer the audience a special
treat was Lypsinka (a.k.a. John Epperson),
who was exceedingly glamorous and fierce
in a fiery red frock with crimson hair to
match. Lypsinka performed her signature
schizophrenic telephone medley, brilliantly
The award ceremony was appropriately cel- mashing moments from Mommie Dearest,
ebratory and at times quite moving. Winner
In Review
After walking a red carpet leading to the
VIP photo op stop, guests were treated
to a sumptuous reception with solicitous
cater waiters weaving their way through
the crowd. (Hint: park it in the back of the
room for first dibs on each new platter of
delectables as it glides out of the kitchen).
Standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes
of Charles Busch, Olympia Dukakis, Frank
Bruni, Anthony Rapp, and Ally Sheedy, I was
the only one there I never heard of!
after winner paid tribute to the foundational
work of Armistead Maupin, who received a
2012 Pioneer Award. Maupin, who is the author of nine novels, including the addictive
Tales of the City series, movingly accepted
his award stating, “The great pleasure of
writing is that people come up to you and
tell you you’ve touched them in some way.”
Feminist, writer, filmmaker, and sculptor
Kate Millett also received a 2012 Pioneer
Award. Millett, the author of Sexual Politics,
was clearly moved by the extraordinary ovation that greeted her, and in her acceptance
speech, she explained that literary and political accolades aside, these days she considers herself a “farmer,” first and foremost.
The LGBT literati hobnobbed with the NYC
glitterati for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards on June 4th. CLAGS co-sponsored the Lammies in the Graduate Center’s
Proshansky Auditorium, and the sold-out
event, hosted by Kate Clinton, was a fabulous affair. The only thing missing were the
klieg lights dancing on the façade of the
Graduate Center, but all other elements of
glitzy award show rituals were in place.
BY JAMES WILSON
LAMMIES
THE 24TH
ANNUAL LAMBDA
LITERARY AWARDS
SEMINAR IN THE CITY SPRING 2012
QUEERING THE CURRICULUM
Just last summer, California legislators passed SB48, a bill that requires California’s State Board of Education to adopt textbooks and curricular materials
that explore the historical contributions of LGBTQ people. This ambitious law
not only ensures that California’s public schools teach queer history, but also
influence and shape the curriculum in many other states across the country.
The potential effects of an LGBTQ component in history and social studies curricula seem boundless, from empowering educators to introduce students to
the contributions of historical actors as diverse as Djuna Barnes, Bayard Rustin, Pauline Park, or California’s own Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, to addressing the widespread and tragic consequences of transphobic and homophobic
bullying in the classroom.
While the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies applauds the California bill and
similar efforts in New York State, an inestimable number of educators have
already taken the courageous risks and proactive steps to introduce queer
history into their own classrooms. Last summer, as legislators in California
worked overtime to ensure the passage of SB48, SUNY–New Paltz Professor
Rachel Mattson conducted a seminar with local educators entitled “Queering the Curriculum.” As part of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History’s SoHo
Exhibit at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery (now The Leslie + Lohman Museum of
Gay and Lesbian Art)—a pioneering public history exhibit to which CLAGS was
privileged to contribute—“Queering the Curriculum” brought together educators and community organizers in order to share best practices and tackle
curricular topics from classroom transphobia and homophobia to the ways we
interpret and think about gender and sexuality in the past and the present.
CLAGS’ staff and board members were therefore understandably thrilled when
Mattson and Pop-Up Museum founder and director Hugh Ryan approached development director Lauren Gutterman with a proposal for the spring Seminar
in the City: an expanded series of workshops based on the “Queering the Curriculum” seminar. In the early fall, Rachel, Hugh, and CLAGS’ board members
Daniel Hurewitz and Chris Mitchell worked to build a coalition of educators and
administrators who could facilitate workshops for teachers and community
educators in New York City. We were soon joined by New York City Department
of Education teachers Jesse Chanin and Kevin Connell, the Hetrick–Martin
Institute’s Education Initiatives Director Darnell Moore and Assistant Director
of After-School Services Sam Stiegler, the Dia Art Foundation’s Christine Hou,
as well as New York University Professor Robbie Cohen, who helped provide
additional funding and co-sponsorship through NYU’s Steinhardt School of
Education.
From the outset, the planning committee wanted to challenge the tokenism
that too often infects so-called “minority” histories—what the astute (not
to mention witty!) Ryan referred to as the “add-a-gay and stir” approach.
Mattson challenged planners not to just think about teaching about queers
BY CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL
in history, but to challenge teachers and students to ask questions about how
normative power has worked historically, and how change has happened. A
long-time community educator and activist, Moore suggested the group divide their sessions into “buckets” in order to diversify the curricular vision
and maximize the strengths and fluencies of the group’s individual members.
Planners also worked hard to think about “queering” the curriculum in a
multi-dimensional way to avoid paving over the diversity and differences of
race, class, and gender in the same way that conventional “straight” histories
erase sexual diversity. Unlike typical Seminars in the City—which are generally more open to the public and concentrated in consecutive weeknights over
a month—the facilitators decided to to expand each of these thematic buckets
over four Saturday sessions spread throughout the spring semester in order to
accommodate educators’ schedules.
As New York City literature and science teachers, respectively, Jesse Chanin
and Kevin Connell seemed the most obvious candidates to inaugurate the first
Seminar in the City, an introductory workshop exploring their own best practices in “queering” the curriculum in their own classrooms. Historians and
teachers Hugh Ryan and Chris Mitchell tackled the general lack of information
about queer history by exploring the intersections of the Homophile and Gay
Liberation Movements with broader notions of civil rights in U.S. history, especially the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Christine Hou and Rachel
Mattson created a session to think differently gender and sexuality both in
the curriculum, through an examination of art and poetry, as well as ways to
confront norms around gender and sexuality in the classroom interactions of
students, educators, and other staff. Darnell Moore and Sam Stiegler brought
their expertise from the Hetrick-Martin Institute in order to lead a workshop on
classroom and school culture and the day-to-day interactions between queer
students and their teachers, families, and administrators. They also introduced our Seminar to co-facilitators from Hetrick–Martin Lillian Rivera, Direc-
Picture: Todd Binger/Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddbinger.
The response to Seminar in the City: Queering the Curriculum was truly
overwhelming. Over fifty teachers, community educators, and activists from
public schools, independent schools, colleges and universities, museums,
and even community gardens responded to the initial announcement. Educators in attendance worked with age groups from very early childhood into
adult education, covering a wide range of subjects and interests. Educators
also used the sessions to share their own best practices with one another,
to brainstorm about future lesson planning, and to think about moving forward with administrators, staff, and students’ families in their own schools.
Just as importantly, teachers forged connections among themselves in a
network that continues to have a life of its own beyond the Seminar in the
City. Perhaps this network will even be part of an effort to persuade New
York State’s legislature to follow California’s tack in refusing the distortions
and absences that characterize too many social studies and history curricula. As Professor Cohen lately reminded the planners, “It seems to me
that if California can mandate a whole curriculum, New York can at least
be pressured to take some steps to end its disconnect from this LGBTQ
history.”
tor of Advocacy and Capacity Building; Cindy Molina, G.E.D. Coordinator; and
Mara Hughes, a Ph.D. candidate in Rutgers University’s Graduate School of
Education, who led a discussion about the ways in which racism, issues of
class and poverty, and gender compact homophobia and transphobia in the
classroom.
Thanks first and foremost to the dedicated educators who gave up their
Saturdays to collaborate in these Seminars. Special thanks to the incredibly talented group of educators who brought this project to CLAGS’ attention and to the planners who worked tirelessly to facilitate the Seminars in
the City. CLAGS also wishes to thank the Hetrick–Martin Institute, Lillian
Rivera, Cindy Molina, Mara Hughes, the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History,
Professor Robbie Cohen and the Steinhardt School of Education for cosponsorship and co-funding, and Hugh Ryan and the Urban Justice Center,
which provided time and physical accommodation for the Seminars. Burlesque, Comedy, Visual Art, Short Films, Theatrical Performance, Performance Poetry, V ocal & Instrumentalists, and more… Deadline: Rolling We are so grateful to all members, new
and old, for showing us that the work we
do at CLAGS is integral to the
advancement and flourishing of LGBT
issues around the globe.
Rivers of Honey is a monthly Cabaret highlighting the art of
Womyn of Color. All performances are held on the first Friday of
every month, at the WOW Cafe Theater on East 4th street in NYC.
Apply online at riversofhoney.com If you have not joined yet or need to
renew your membership, please visit
www.clags.org and click on the red
banner on the home page. Our
membership rates start at $40, and $20
for students and those on a fixed income.
Her Saturn Returns Anthology Queer Women of Color Life Transitions CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Payment: Anthology Copy Thank you for your support!
Deadline: October 15th, 2012
Her Saturn Returns, a blog-turned-anthology on Queer Women of
Color Life Transitions is seeking in 2500 words or less, non-fiction
essays, memoir, interviews, poetry and other forms of documentary
writing. Pieces are by or about women who are experiencing their
1st Saturn Return -turning 30, or their 2nd Saturn Return -turning
60. All women who identify as queer, lesbian, or bisexual, and of
color may submit.
Submit at hersaturnreturns.com CLAGS
Coming Up
CALL FOR ARTISTS In Review
Rivers of Honey Cabaret Introductions & Recognitions
Women of Color 2 Calls for Participation CLAGS relies on the generous financial
support of our members to help us to
continue and provide our fellowships
awards, create public events and to help
the larger LGBT community. This past
year,
154 individuals became members of
CLAGS or renewed their memberships,
thereby reaffirming their commitment to
CLAGS and the work that we do.
Art by Jaz Cruz
Queer Women of Color Life Transitions This page contains
advertisements.
BECOME A MEMBER TODAY
2
1
POSITIONING THE RADICAL
AN INTERVIEW WITH
MARTIN DUBERMAN
KESSLER AWARD
RECIPIENT 2012
Benjamin Gillespie (CLAGS Events and Outreach Coordinator,
PhD. student in theatre) interviews Professor Martin Duberman
about his life as a historian, playwright, scholar, and activist;
his recent honorary degree from Amherst College; and being
awarded the 2012 Kessler Award.
Benjamin Gillespie (BG) You were recently awarded an honorary doctoral
degree from Amherst College for your prolific and groundbreaking career, as
well as your passion for honoring the pasts of those that live in the “margins
of our society.” In your keynote address, you critiqued the assimilationist focus
of the national gay rights agenda, which features marriage and the military as
its central components, and—paraphrasing your words—ignores the needs of
the lower economic factions of queer society within the American corporate
capitalist system. Seeing as Amherst is a liberal institution, how was this
critique received?
Martin Duberman (MD) I had wondered whether or not there would be some
hostility, but anyone who said anything—at least subsequent to the speech—
was positive about it and agreed with me. One young guy said, “it’s amazing that
someone as old as you are would have radical ideas!”
BG Radical ideas are something you have had for a long time. Perhaps the
audience at Amherst appreciated your critique more than some gays, who are
pushing instead for assimilation and integration.
MD Sure. It was, of course, a self-selected audience. And Amherst is
liberal—even more than it used to be. Its outgoing president, Anthony Marx,
has recently been named head of the library system in New York. In the past, he
made sure that a number of Africans received scholarships to Amherst College.
It was interesting how many of the students that were there were minorities. It
wasn’t that long ago that it was completely white and male.
BG That is another part of your critique, isn’t it? That the assimilationist
agenda is generally geared toward the upper-middle-class white male?
MD Certainly. But that’s hardly surprising. It has always been that way.
BG And this was the first time Amherst awarded an honorary doctorate
to a “marginalized person,” correct? In the description I quoted earlier, it is
interesting how they never mention gay or queer, but use the language of
“marginalizaton.” Do you have any thoughts on this?
MD I think that it is all code for gay. Well, not all gay. Back in 1963, I wrote
a play called “In White America” about being black in white America, which
continues to be performed. When they say, “live on the margins,” I think the
reference is also to race, not just sexual orientation.
BG I think another word they could have used was ‘radical.’ You often
distinguish between liberal and radical political positions, identifying yourself
as a radical because you are someone who has struggled and continues
to fight to substantially restructure the system itself, rather than push for
LGBT integration into the system as it currently exists. Can you say anything
more about this distinction and how it has influenced your career as a gay
historian?
MD It does seem to me that being allowed “in” to
mainstream culture is not the goal that the Gay
Liberation Front (GLF) originally aimed at. It wasn’t
that we wanted to become accepted members of
established institutions; it was rather that we
wanted to change the institutions. Rather
than being allowed to join the military, we
wanted to challenge the whole idea of
war and state-sanctioned killing. The
It wasn’t that we wanted to become
accepted members of established
institutions; it was rather that we
wanted to change the institutions.
Rather than being allowed to join
the military, we wanted to challenge
the whole idea of war and statesanctioned killing. The whole war
machine was our target and we
weren’t eager to put on the uniform.
whole war machine was our target and we weren’t eager to put on the uniform.
The same is true of marriage. As gay people, we learned a great deal about
relationships that perhaps mainstream America didn’t know or wasn’t willing to
acknowledge, in terms of the roles people play in a partnered relationship. The
studies that have been done make it very clear that gay relationships (and I mean
gay inclusively—lesbian, trans, queer, etc.) tend to be much more egalitarian
than heterosexual ones. Also, there is the whole issue of monogamous marriage.
I think that there is a wide spectrum of different kinds of gay relationships:
some are monogamous; some are “open”; some are sexual for a time, but then
become companionable.
Radicals still don’t accept that institutions currently structured are in any sense
universal or maximally indicate human needs. In our point of view, we don’t want
to join up. Yes, we want all the rights everybody else has. But at the same time,
we want the right to challenge traditional institutions. The original GLF differed
much from today’s politics. We don’t want merely to be good patriotic citizens
because there is a lot wrong with national values and national policies and we
want to challenge those.
BG Let’s move to something more personal. To quote you in Cures: A Gay
Man’s Odyssey, you state, “It was easier for me to harangue the country about
changing its ways than to change my own; perhaps because—a notion I can only
entertain in retrospect—the country really did need to remake itself, whereas I
did not.” Here, you were referring to having an optimistic viewpoint when it came
to the country’s politics, but a more negative opinion of your own struggle with
a gay identity that you hadn’t yet accepted.
Looking at this experience retrospectively here, you point out your own guilty
conscience, which essentially pushed you to want to conform (at that time)
to mainstream heterosexual value systems and beliefs. Thinking about your
talk at Amherst, this still seems to me to be a prevalent problem—that is, gay
assimilationism and the guilty conscience of queer radicalism.
MD Some of this may be generational, but shame and guilt remain elements
of the gay personality, simply because that is
how we were raised—to feel ashamed of our
orientation and guilty about it. And even though
you know better or learn better, as you become
part of a community and become politically
active, there remains an emotional residue that
cannot be fully erased, even if you know its
foolish. It’s deeply imprinted on us, especially
for those today who grow up in rural areas or in
small towns and cities where the freedoms of
places like New York don’t exist. There is still a
great imprinting of shame.
But you make a good point. It means assimilation
is the equivalent of acceptance. If you are
accepted by the mainstream, you no longer have
to be ashamed of your differentness, and even
beyond that, you no longer have to see yourself
as different. And that’s one of the reasons I
react negatively to assimilationism. I feel we
are different: we grow up as outsiders and that
affects our perspectives and values. And we
don’t want to throw that subcultural awareness
away in order to be accepted as “just folks.”
BG It has recently been announced that you
were selected to receive the Kessler Award in the
fall for your significant influence in LGBT studies
and the body of work you have produced in this
area. As the founder of CLAGS, its Executive
Director for the first decade of its existence, and
a continued supporter of its efforts, this award
must have a special significance for you—a full
circle kind of significance. Can you say anything
more about that?
MD For starters, I can tell you a bit more
about how the Kessler Awards came about. Dave
Kessler and I had known each other since our
graduate school days, and we had stayed in touch
through the years. When I started CLAGS, I knew
that Dave had done very well as a psychiatrist,
and so I approached him about endowing this
lectureship. I didn’t have to do any sort of hard
sell. Dave saw it as a worthwhile idea and gave
CLAGS $100,000. With that endowment, we’ve
been able to continue to give this award. I guess
it is especially nice for me—feeling full circle—
because the award emerged from a personal
friendship. And the Kessler award has turned out
to be a successful community event. The first ten
years were produced as a book. It will be nice to
do the lecture myself and have Dave be present
for it.
BG What will you talk about?
MD I was originally going to talk about how
CLAGS began, but I’m afraid too much of it
would be unfamiliar to the audience. The kinds
of issues being raised back then might be too
boring for a current audience [laughs.]. I think
I will talk about anti-assimilationism. It is a far
more immediate event, since Obama has just
come out in favor of gay marriage.
BG In your lecture at Amherst, you also
brought up Obama’s recent endorsement of gay
marriage. Even with all the media attention it
has received, it seems to me that his personal
acceptance of the issue is not going to put into
motion the changes that need to be made, which
is clear in cases like North Carolina, where
marriage and even civil unions have been barred.
Even if marriage is a side-stepping issue—one
that avoids the larger economic problems for
queers in the U.S.— it is still the public issue
right now, and therefore we can’t ignore it.
I think discussing anti-assimilationism in this
arena will allow you to receive the attention you
deserve for your sustained commitment to gay
radicalism.
MD Thank you. As for Obama, at least he
recognized it [gay marriage] and took a clear
position on it. But I do feel strongly about the
lack of economic equality and opportunity in the
country and about the need sharply to narrow
between rich and poor. As of now the country
closer to being a corporate oligarchy than a
democracy.
BG How is it that you’ve been able to balance
your research, activism, and teaching for all of
these years, building up such a rich profile that
has been recognized by so many accolades?
MD I doubt if that question can be answered-for example, why I became a writer instead of, say,
a lawyer. People develop their own mechanisms
for coping with life’s stresses, and for me, it’s
always been important to stay busy. Writers are
rarely laid back, relaxed types. They tend to be
classic Type A’s--at their happiest when at their
most productive. Even today, I keep involved-writing, reading, staying abreast politically. I
don’t think anybody knows much about how his
or her own inner workings and evolution. To take
one example, I know when I was growing up, and
straight through college, I was hardly a political
radical. I’d like to say that it was public events
that educated me, but I don’t think anyone can
know for sure the sources of their motivation.
BG CLAGS just celebrated its official 20th
anniversary last year—a remarkable feat for a
center fostering LGBT studies, and one that has
harnessed a consistent radical queer agenda.
What do you see as the central issue(s) that
should be in focus at CLAGS now and in the years
to come?
MD It was really CLAGS’ twenty-fifth
anniversary. It was 1986 when I first gathered
a few people in my apartment to talk about the
possibilities of what became CLAGS. It took five
years of work and planning. We were warmly
welcomed at the CUNY Graduate Center from the
beginning, but it was made clear to us that we
had to raise $50,000 to prove we were viable as a
Center before we could get formal accreditation.
So it all really began twenty-five years ago—we
were just not formally accredited until 1991. Our
first public conference was in 1987 on “Gay Life
in New York.”
BG Are there any current projects you are
working on?
MD Type A’s ALWAYS have a current project!
For the last few years I’ve been working on a
biography of Howard Zinn, the political radical
and historian who wrote the best-selling book, A
People’s History of the United States. His family
has opened up all his archives to me, so it’s
the first time his story has been told. He was a
remarkable human being. The biography will be
published by The New Press on October 1 [www.
thenewpress.com]. I’ve also recently completed
Against the Grain: A Martin Duberman Reader. It
includes selections from my various books and
essays, and The New Press will be publishing it
in the spring of 2013. By the time their paths first crossed in the 1960s, Barbara
Deming and David McReynolds had each charted a unique
course through the political and social worlds of the
American left. Deming, a feminist, journalist, and political
activist with an abiding belief in nonviolence, had been an
out lesbian since the age of sixteen. The first openly gay man
to run for president of the United States, on the Socialist
Party ticket, McReynolds was also a longtime opponent
of the Vietnam War—he was among the first activists to
publicly burn a draft card after this became a felony—and
friend to leading activists and artists from Bayard Rustin to
Quentin Crisp.
Zinn was at the heart of the signal events of modern
American history—from the battlefields of World War II to the
McCarthy era, the civil rights and the antiwar movements,
and beyond. A bombardier who later renounced war, a
son of working-class parents who earned a doctorate at
Columbia, a white professor who taught at the historically
black Spelman College in Atlanta, a committed scholar
who will be forever remembered as a devoted “people’s
historian.”
Howard Zinn blazed a bold, iconoclastic path through the
turbulent second half of the twentieth century. For the
millions who were moved by Zinn’s personal example of
political engagement and by his inspiring “bottom up”
history, Duberman has written the first biography of this
towering figure.
In this remarkable dual biography, Duberman reveals a vital
historical milieu of activism, radical ideas, and coming to
terms with homosexuality when the gay rights movement
was still in its nascent stages. With a cast of characters
that includes intellectuals, artists, and activists from the
critic Edmund White and the writer Mary McCarthy to the
young Alvin Ailey and Allen Ginsberg, A Saving Remnant
is a brilliant achievement from one of our most important
historians.
Coming Up CLAGS Newsletter Fall 2012 Page 25
Howard Zinn was perhaps the best-known and most widely
celebrated popular interpreter of American history in the
twentieth century, renowned as a bestselling author, a
political activist, a lecturer, and one of America’s most
recognizable and admired progressive voices.
In Review
A SAVING REMNANT
The New Press, Paperback, Spring 2012
HOWARD ZINN: A LIFE ON THE LEFT
The New Press, Fall 2012
RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY
MARTIN DUBERMAN
10/
NIN
PE
9/27–9/30
CLAGS CONFERENCE
Tran
write
quee
Paul
to) w
of A
man
quee
Arse
RADICALLY
GAY
THE LIFE &
VISIONARY
LEGACY OF
HARRY HAY
Harry Hay was born in England
on the day the Titanic sank. Hay
became an active trade unionist and learned the organizing
skills he later used to advocate for gay rights. In honor of
the 100th anniversary of Harry
Hay’s birth, CLAGS and the
Harry Hay Centennial Committee will sponsor a four day conference exploring Hay’s life and
ideas and the multiple facets of
LGBT life that Harry Hay himself pioneered.
These aspects will be organized around four major
themes: the arts, political activism, spirituality and sexual
identities. The conference will
feature presentations from
scholars, activists and artists
all exploring the evolution of
LGBT life in the 60+ years since
Hay and a small cohort of Californians founded the Mattachine Society.
This event requires registration. Please visit the conference
website for more information:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/clags/
pages/conferences/hay.php.
Sep 27–Sep 30 ↙
CUNY Graduate Center, NYU, ↙
and The LGBT Center
Schedule available on website ↙
CLAGS
EVENTS
FALL
CALENDAR 2012
CH
PE
BOOK LAUNCH
BORN THIS WAY
REAL STORIES OF
GROWING UP GAY
.
FALL 2012
SEMINARS IN THE CITY
QUEERING THE FRAME
TRANSGRESSIVE PERFORMANCE & THE
POSSIBILITY OF FREEDOM
Transgressive art shocks, titillates, enlightens and, perhaps
most importantly, provides a
space of inclusion for marginalized or neglected communities.
At this vital moment, the role of
queered bodies in transgressive art has become increasingly
threatened and equally necessary. We will use the city as a
canvas for our research. This
course will include both seminar
discussions and visits to performances/interventions/art exhibits in the New York City area. We
10/11
11/
will convene to discuss the readings and then visit spaces such
as the MOMA, New Museum and
performance spaces to engage
in site specific research. Authors
we will read include Coco Fusco,
José Muñoz, Elizabeth Grosz,
Judith “Jack” Halberstam, and
Joseph Roach. Instructor: Sujay
Pandit, NYU.
Oct 13, 20, 27, and Nov 2, 11am–1pm ↙
WOW Cafe Theatre, ↙
59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Fl.
Info available on website ↙
.
Based on the popular blog of the
same name, Paul Vitagliano’s
Born This Way is a celebration
of gay coming-of-age, featuring
childhood photographs accompanied by the personal stories of
those who grew up LGBTQ. The
book features contributors from
around the world, dating from
the 1940s to today.
The event will include an interview with author Paul V. and
readings from some of the book’s
many contributors, including Michael Musto (Columnist, The Village Voice), Bill Coleman (Owner, Peace Bisquit). Hosting the
event is Noah Michelson, editor
of Gay Voices at The Huffington
Post. Admission is free and copies of the book will be available
for purchase.
Oct 11, 6.30pm–8.30pm ↙
CUNY Graduate Center ↙
Recital Hall
.
A
o
P
Y
&
from her repertoire of critically
acclaimed artistic works as well
as showcase some of her new
performance projects.
Oct 26, 7pm–9pm ↙
Segal Theatre
.
11/13
7PM–9PM
CHARLES BUSCH WITH JAMES WILSON
PERFORMING QUE(E)RIES SERIES PART II
Y
Charles Busch, renowned New
York performer, playwright, director, and drag extraordinaire,
discusses his astonishing career in the theatre and on film,
as well as the changes he has
seen in LGBTQ performance
over the last four decades.
Moderated by CLAGS’ Executive Director, James Wilson.
12/5
NCH
F
Y
of the
ano’s
ation
uring
comes of
. The
from
from
n in. and
ook’s
g Mie VilOwng the
ditor
ngton
coplable
pm ↙
ter ↙
all
.
Nov 13, 7pm–9pm ↙
Segal Theatre
\
ANNUAL KESSLER LECTURE
MARTIN DUBERMAN
THE RECIPIENT OF 2012
KESSLER AWARD
The prestigious Kessler Award
is an annual lectureship given
to a scholar who has produced
a substantive body of work
that has had a significant influence on the field of GLBTQ
Studies. The 2012 awardee
is prominent historian, playwright, Professor Emeritus,
and CLAGS’ founder, Dr. Martin Duberman. The event will
include a lecture given by Dr.
Duberman, as well as keynotes given by several distinguished guest speakers.
Dec 5, 6pm–9pm ↙
Proshansky Auditorium
All CLAGS events are free and
open to the public.
Please RSVP to [email protected]
.
Trans performer, playwright, and
writer Nina Arsenault, along with
queer performance scholar J.
Paul Halferty (University of Toronto) will discuss the development
of Arsenault’s bodily and performance aesthetics in the Canadian
queer performance landscape.
Arsenault will perform excerpts
In Review
NINA ARSENAULT WITH J. PAUL HALFERTY
PERFORMING QUE(E)RIES SERIES PART I
7PM–9PM
10/26
BORN THIS WAY
Q&A WITH
PAUL VITAGLIANO
On October 11th, National Coming Out Day, CLAGS will host a
Book Launch for Paul Vitagliano’s soon-to-be-released book,
Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay. Based on the
popular blog of the same name, Born This Way is a celebration of gay coming-of-age, featuring childhood photographs
accompanied by the personal stories of those who grew up
LGBTQ. The book features contributors from around the world,
dating from the 1940s to today. The event will include an interview with author Paul Vitagliano and readings from some
of the book’s many contributors, including Michael Musto
(Columnist, The Village Voice), Bill Coleman (Owner, Peace
Bisquit), and Noah Michelson (Editor, Gay Voices, The Huffington Post). Visit www.clags.org for more information on this
event. Benjamin Gillespie, CLAGS Events Coordinator has interviewed Paul Vitagliano/DJ Paul V.
these amazing photos and stories about growing up gay. (By the way,
that photo of Dennis is on the book’s cover!) But few of us ever talk
about our childhood, even with close friends. The Born This Way blog
is a forum where people can feel welcome—and, in some cases, safe
enough—to share incredibly personal stories with the world. It immediately resonated with people, and the blog has now had over 4
million visitors since I launched it in 2011.
BG What pushed you to turn the project into a book?
PV When six gay kids committed suicide within the span of one
month, I got so sad and enraged it motivated me to do something.
I launched Born This Way online, and the overwhelming reader response helped me develop it into a book.
BG You use a chronological style in the book, working from the late
1940s up to 1990. Can you tell us a little bit more about the choice
of representing different generations of coming out stories? How did
Benjamin Gillespie (BG) Tell me why you started the Born This
you choose which contributors would be included in the book?
Way project. Why or how were you inspired to create a photo essay
project? How do you think it grew to be as immensely popular as it PV Growing up gay in the 1950s was very different from growing up
gay in the ‘70s or the ‘90s. And I want people to see that. It’s also indid?
teresting to see some of the similarities. Even in the 1950s, the supPaul Vitagliano (PV) It all started with a childhood photo my
port of a loving parent or a good teacher could do wonders for a child.
friend Dennis posted to MySpace in 2008. I realized that we all have
So for the book, I chose contributors of all generations, backgrounds,
PV When the blog started, some people were under the impression that they had to find the campiest, most stereotypical photo
to be considered for posting, which is not true at all. It’s important
to let go of our guilt about all the layers of masculine and feminine within the LGBTQ community. We come in every size, shape,
and form, just like straight people do, and all these variations are
equally real and valid.
BG Many of the contributors urge young people to come out of
the closet as soon as they can, stating that their own lives became
much better after they had come out. Are you also of this opinion?
PV Yes, 100%. But it’s easy to say that without knowing if a person’s circumstances make it hard, if not dangerous, to fearlessly
state they are gay. I advocate coming out as soon as you can, but
only once you’re ready, secure, and safe enough to do so.
which I think is a very common occurrence. I tell part of my story in
the book’s introduction, but I wanted the project to be more about
all the contributors and less about me.
BG How do you see your project relating to the “It Gets Better”
BG To follow up on my previous question, all of the stories in the project, started by Dan Savage? What about Lady Gaga’s gay anbook share a generally positive outcome in the lives of the con- them, “Born this Way?”
tributors after they came out. What about all those stories that are PV I see my project as part of a larger zeitgeist: The world is
not so positive? What do you see this project doing for the youth of finally tipping in support of full equality for the LGBTQ community!
today that are fighting homophobia, bullying, and shame or guilt Lady Gaga is an incredible artist and I have huge respect for her.
Her message is aligned with my project’s goal, and that of the
related to their sexuality, either before or after coming out?
PV I wanted the larger message to be: I faced the same ad- larger gay community. Gay people have talked about being “born
versity you do today, and I ended up as a happy, loved, and proud this way” for decades, but only recently have we been able to celgay adult. I omitted particularly painful memories simply because ebrate it! Gaga sings about it with powerful conviction; I ask the
I wanted this book to illuminate the positive and be appropriate people she’s singing about to tell their own story. reading material for kids as well as adults.
BG What was your coming out story? Did you include it in the
book? Why or why not?
PV I was taunted, teased, and sometimes beat up. Once I graduated and left my hometown, I blossomed and never looked back,
BG The photos in the book are so hilariously campy, but also
quite touching. Is it true that it was the photos that inspired the
Born This Way project?
In Review
PV Forums like Born This Way show young gay kids that they’re
not alone. LGBTQ narratives also educate the straight community,
especially parents. Everyone has gay family members and friends.
But much of straight society has no concept of the hatred, violence, and discrimination that gay children face.
BG Why do you think it is important for both LGBT adults and
LGBT youth to have forums for discussion like the one you created?
What is the importance of sharing queer stories and narratives
publically, do you think?
genders, and religions. There are so many great stories and photos
that it was difficult to decide who’d make the cut.
A QUEER
LIBRARY
COLLECTION
BY SHAWN(TA) SMITH
After the receipt of a generous bequest by long-time CLAGS member Ivor Kraft in 2000, an Endowment was created in the name of
poet and labor activist Edward Carpenter (1844-1929). Thanks to
this Endowment, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies administers
the acquisition of materials and resources on books directly relevant
to the fields of lesbian, gay, and gender studies, broadly defined, to
be housed at the Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library. For the Fall 2012 semester, a simple catalog subject search will
prove that the CUNY system is a leader in LGBTQ holdings. As a
result of over ten years of acquisition, this Fund maximizes access
to texts that would likely not exist in a public library, or in most
public universities. Students from all CUNY campuses have access
to these invaluable resources, thereby transforming the essential
nature of graduate and undergraduate research to include an LGBTQ
For the 2011-2012 academic year, the Library instituted a large ship- framework. CLAGS is proud to contribute to a representative library,
ment of hundreds of new titles including, films such as 2012 re- one that undoubtedly holds a queer library collection.
lease Dyketactics: And Other Films from the 1970s by Barbara Ham- Edward Carpenter (1844 - 1929) was an influential English author,
mer, to titles published by previous CLAGS Awards recipients, such social reformer, and leader in sexual freedom, enlightenment, and
as 2011 publication, Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, tolerance. His socialism advocated for a homosexual imprint in conand Motherhood among Black Women by 2009 Joan Heller–Diane versations of social change and public education. The Mina Rees
Bernard Fellowship Recipient Mignon R. Moore, PhD. Included in this Library is committed to a collection that represents the mission of
new shipment were 2011 and 2012 publications by well-respected the Carpenter Endowment. CUNY Faculty, including but not limited to former CLAGS Executive LGBTQ book recommendations can be emailed to the LGBT Studies
Director Paisley Currah, 2012 Harry Hay Conference Presenter Da- Liaison at [email protected]. vid A. Gerstner, and CLAGS 2013 Homonationalism and Pinkwashing
Conference Chair Sarah Schulman, to name a select few. Beyond books, as LGBT scholarship expands, a queer library will
include a multiplicity of formats. Income generated by the Carpenter Endowment will be used exclusively to collect books, serials,
pictorials, graphics, audiovisuals of all sorts, electronic programs
and materials, manuscripts, archives, and objects of art as set forth
by the parameters of the Fund. This includes supported databases
and indexes such as user-friendly academic database, LGBT Life
with Full Text, administered by EBSCO Publishing, a database containing hundreds of the most historically significant LGBT journals,
magazines, regional newspapers, and monographs. While the Mina
Rees Library consistently ensures acquisitions that are reflective of
courses taught at the CUNY Graduate Center, the Carpenter collection is uniquely on its way to ensuring an LGBT studies research hub
for all of CUNY.
Shawn(ta) Smith, MLS is an archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives and is the
LGBT Studies Liaison and Reference Librarian at the Mina Rees Library. She worked
as Memberships Fellowships Coordinator at CLAGS and Web Administrator for three
years. She updates the LGBT Studies Subject guide and welcomes your feedback
at [email protected].
Seminar Dates: October 13th, 20th, 27th, and November 3rd.
This Seminar in the City seeks to examine the role of so-called
Location and Times: TBA.
“dangerous” art and ask questions such as:
To participate: RSVP by October 1st to [email protected].
— What does it mean to be a transgressive artist?
— How is transgressive art, already redefining boundaries of artmaking, include racial and sexual, minoritarian bodies?
— Can transgression bring us into a space of queer freedom?
New York City has a rich history of transgressive artists including:
filmmakers like Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Paul Morrissey and John
Waters, artists like Keith Haring, Adrian Piper and Andy Warhol, the
public protests of ACT UP, to the more recent, artistic projects by
Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili.
We will use the city as a canvas for our research. This course will
include both seminar discussions and visits to performances/interventions/art exhibits in the New York City area. We will convene
to discuss the readings and then visit spaces such as the MoMA,
New Museum and performance spaces to engage in site-specific
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Sujay Pandit is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York
University; his work focuses on the interplay between space/place,
architecture, human rights and philosophy. He completed his BA in
Philosophy and Politics at Sarah Lawrence College and his Master’s
in Performance Studies at New York University. He is also keenly
interested in digital and new media. Outside of the academy, Sujay
has worked as a graphic designer, digital archivist/photographer
and multimedia specialist for multiple media outlets including:
Scientific American Magazine, PBS’ Art:21, the NYU Afghan Digital
Library, and various corporations. Sujay in the Memberships and
Fellowships coordinator at CLAGS.
No prior experience in art history/criticism, theoretical readings, or
performance necessary. All readings will be provided.
In Review
research. Authors we will read include Coco Fusco, José Muñoz,
Elizabeth Grosz, Judith “Jack” Halberstam, and Joseph Roach.
Transgressive art shocks, titillates, enlightens and, perhaps
most importantly, provides a space of inclusion for marginalized or neglected communities. At this vital moment, the
role of queered bodies in transgressive art has become increasingly threatened and equally necessary.
SEMINAR IN THE CITY FALL 2012
SEMINAR SERIES:
PERFORMING QUE(E)RIES
CLAGS’s Performing Que(e)ries is a series that will take
place over the 2012/13 academic year and will explore LGBTQ performance in the 21st century, particularly the ways
in which contemporary queer performance is tied to past,
present, and future possibilities for queer identity exploration, transformation, and affirmation. The series will include
performers, scholars, and writers of diverse backgrounds
and styles coming together to discuss their work in multiple
formats, including roundtables, interviews, discussions,
lectures, readings, and/or performances.
Performances and discussions will track the legacy of queer
performance and the shifting act(s) of the queer performer onstage
and off, querying the efficacy and vitality of live queer performance
in the age of media-based and digitized communication.
EVENTS
PART I: NINA ARSENAULT WITH J. PAUL HALFERTY
10/26/2012 7–9pm Segal Theatre
Trans performer, playwright, and writer Nina Arsenault, along with
queer performance scholar J. Paul Halferty (University of Toronto) will
discuss the development of Arsenault’s bodily and performance aesthetics in the Canadian queer perfo`rmance landscape. Arsenault will
perform excerpts from her repertoire of critically acclaimed artistic
works as well as showcase some of her new performance projects.
Nina Arsenault is a critically acclaimed interdisciplinary artist who
has worked in live performance, photography, video art, writing and
popular national media to document and explore her continuing
psychic and physical transformations. Nina’s gender transformation,
her cosmetic metamorphosis through over sixty surgical procedures,
and her personal life have been the subject of numerous national and
international documentary television programs, radio interviews, and
print articles.
PART II: CHARLES BUSCH WITH JAMES WILSON
11/13/2012 7–9pm Segal Theatre
Charles Busch, renowned New York performer, playwright, director, and
drag extraordinaire, discusses his astonishing career in the theatre
and on film, as well as the changes he has seen in LGBTQ performance
over the last four decades. Moderated by CLAGS Executive Director and
Professor of theatre, James Wilson (CUNY Graduate Center, LaGuardia
Community College).
Charles Busch is the author and star of such plays as The Divine Sister, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset and Vampire Lesbians
of Sodom, which ran five years and is one of the longest running plays
in Off-Broadway history. His play The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife ran
for 777 performances on Broadway and won Mr. Busch the Outer Circle
Critics John Gassner Award and received a Tony nomination for Best
Play. He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho
Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best
Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, Mr. Busch
received a special Drama Desk Award for career achievement as both
performer and playwright. Mr. Busch made his directorial debut with
the film A Very Serious Person, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca
Film Festival, where it won an honorable mention. He is also the subject of the documentary film The Lady in Question is Charles Busch.
ALL CLAGS EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
PLEASE RSVP TO: [email protected].
across various disciplines. This one-day conference will culminate blackness and queerness open up new pathways of thought to engage
with a keynote by Professor Kara Keeling of the University of thinking concerned with a host of issues ranging from agency to
South Carolina.
temporality to phenomenology to resistance? Are we in a post-black
This conference seeks to create a public forum for dialogue on or post-queer moment, and if so, how might a reinterrogation of
innovative research across disciplines and fields that interrogate both blackness and queerness reanimate supposedly deadened modes
the intersections between blackness and queerness. Against an of inquiry?
abjuring history, we ask: how might we understand the For more information, visit http://www.princeton.edu/~gss/events/events.html, or
contact Brittney Edmonds ([email protected]) or Jennifer Jones
relationship between blackness and queerness if we first reject the ( [email protected]).
vet nov
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http://bqsgraduateconference.eventbrite.com/
NEW!
Sexualities in Education: A Reader
Edited by Erica R. Meiners & Therese Quinn
PB | $49.95 | 448 pages | HC | $149.95 | 978-1-4331-0636-1
Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education; vol.367
With germinal texts, new writings, and related art, Sexualities in Education: A
Reader illuminates a broad scope of analysis and organization. Composed of a
framing essay and nine sections edited by established and emerging scholars and
addressing critical topics for researchers and students of sexualities and education, the text provides a timely overview of sexualities considered through a variety of educational lenses and theoretical frameworks. Threads woven throughout
include visual, literary, and performing arts; youth perspectives; and an emphasis
on justice work in education. The volume provides entry points for students and
practitioners at a range of levels. Research-based articles, essays, interviews, poetry and ready-to-reproduce visual materials from the Americas, Europe, and Asia
are linked to a resource section to facilitate deep learning, on-going investigation,
and informed action.
Perfect for classes in education, sexuality, gender studies, and social justice!
To place an order or request a desk copy, contact:
“This is a brave, inspiring and one-of-a-kind volume that
brings fresh voices and modes of expression into
contemporary debates on the politics and pedagogy of
gender and sexuality.”
Wendy Luttrell, Professor of Urban Education & Psychology,
Graduate Center of The City University of New York
Peter Lang Publishing
29 Broadway, 18th Fl, NY, NY 10006
[p] 800.770.LANG (in US) or 212.647.7706
[f] 212.647.7707 |
[e][email protected]
For more information visit: www.peterlang.com
In Review
The conference will feature four panels of original scholarship premise of their mutual exclusivity? How might transit between
october 20, 2012
Please join us for Princeton University's Inaugural Black Queer Sexuality Studies Conference
QUEER VOICES,
QUEER WORLDS
UPDATE FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCE
NETWORK
BY RÜSTEM ERTUG ALTINAY
The first six months of 2012 was a particularly active and fruitful period for the International Resource Network (IRN), a global network of
researchers, activists, artists, and teachers sharing knowledge about
diverse sexualities, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Our organization continued to grow with new projects and alliances,
serving the needs of scholars, activists, artists and students worldwide.
The Africa region of IRN launched two new projects, the Digital Library of
Africa and Voices in the Shadows. The Digital Library of Africa is a web project
connected to the IRN website. The project will feature material documenting
Africa’s queer history. Voices in the Shadows is a radio drama series dealing
with issues facing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) communities in Kenya, developed primarily by and for LGBTI Kenyans who still face
institutionalized and social discrimination. IRN Africa has also co-sponsored
the International Day against Homophobia (IDAHO) events organized by the Gay
and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, and the queer e-magazine Identity Kenya. IRN
Africa has also prepared a new issue of Outliers, an e-journal featuring essays
written by scholars and activists whose work is focused on African sexualities.
All issues of Outliers are available on the IRN website.
Determined to contribute to the emergence of new queer voices in the region,
IRN Asia developed a variety of new projects. “In Search of Queer” is an online
digital library that will compile and introduce selected queer studies and sexuality studies texts to China, especially those from the rest of Asia. The website
will include translated articles, resources, book reviews, original articles,
special opinion columns written by sexuality studies scholars, and interactive
projects where community members can submit photos and short posts. The
project aims to promote the articulation of a native discourse by Chinese LGBT
activists. “On the Margins” reading group focuses on the marginalized people
and issues within the sexual minority communities in Asia. The group reads
both classic works of queer theory and newer, creative works, mainly from the
region. IRN Asia also co-sponsored one of the first lesbian non-fiction books
published in China, where implicit rules prevent such books from official
publication. The Lace Dictionary unearths the history of same-sex love between
women in China and re-tells their forgotten stories. Another publication by IRN
Asia is the China queer women’s activism map. This project features a map of
queer women’s activism in China, including background and contact information for each organization. The map will be available in print and online. IRN
Asia also sponsored one day of Chinese Lala Alliance’s bi-annual international
conference, where speakers and workshop trainers from India, the Philippines,
Taiwan, and Hong Kong discussed about the connection between queer and
feminist theory and sexuality activism. In order to encourage young scholars
and students interested in sexuality studies in the region, IRN Asia is now
organizing a competition to support the work of students with the best project
proposals in the field. Another major project of IRN Africa was the digital storytelling workshops implemented in China. The workshops teach participants
how to make short videos on their personal stories, capturing their oral history
through image and sounds, with the ultimate goal of sharing the videos with a
wider audience. The project also involves developing a training manual for the
workshops to be made available to other groups.
In the meantime, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East regions
of the IRN continued to develop their projects. IRN Caribbean launched the
publication Theorizing Homophobia in the Caribbean, an edited collection bringing together works which reflect on the complexities of homophobia(s) in the
Caribbean to expand awareness about Caribbean LGBT lives, experiences, and
activism in the region and its diaspora. The collection is available online. IRN
Caribbean also expanded the Digital Archives of the Activist and Related Work
in the Caribbean project. There are three established collections in this digital
archive: a general one presenting a variety of relevant material from the region,
the collection of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica, and the collection of
the Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas. IRN Latin America developed two new
issues of Sexualidades, an e-journal featuring essays in the field of sexuality
studies in the Americas. IRN Middle East continued to expand Turkey’s Queer
Lives: An Oral History Project. Implemented in collaboration with Bogazici
University’s Department of History, Turkey’s Queer Lives collects oral history
accounts from LGBTQ people to be published as an edited volume. IRN Middle
East’s Transnational Peer Review Network (TPRN) continued to serve the needs
of students and researchers. TPRN is a free online network designed to provide
pro bono peer reviewing services for students, scholars and independent
researchers working in the field of Middle Eastern sexualities. The service is
available in English, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. For more information, please
contact R. Ertug Altinay: [email protected].
To participate in our projects, to learn the latest news and opportunities in the
field of sexuality studies, and to communicate with other individuals and groups
that are active in the field, please visit our website: www.irnweb.org. BY ROSAMOND S. KING
CO-CHAIR OF THE CARIBBEAN IRN REGIONAL BOARD
The Caribbean region of the IRN was created in 2008 and connects
academic and community-based researchers, artists, and activists around
the Caribbean and in the diaspora in areas related to diverse sexualities
and genders. The Caribbean IRN highlights and promotes activism and
creative work, as well as different kinds of engaged scholarship which
seek to question, provoke and illuminate various ways of thinking about
same-sex desire and sexual minorities.
The IRN is an internet-based project created by the Center for Lesbian
and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York in 2002. The
purpose of the IRN is to link researchers, activists, artists, and teachers
from both academic and community bases in areas related to diverse
sexualities. It strives to be a central internet location (at www.irnweb.org)
for people interested in approaching sexual rights and human rights from
the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer studies,
or who are interested in surveying research on particular sexual minority
issues around the globe. Over many years, the IRN has received generous
support from the Ford Foundation to build this project. The Caribbean Region of the IRN
The Caribbean Region of the IRN is a resource for people and organizations whose work focuses on issues
related to diverse genders and sexualities in the Caribbean. The Caribbean IRN serves as a network among
Coming Up
The Advanced Sexuality Studies Short Course (ASSC) consists of a variety
of course modules on various sexuality topics freely available through
open source technology at www.sexualitystudies.net. IASSCS developed
the ASSC with funding from the Ford Foundation in response to a growing
recognition of the need for graduate-level training in critical sexuality
studies in the global South; the project was piloted in sites including
South Africa and Vietnam. The Caribbean IRN’s course will not only combine the considerable expertise of faculty from the IRN board and UWI’s
IGDS, it will also utilize webconferencing technology and web-based
materials (including the IRN’s Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean
collection and our online archive at http://www.dloc.com/icirn). This
collaboration will encourage Caribbean students’ study of and research
on sexuality and will facilitate connections among faculty in this field at
UWI and in the USA. Because the teaching faculty will commit to teach-
ing the course material over the next several years, and because the final
course materials will be available on the internet, this project will also
strengthen the growing field of Caribbean sexuality studies both in the
region and around the world.
In Review
The Caribbean Region of the International Resource Network (IRN) is
pleased to announce the receipt of a $20,000 grant from the International
Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture, and Society (IASSCS) to
create and present an Advanced Sexuality Studies Short Course. The
course will be presented during the summer of 2013 in Trinidad through
a collaboration with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies
(IGDS) at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Trinidad &
Tobago) campus.
CARIBBEAN IRN RECEIVES GRANT
TO CREATE SEXUALITIES COURSE
Resources and projects include:
— The Caribbean IRN Digital Archive on the Digital Library of the Caribbean: dloc.com/icirn
— Special Archive collections, including the Digital Archive of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica: dloc.com/icirngfm
— Multimedia Collection, Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean: caribbeanhomophobias.org
— Online Networking and Resources through the IRN website, the Caribbean IRN listserv, and the Caribbean IRN Facebook Page.
For more information, visit irnweb.org, email [email protected],
or join the Facebook Group Caribbean IRN
inside and outside the Caribbean.
activists, scholars, community organizers, writers, artists, and community-based researchers, among others,
ABOUT
CLAGS
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies provides a platform
for intellectual leadership in addressing issues that affect
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender individuals and other
sexual and gender minorities. As the first university-based
LGBT research center in the United States, CLAGS nurtures
cutting-edge scholarship, organizes colloquia for examining and affirming LGBT lives, and fosters network-building
among academics, artists, activists, policy makers, and community members. CLAGS stands committed to maintaining a
broad program of public events, online projects, and fellowships that promote reflection on queer pasts, presents, and
futures. CLAGS makes its home at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York.
CLAGS’s efforts to promote an academy where homophobia,
sexism, racism, and classism are studied and not enacted
depend on the generosity of our members. The basic membership rate of $40 ($20 for students or individuals with
limited income) includes advanced notification of all public
events and a subscription to our biannual newsletter. Members who donate $100 or more also receive free admission to
all CLAGS conferences.

Newsletter with Article

Transcription

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