FEATURING CLAGS UPDATES UPCOMING EVENTS

Transcription

CLAGS
SPRING 2 0 1 3
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
Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference
Performing Que(e)ries: Holly Hughes and Carmelita Tropicana
Rethinking Race, Queer Politics, and Practice: Dean Spade and Urvashi Vaid
Plus Many More!
CLAGS UPDATES
Events and Outreach
Memberships and Fellowships
International Resource Network
FEATURING
Spring 2013 Events Calendar
Martin Duberman’s 2012 Kessler Award Lecture
JAMES WILSON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
James Wilson is Professor of English and Theatre at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. 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 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.
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.
RANDALL CHAMBERLAIN DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
Randall Chamberlain has worked in fundraising for international nonprofits, including Human Rights Watch, Action Against Hunger,
and EngenderHealth, and is also an immigration lawyer with a focus on LGBT immigrants. He is on the advisory committee for the
LGBT Rights Division at Human Rights Watch and the LGBT Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. 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.
INTRODUCTIONS & RECOGNITIONS
Office Staff and Interns
Founder & Board of Directors
Major Donors List
Letter from the Executive Officer
CLAGS Facebook Page in Numbers
005
BENJAMIN GILLESPIE EVENTS AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR
Benjamin Gillespie is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Benjamin holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies from York
University in Toronto. He created and curated the very successful Performing Que(e)ries series, which addresses LGBTQ performance in
the twenty-first century. 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 been published in the
Canadian Theatre Review, the anthology TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work/Body of Art and has reviewed for Theatre
Survey. He is currently working on a project based around queer performance, affect, and stage properties
COSPONSORED EVENTS IN SPRING 2013
KALLE WESTERLING GLOBAL COORDINATOR
CLAGS cosponsors events with other
departments, centers, and programs in
The Graduate Center, CUNY, and outside
organizations. Here are some of our
cosponsored events in Spring 2013. All
of these events are free and open to the
public.
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is cosponsored
by heteronormative
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In light
thestructures
publication
of the
an investigation of stripping men and the New York City burlesque scene in the 1920s and 1930s.
CLAGS
and The Center for the Study of
final installment of his lecture courses,
Women and Society. April 24, 12pm, Room How to Live Together, this conference will
6112, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
feature presentations exploring all aspects
NOAM PARNESS MEMBERSHIPS ANDof FELLOWSHIPS
COORDINATOR
Roland Barthes’ oeuvre:
the tightrope
2nd
Annual
Theory
ConferNoam
ParnessCritical
is currently
finishing
their B.A. in Philosophy
and Jewish
at CUNY
Queens of
College.
his writing
walksStudies
between
the forms
the Most of Noam’s academic
interests
lie Renaissance
within the realmofof Roland
queer history, art, and culture, and in religious aesthetics. Their personal activities align with their
ence:
“The
novel and the essay, the evolution of his
academic interests,
having volunteered
with a number of queer arts organizations, such as MIX NYC and the Leslie-Lohman Museum
Barthes”
The students
of the Comparawritingeducation,
and thinking
throughout
of Gay
and Lesbian
Noamdepartments
is also involved in organizing,
and activism
withinhis
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around the Orthodox Jewish Queer
tive
Literature
and Art.
English
the engagement of his work with literary or
community.
present the second annual conference
cultural texts, and the relationship of his
devoted to Critical Theory. Barthes’ final
work to critical theory, as well as to any
lecture course, Preparation of the Novel,
and all other disciplines. April 25–26, The
staged the search for a Vita Nuova and a
Graduate Center, CUNY.
“third form” between or beyond the Essay
and the Novel that would, in the manner of
“the Neutral,” baffle or outplay the paradigms of theory and literature. Even if we
The Brain, Truth and Underwear: The
can only hypothesize what hybrid work of
Clinical Management of Gender
critique and narrative Barthes would have
in Children is co-sponsored by
gone on to create, the brilliance, theoreti- CLAGS and The Center for the
cal significance, and formal innovation of
Study of Women and Society
Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series:
Clinical Management of Gender in Children Sahar Sadjadi, visiting assistant
professor and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow,
Committee for Interdisciplinary Science
Studies, the Graduate Center. Dr. Sadjadi
is an anthropologist and medical doctor
whose research lies at the intersection of
science and technology, gender and sexuality and childhood studies. She studied
medicine at Tehran University of Medical
Sciences, worked as an emergency room
physician, and received her Ph.D. in medical anthropology at Columbia University.
COMING UP
CLAGS Fellowships
CLAGS Events and Outreach 2013
Upcoming Events Spring 2013
Rainbow Book Fair
Homonationalism and Pinkwashing
HOMONATIONALISM AND PINKWASHING
The Graduate Center, CUNY and CLAGS
revealing that Homonationalism and
will be presenting the Homonationalism Pinkwashing are pressing, urgent, and
and Pinkwashing Conference over two
inspiring topics in international acadays, April 10–11. This historic event
demic work. This conference, which sold
will feature a varied group of speakers
out six months before its date, is already
representing various countries, ethsignificant, respected and pioneering in
nicities, nationalities, genders, ages,
burgeoning arenas of academic study
communities, universities, and academic and inquiry.
fields in discussion around a new arena
CLAGS offers this program with pride,
of thought, specifically the concepts
excitement and the certainty that this
of Homonationalism and Pinkwashing.
conference will be remembered as an
These
concepts have
been
addressed
ON NOVEMBER
13, 2012,
CHARLES
BUSCH WAS IN CONVERSATION
historic event in the development of
by WITH
a number
of scholars
of all racial,
JAMES
WILSON, CLAGS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. IN THIS
discourses
EXCERPT,
BY ILYSSA SILFEN, global
CHARLES
BUSCH and will shine bright
cultural,
andTRANSCRIBED
religious backgrounds,
on the reputations of the Graduate
Center and the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies as institutions committed to
the most advanced and dynamic work in
global academia.
PERFORMING QUE(E)RIES
CHARLES BUSCH
AND JAMES WILSON
What is Homonationalism? Homonationalism, a term coined by Professor
Jasbir Puar of Rutgers University, describes
the recent global phenomenon that occurs when sub-sectors of specific LGBTQ
communities achieve legal equality with
heterosexuals and then embrace racial
and religious supremacy ideologies. In
DESCRIBES THE GENESIS OF THEATRE IN LIMBO, THE COMPANY
THAT PRODUCED BUSCH’S EARLY WORKS, SUCH AS VAMPIRE
LESBIANS OF SODOM, PSYCHO BEACH PARTY, AND THE LADY IN
IN REVIEW
Performing Que(e)ries: Nina Arsenault with J. Paul Halferty
Four-Day Conference Celebrated Harry Hay, Founder Of Modern American Gay Movement
Performing Que(e)ries: Charles Busch and James Wilson
Acceptance At What Price? The Gay Movement Reconsidered
UPDATE FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCE
NETWORK
BY KALLE WESTERLING
In the summer, the Caribbean IRN region is creating and presenting an
short course in Advanced Sexuality Studies 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.
The region will also further its collaboration with the Digital Library of the
THE IRN MAP
In North America, we are focusing on an attempt to build a network linking university-based LGBT, gender and sexuality programs and research
centers with similar non-academic centers and related initiatives across
the continent.
In the Middle East, we continue to work on the free online network
designed to facilitate exchange and dialogue between the transnational
community of scholars and students working on or in the Middle East,
called The Transnational Peer Review Network. The other major project in
the region is “Turkey’s Queer Lives: LGBTQ Oral Histories Archive,” which
aims to address the lack of large scale academic project on the LGBTQ
community in the country by collecting life stories of people in Turkey who
identify as LGBTQ. The goal is to construct an archive that will be made
available to academics, independent researchers and activists who work in
the field.
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.
IRN Africa
Coordinator: Naijeria Toweett
Contact: ntoweett@irnweb.org
IRN Middle East
Coordinator: Rustem Ertug Altinay
Contact: middle-east@irnweb.org
IRN Asia
Coordinator: Ana Huang
Contact: asia@irnweb.org
In Latin America, the IRN provides a space for discussion for strategies for
the strengthening of LGBT rights in the region through its listserve “The
Advocacy Network for Latin America and the Caribbean.”
IRN Latin America
Coordinator: Jasmin Blessing
Contact: latin-america@irnweb.org
IRN Caribbean
Coordinator: Vidyaratha Kissoon
Contact: caribbean@irnweb.org
IRN North America
Coordinator: Mark Blasius
Contact: north-america@irnweb.org
In Review
In China, we are currently focusing on translating and compiling primary
sources from Chinese into English to provide resources for English-speaking scholars and facilitate access to first-hand voices. Another project
that is ongoibg and started as an IRN project is SeekQueer, a chineselanguage interactive website on queer theory and sexuality resources,
available at seekqueer.com.
Caribbean and create a collection of oral history interviews.
REPORTS FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL RESOURCE NETWORK
Coming Up
In our Africa region, we have two ongoing projects: one which aims to
publishing interviews with leaders of the LGBTI rights movement in African
countries where they are less visible, the other which will result in a
Kenyan radio drama series dealing with issues of LGBTI communities in
Kenya.
Introductions & Recognitions
The International Resource Network (IRN), the global network of
researchers, activists, artists, and teachers sharing knowledge
about diverse sexualities, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies, as so far had a time of reorganization and applying for
future funding. Meanwhile, the local organizations and projects
associated with the network continued to grow and expand.
CLAGS Newsletter Spring 2013 Page 33
Photo: David Rodgers
QUESTION.
011
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: clags@gc.cuny.edu.
021
033
STAFF
Executive Director
James Wilson
Global Coordinator for IRN
Kalle Westerling
Events and Outreach Coordinator Benjamin Gillespie
Financial and Administrative Director
Jasmina Sinanovic
Development Director
Randall Chamberlain
Memberships and Fellowships Coordinator Noam Parness
Media and Design
Kalle Westerling
Newsletter Editor
Benjamin Gillespie
Newsletter Design
Kalle Westerling
CLAGS STAFF
CLAGS Newsletter Spring 2013 Page 3
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, CUNY. 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 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.
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.
RANDALL CHAMBERLAIN DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
Randall Chamberlain has worked in fundraising for international nonprofits, including Human Rights Watch, Action Against Hunger,
and EngenderHealth, and is also an immigration lawyer with a focus on LGBT immigrants. He is on the advisory committee for the
LGBT Rights Division at Human Rights Watch and the LGBT Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. 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.
BENJAMIN GILLESPIE EVENTS AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR Benjamin Gillespie is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Benjamin holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies from York
University in Toronto. He created and curated the very successful Performing Que(e)ries series, which addresses LGBTQ performance in
the twenty-first century. 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 been published in the
Canadian Theatre Review, the anthology TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work/Body of Art and has reviewed for Theatre
Survey. He is currently working on a project based around queer performance, affect, and stage properties
KALLE WESTERLING GLOBAL COORDINATOR
Kalle Westerling is a Ph.D. student in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY, 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 stripping men and the New York City burlesque scene in the 1920s and 1930s.
NOAM PARNESS MEMBERSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS COORDINATOR Noam Parness is currently finishing their B.A. in Philosophy and Jewish Studies at CUNY Queens College. Most of Noam’s academic
interests lie within the realm of queer history, art, and culture, and in religious aesthetics. Their personal activities align with their
academic interests, having volunteered with a number of queer arts organizations, such as MIX NYC and the Leslie-Lohman Museum
of Gay and Lesbian Art. Noam is also involved in organizing, education, and activism within and around the Orthodox Jewish Queer
community.
BENJAMIN JOSEPH NOBILE KAMPLER MEMBERSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS INTERN
Benjamin Joseph Nobile Kampler received his B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s Studies from Brandeis University in
2005. He completed his first master’s thesis on queerness, children, and video game violence in December of 2011 at New York
University’s John W. Draper Master’s program. His published work has focused on queer public sexuality and he is currently a
student in Queens College’s M.A. program for applied social research.
CLAGS BOARD MEMBERS
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
James Green, History, Brown University
Alyssa Nitchun, Creative Time
Daniel Hurewitz, History, Hunter College,
CUNY
Angelique V. Nixon, Women’s Studies,
University of Connecticut
Jason Baumann, Coordinator of Collection
Assessment and LGBT Collections, New York
Public Library
Ileana Jiménez, Institute for Writing and
Thinking, Bard College
Nick Salvato, Theatre and English, Cornell
University
Beck Jordan-Young, Women’s Studies,
Barnard College
John-Paul Sanchez, Montefiore Medical
Center, Bronx, NY
Neil Meyer, English, La Guardia Community
College, CUNY
Andrew Spieldenner, Speech
Communication, Rhetoric and Performance
Studies, Hofstra University
Michelle Billies, Psychology, CUNY
Graduate Center
Matt Brim, English, College of Staten
Island, CUNY
Chris A. Eng, PhD Student in English, CUNY
Graduate Center
Jeffrey Escoffier, Independent Scholar
Thomas Glave, English, SUNY Binghamton
Darnell L. Moore, Director of Educational
Initiatives, Hetrick-Martin Institute
Christopher Adam Mitchell,
History, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Dagmawi Woubshet, English, Cornell
University
In Review CLAGS Newsletter Spring 2013 Page 5
Ilyssa Silfen is a second-year Masters student in the MALS program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently writing her
thesis on trans* reproduction and its implications in further problematizing the perceived gender binary, as well as working
part-time at the College of Staten Island as a reading/writing tutor. This is her first year as an intern for the Center for Lesbian
and Gay Studies.
Coming Up
ILYSSA SILFEN EVENTS INTERN
CLAGS INTERNS
LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
James Wilson
CLAGS Executive Director
AN ACCIDENTAL PROTESTER
This past January, I spent a cold, wet, and
fabulous week in Paris. One evening while
strolling along the Left Bank, sauntering in
the shadows of the imposing grandeur of
L’Hôtel national des Invalides, I found myself caught up in a massive wave of protesters, who were dispersing from a demonstration in front of the Eiffel Tower. The crowd
moved like a protean organism through the
narrow Parisian streets, growing in immensity as other protest groups siphoned into
the throng from criss-crossing thoroughfares. My French is not nearly what it once
was, so I had difficulty discerning the gist
of the chants and call-and-response rallying cries, but I still read hieroglyphics with
relative fluency. Looking at the protesters’
signs decorated with stick-figured, perfectly
gendered families (i.e., a tall stick-figure
man holding hands with a tall stick-figure
woman, flanked by one each stick-figure
girl-child and stick-figure boy-child), I knew
that this was not a protest among which I
wanted to be counted.
I tried to extricate myself from the human
amoeba, and at every turn, every boulevard,
every Rue de Something or Other, I encountered more protesters. I started to make out
some of the declarations, such as “Opposition to Gay Marriage is Not Homophobic”
and “Paternity, Maternity, Equality,” but I
was trapped in a Kafkaesque vortex as I got
swept along with the tide of impassioned
anti-gay marriage, sign-carrying non-homophobes. Finally, by ducking into a Japanese
restaurant and settling down to a glass of
Côte du Rhône red wine and a plate of sushi
I could watch the protest run its course and
leave when the coast was clear. I do hope
that as final numbers of participants are tallied, the organizers can subtract one, citing
the presence of an accidental protester.
Just about a week later I was back in the
States, and using language I could fully
understand, newly inaugurated President
Obama referred directly to equality for his
“gay brothers and sisters,” citing Stonewall
as the flashpoint for the lesbian and gay
civil rights movement. It was, as bloggers
blogged and twitterers tweeted, an historic
occasion. This was the first time a president
used the word gay (at least in its same-sex
connotation) in an inauguration speech.
Even more impressive was the fact that it
caused hardly a stir (even among the Fox
News pundits).
So then why did I feel that something had
been lost in translation? First, Obama does
a disservice to our revolutionary forbears
who took part in the Stonewall Riots by
metonymically linking that event with the
rights of gay men and women to marry. As
all accounts have it, a good number of the
instigators on that June night in 1969 were
drag queens and street kids, and they were
not protesting for the right to file joint tax
returns but exploding with long-suppressed
rage to ongoing humiliation and abuse from
the law. Second, I am afraid that gay marriage has to a degree subsumed all other
LGBT issues, and we are marching along,
becoming accidental protesters focused on
Data collected May 2012–Mar 2013
Number of stories
created about CLAGS
Number of times someone
clicked on or created a
story from the CLAGS
Facebook Page
Number of people
sharing stories
about CLAGS
May ‘12
Jun ‘12
Jul ‘12
Aug ‘12
Sep ‘12
Oct ‘12
Nov ‘12
Dec ‘12
Jan ‘13
Feb ‘13
Total Reach*:
9,015
4,983
3,103
7,148
8,014
9,052
9,278
25,153
23,818
13,240
* The number of people who have seen any content associated with our page
one aspect of equality that benefits only
the coupled, the moneyed, and those in the
mainstream.
Offering (for me) a corrective to this interpretation, CLAGS hosted a number of
important events in the fall, and I was
energized anew by the nuances within and
among the multiple discourses arising
from our diverse communities. The Harry
Hay conference in September situated LGBTQ militancy through particular historical moments and reflected the potential
for realizing new communities unbound by
constraints of gender and sexual desires.
The celebration of the book Born this Way
was a forceful reminder of the agony, courage, and pleasures associated with coming
out as LGBT. Nina Arsenault embodied and
celebrated through performance and praxis
what it means to be a trans woman and art-
ist, and playwright and drag artist Charles
Busch hilariously described the process of
working in the margins of New York theatre
with a group of like-minded misfits to hobnobbing with the show-biz elite. And finally,
capping the semester with his inspiring
Kessler Award Lecture, Martin Duberman
offered a call to arms to consider the costs
of sacrificing radicalism for normativity.
The spring calendar offers even more opportunities to deepen the conversation and
broaden our understandings of LGBT issues
locally, nationally, and internationally. We
will continue to provide opportunities for
artists to share their creative processes
and challenges through the enormously
popular Performing Que(e)ries series, and
we will host a number of scholars and activists who will share their own work in their
varied fields and disciplines. The highlight
of the spring, though, will most certainly
be the Homonationalism and Pinkwashing
Conference, which sold out its registration within days of announcement and has
already generated considerable buzz and
anticipation.
I do not want to minimize the historical
significance of gay and lesbian marriage
equality. Beyond its symbolic importance,
marriage equality is crucial to the lives of
our gay brothers and sisters raising families across the country (and not just the
nine states that legally recognize same-sex
marriages). Yet, we must resist the centripetal force that binds us to a single issue.
At CLAGS, we welcome the opportunity to
throw away the guidebook and set out in
new directions. In Review CLAGS Newsletter Spring 2013 Page 7
Number of users who clicked
any of the content on the
CLAGS Facebook page
Coming Up
Number of times content from
the CLAGS Facebook Page was
seen on Facebook
Number of
new fans
Number of people who have seen
any content associated with the
CLAGS Facebook Page
CLAGS FACEBOOK PAGE IN NUMBERS
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Blanche Wiesen Cook
James Wilson
Amanda Wilson
Evan Wilson
Kevin Brooks Winkler
Coming Up
Presidential Circle
Over $500
Honor Roll
Over $100–249
The following generous CLAGS members have donated $100.00 or more
to our organization between July 1st
2011 and June 30th 2012.
MAJOR DONORS
CLAGS FELLOWSHIPS
AND AWARDS
BY NOAM PARNESS
This past fall, CLAGS awarded two fellowships: The Paul
Monette-Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize, and the CLAGS
Fellowship Award. Our fantastic fellowship winners are profiled
in this newsletter, and on our website. Please check out our
current winners to read more about their scholarly endeavors!
Additionally, we are excited by all of the applications that we
have received for the three fellowships that CLAGS will be
awarding this spring: The Martin Duberman Fellowship, The
Robert Giard Fellowship and the Joan Heller–Diane Bernard
Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies. We have received a
large number of applicants this year, and are impressed by the
strength and integrity of their work. For example, the Robert
Giard Fellowship has received numerous applications from
artists, photographers, and filmmakers, whose locations range
from Brooklyn to Berlin. Stay tuned for the winners of these
fellowships, to be announced in May.
CLAGS Fellowship Award
The Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship
A $2,000 award to be given annually to 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 their work, the fellowship will be able
to be used for research, travel, or writing support. Deadline: June
15, 2013.
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. Deadline: November 15, 2013.
The Martin Duberman Fellowship
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 (LGBTQ) experience.
Deadline: November 15, 2013.
For 2013, we will be offering these two awards again, so please
visit http://www.clags.org for instructions on how to apply.
The Robert Giard Fellowship
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
The Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender
Studies
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.
The Paul Monette–Roger Horwitz Dissertation
Prize
This award, which honors the memory of Sylvia 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. Deadline: June 15,2013.
More information: http://www.clags.org
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
UNITED
IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP
DIRECTOR: JIM HUBBARD
CO-PRODUCERS: JIM HUBBARD, SARAH SCHULMAN Award-winning documentary about the history of
ACT UP now available for educational and library
purchases!
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP explores
the story of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power) from the grassroots perspective—how a small
group of men and women of all races and classes,
came together to change the world anvd save each
other’s lives. The film takes the viewer through the
planning and execution of a dozen exhilarating major
actions including Seize Control of the FDA, Stop the
Church, and Day of Desperation, with a timeline of
many of the other zaps and actions that forced the
U.S. government and mainstream media to deal with
the AIDS crisis. UNITED IN ANGER reveals the
group’s complex culture—meetings, affinity groups,
and approaches to civil disobedience mingle with
profound grief, sexiness, and the incredible energy of
ACT UP.
2012 | USA | 93 min.
“As scrappy and passionate as the actions it documents, UNITED
IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP delivers a living tribute to a
movement spawned by death and despair" — New York Times
“If the AIDS crisis has crested, it's due in large part to the radical
advocacy group so intelligently portrayed in "United in Anger: A
History of ACT UP," a documentary that aims to educate rather
than agitate.” — Variety
“UNITED IN ANGER isn't just a film, it's a teaching tool for future
activists. Those future activists are us.” — Autostraddle
FILM FESTIVALS:
Hot Docs 2012, MoMa Documentary Fortnight, Frameline: San
Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Outfest: Los Angeles Gay
and Lesbian Film Festival, etc.
EDUCATIONAL PURCHASE FORMATS: DVD EDUCATIONAL
RENTAL FORMATS: HDCAM, DIGIBETA, BLURAY, DVD SUGGESTED EDUCATION RATE: $300 (INCLUDES SHIPPING)
STUDY GUIDE ALSO AVAILABLE
FOR RENTAL OR PURCHASE
EMAIL The Film Collaborative to purchase avfilm for your
organization at jeffrey@thefilmcollaborative.org
The Kessler Award
Coming Up
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. Deadline: June 15, 2013.
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. Deadline:
November 15, 2013.
This page contains advertisements.
AWARD
WINNERS
RAMZI FAWAZ
LYNN HORRIDGE
CLAGS FELLOWSHIP
PAUL MONETTE-ROGER HORWITZ AWARD
Ramzi Fawaz is a Postdoctoral Fellow of American Studies at George
Washington University and a Visiting Professorial Lecturer of American Studies at Georgetown University. His current book project,
The New Mutants: Comic Book Superheroes and Popular Fantasy
in Postwar America, explores how the American superhero became
a cultural embodiment of the political aspirations of sexual, gendered, and racial minorities in the post-WWII period. This project recently won the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Fellowship Award
and is forthcoming with NYU Press as part of their new series “PostMillenial Pop.” Fawaz’s research interests include queer and feminist cultural politics, the culture of social movements, critical race
and queer theory, and fantasy and enchantment in modern America.
His work has appeared in a number of journals including American
Literature, Callaloo, and Anthropological Quarterly. Lynn Horridge was awarded the 2012 Monette-Horwitz Prize for her
dissertation, Finding Kinship in the Twenty-First Century: Matching Gay New Yorkers with Children through Adoption and Fostering.
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in New York City and
Guatemala, Horridge’s work examines the social history of “matching” in American adoption practices and how the neoliberalization
of child welfare services has affected gay adopters and children in
need of care. Horridge received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology
from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2011 and has a private practice in
psychotherapy in the West Village.
The Essential Historical, Biographical,
and Autobiographical Writings
THE NEW PRESS
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Coming Up
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The
The MARTIN DUBERMAN Reader
“An unflinching nerve, a wise heart, and a brilliant intellect.”
—Jonathan Kozol
CLAGS EVENTS
AND OUTREACH
SPRING 2013
This past semester, CLAGS held many successful and provocative events that effectively supported our mandate as a platform
for historical and contemporary issues affecting the LGBTQ community. We hosted
the book launch for Born This Way: Real
Stories of Growing up Gay by Paul Vitigliano,
featuring such guest speakers as Noah Michelson (Huffington Post Gay Voices) and
Michael Musto (Columnist, Village Voice).
We held the first two parts of a brand new
series, Performing Que(e)ries, which tracks
the legacy of live queer performance in the
age of media-based and digitized communication. The first two performers in this
series included Canadian trans performance
artist Nina Arsenault and acclaimed New
York-based playwright and drag performer
Charles Busch. Sujay Pandit (NYU) led the
fall Seminar in the City series on Transgressive Performance and the Possibility of Freedom, hosted by the WOW Café Theatre. Our
spring conference, “Radically Gay: The Life
and Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay,” brought
together generations of LGBT scholars celebrating the 100th anniversary of Harry
Hay’s birth, with CLAGS and the Harry Hay
Centennial Committee sponsoring a four
day-long conference exploring Hay’s life and
ideas and the multiple facets of LGBT life
that Harry Hay himself pioneered. Finally,
the Annual Kessler Lecture marked the final
CLAGS event of the semester in December
and featured 2012 awardee Martin Duberman giving an honorary lecture entitled “Ac-
BY BENJAMIN GILLESPIE
ceptance at What Price? The Gay Movement
Reconsidered.” The lecture was followed by
a wine and cheese reception as the room
buzzed over Duberman’s radical politics and
views on the national gay movement.
eddine, Jasbir Puar and Haneen Maikay, as
well as over 150 presenters.
In order to keep up to date on all of our
events, fellowships, and awards, I encourage you to join CLAGS’s listserv by visiting
our website, clags.org, where you will also
be able to access our virtual event calendar,
archives, and important announcements and
updates.
CLAGS has many exciting events planned as
part of our Spring 2013 calendar. Highlights
include the continuation of the Performing
Que(e)ries series with Holly Hughes and
Carmelita Tropicana. We will continue to
be a leading sponsor of the annual Rainbow I hope to see you at all of our exciting events
Book Fair, taking place on April 13th. CLAGS coming up this Spring! will host a series of sponsored lectures and
talks, including a lecture by Michael Schiavi
on “The Life and Times of Vito Russo.” We
will also host a critical dialogue between
Urvashi Vaid and Dean Spade entitled “You
Gotta Serve Somebody: Rethinking Race,
Queer Politics, and Practice.” madison
moore will give a talk on Queer Nightlife,
and CLAGS Fellowship winner Ramzi Fawaz
will discuss his award-winning book manuscript. We will also co-sponsor a number of
exciting conferences and talks within the
Graduate Center and beyond. The highlight
of CLAGS’s semester will surely be the Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference, which will be held on April 10-11 at
the CUNY Graduate Center. This conference
will mark a crucial turning point for queer
scholars and activists by providing an opportunity to examine queer resistance and
global complicity. This two day conference
features four keynote panels by Rabih Alam-
Performing Que(e)ries Part IV: Holly
Hughes in conversation with Jill
Dolan Lauded queer performance artist
Holly Hughes joins theatre scholar Jill
Dolan to discuss the genealogy of her
politics and aesthetics as a queer artist in
New York, informed by her experiences at
venues like the WOW Café, to the development of her pedagogy as a professor at
the University of Michigan. Many artists
like Hughes have transitioned into the
university in order to sustain their work
as queer performers. How is the lived
experience of collective queer artistic
communities transferred to the institutional atmosphere and how does queerness translate into pedagogy and remain
transgressive? How do we deal with the
taboo of a faculty member as a sexual
creature? Can queerness be translated
through teaching in a way that students
can experience queerness outside of the
community for which it was intended?
A short performance piece will also be
presented by Hughes’ past and current
students. May 7, 7pm, Segal Theatre,
The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Please RSVP: rsvp@clags.org
an expression of creativity as well as the
labor of that creativity. ON FIERCENESS
addresses the critical and creative implications of “fierceness”—what fierceness
is, what it does, and how it opens up
alternative possibilities of identification. April 26, 7pm, C201, The Graduate
Center, CUNY.
Coming Up
representing various countries, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, ages, communities, universities, and academic
These concepts have been addressed by a
“You Gotta Serve Somebody: Rethinking number of scholars of all racial, cultural,
Race, Queer Politics, and Practice”—A and religious backgrounds, revealing that
Critical Dialogue between Urvashi Vaid Homonationalism and Pinkwashing are
pressing, urgent, and inspiring topics in
and Dean Spade Two of the leading
critical thinkers and activists in the LGBT international academic work. This conference, which sold out six months before its
movement—Dean Spade and Urvashi
Vaid—meet in a provocative conversation date, is already significant, respected and
moderated by academic, performance art- pioneering in burgeoning arenas of acaist, and activist Rosamond S. King to ask demic study and inquiry. April 10–11 at
The Graduate Center, CUNY. Livestream
and answer key questions about today’s
available at: videostreaming.gc.cuny.
queer practice. Does a politics pursuedu.
ing equal rights produce freedom or an
accommodation to neoliberal economic
5th Annual Rainbow Book Fair The
and political norms? Why does the LGBT 5th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair
movement ignore structural racism? Has will feature more than 1OO publishers,
queerness bound itself to nationalism and writers, poets, editors, booksellers, and
anti-feminism in order to be normalized? the 15OO+ readers who love and buy
How can the structure of the civil rights
their books-from the serious to the wild,
organization form itself be democratized? from the zany to the super hot. Rainbow
Where are the new practices of organizBook Fair is open to the public with book
ing, cultural expression, and resistance? discounts and giveaways. More informaThree veteran queer activists and scholars tion is available at rainbowbookfair.org.
tackle these critical questions as they
April 13, 12pm, Holiday Inn Midtown.
explore how the movement could be
transformed to serve the interests of all
On Fierceness: A Lecture by madison
parts of the queer communities. March
moore Fierceness is a term that’s
22, 7pm, Skylight Room in The Graduate generally used to compliment a perCenter, CUNY.
son’s style—it’s the go-to, sassy way of
describing a job well-done. But fierceHomonationalism and Pinkwashness isn’t always about compliment. In
ing Conference This historic event
queer communities, and queer of color
communities in particular, fierceness is
All CLAGS events are free and open
to the public. Please RSVP to rsvp@
clags.org. For more information on
these events, or to access recordings, please contact: clagsevents@
gc.cuny.edu.
UPCOMING EVENTS IN SPRING 2013
COSPONSORED EVENTS IN SPRING 2013
CLAGS cosponsors events with other
departments, centers, and programs in
The Graduate Center, CUNY, and outside
organizations. Here are some of our
cosponsored events in Spring 2013. All
of these events are free and open to the
public.
Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series:
Clinical Management of Gender in Children Sahar Sadjadi, visiting assistant
professor and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow,
Committee for Interdisciplinary Science
Studies, the Graduate Center. Dr. Sadjadi
is an anthropologist and medical doctor
whose research lies at the intersection of
science and technology, gender and sexuality and childhood studies. She studied
medicine at Tehran University of Medical
Sciences, worked as an emergency room
physician, and received her Ph.D. in medical anthropology at Columbia University.
Her work has been funded by the WennerGren Foundation and the National Science
Foundation. The event is cosponsored by
CLAGS and The Center for the Study of
Women and Society. April 24, 12pm, Room
6112, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
2nd Annual Critical Theory Conference: “The Renaissance of Roland
Barthes” The students of the Comparative Literature and English departments
present the second annual conference
devoted to Critical Theory. Barthes’ final
lecture course, Preparation of the Novel,
staged the search for a Vita Nuova and a
“third form” between or beyond the Essay
and the Novel that would, in the manner of
“the Neutral,” baffle or outplay the paradigms of theory and literature. Even if we
can only hypothesize what hybrid work of
critique and narrative Barthes would have
gone on to create, the brilliance, theoretical significance, and formal innovation of
his late work, especially his lectures, has
yet to receive the international attention it
deserves. In light of the publication of the
final installment of his lecture courses,
How to Live Together, this conference will
feature presentations exploring all aspects
of Roland Barthes’ oeuvre: the tightrope
his writing walks between the forms of the
novel and the essay, the evolution of his
writing and thinking throughout his life,
the engagement of his work with literary or
cultural texts, and the relationship of his
work to critical theory, as well as to any
and all other disciplines. April 25–26, The
Graduate Center, CUNY.
Clinical Management of Gender
in Children is co-sponsored by
CLAGS and The Center for the
Study of Women and Society
HOMONATIONALISM AND PINKWASHING
The Graduate Center, CUNY and CLAGS
will be presenting the Homonationalism
and Pinkwashing Conference over two
days, April 10–11. This historic event
representing various countries, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, ages,
communities, universities, and academic
These concepts have been addressed
by a number of scholars of all racial,
cultural, and religious backgrounds,
revealing that Homonationalism and
Pinkwashing are pressing, urgent, and
inspiring topics in international academic work. This conference, which sold
out six months before its date, is already
significant, respected and pioneering in
and inquiry.
CLAGS offers this program with pride,
excitement and the certainty that this
conference will be remembered as an
historic event in the development of
global discourses and will shine bright
on the reputations of the Graduate
Center and the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies as institutions committed to
the most advanced and dynamic work in
global academia.
What is Homonationalism? Homonationalism, a term coined by Professor
Jasbir Puar of Rutgers University, describes
the recent global phenomenon that occurs when sub-sectors of specific LGBTQ
communities achieve legal equality with
heterosexuals and then embrace racial
and religious supremacy ideologies. In
Who is Presenting?
The Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference
promises to be one of the most diverse
Who Will be Represented?We
have a number of schools who will be
represented at this conference, including:
Bryn Mawr, Arizona State, University of
Toronto, Yale School of Architecture, Harvard Kennedy School, Syracuse, University
of British Columbia, Marquette, University
of California Davis, CUNY Graduate Center,
College of Staten Island, Concordia,
Columbia University, University of Texas,
The New School, University of Alberta,
Williams College, Oregon State, McMaster,
University of Warwick, University of Berlin,
University of Mains, McGill, University
of California Riverside, Fairleigh Dickenson University, Northwestern, Indiana
University, Wesleyan, University of Iowa,
University of Chicago, UCLA, Kingsborough
Community, University of Wisconsin, the
United Nations Development Program.
Coming Up
(Keynote) Speakers
Among the
189 speakers who will be presenting, we
are featuring three keynote speakers: Dr.
Jasbir Puar (Rutgers University), Rabih
Alameddine (Author of Kool Aids: the Art
of War [1998]), Haneen MaiKey (Founding
director of alQaws: For Sexual and Gender
Diversity in Palestinian Society). A small
sample of some of our other presenters
includes: Dr. Julia Creet (York University,
Canada), Dr. Lisa Duggan (New York University), Dr. Roderick Ferguson (University
of Minnesota), Dr. David Gerstner (City
University of New York, College of Staten
Island), Dr. Gayatri Gopinath (New York
University), Dr. Aeyel Gross (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Dr. Samantha King (Queens
University, Canada), Dr. Scott Morgenson
(York University, Canada)
The following countries will also be
subjects of presentations: Iran, Lithuania,
Poland, Italy, Greece, France, Canada, India, The United States, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, Cyprus,
Serbia, Cherokee Nation, Bulgaria, Uganda,
Brazil, Malaysia, Norway, Germany, Chile,
Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba,
Pakistan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
What is Pinkwashing? It is a common practice today for a government body
to point to or exaggerate LGBTQ rights in
order to present itself as progressive. This
practice of “whitewashing” various racial
and religious oppressions with claims
of “gay rights” is called Pinkwashing.
Because LGBT people have been actively
oppressed by society for so long, many
people mistakenly interpret some forms of
“gay rights” (ex. Pride parades, gay people
participating in military service, etc.) as
evidence of increased modernity. However,
due to homonationalism and the shifting
position of LGBTQ people, this is no longer
an accurate measure of social advancement. In the locations where Homonationalism is active, LGBTQ people of the
dominant racial or religious demographic
may actually have far more secure social
rights and political power than people who
exist in subordinate racial and religious
communities (which of course themselves
include LGBTQ people). Pinkwashing is of
profound and engaged interest to scholars
around the world who are interested in
social justice and LGBTQ studies.
conferences in the history of LGBTQ studies, with broad participation across nationality, religion, race, gender and geography.
At this conference, 189 speakers will be
presenting on their specific experiences
concerning these topics.
countries such as the Netherlands, Britain,
and Germany, white gay people (most
often males) are increasingly joining racist
movements against immigrants and immigrations, especially from countries where
the majority of the population is Muslim.
These nationalist ideologies are present
across the globe, and it is necessary to
study these substantial changes in the
positioning of white gay people in relationship to supremacy ideologies in order to
foster a better understanding of how vastly
different conditions for LGBTQ people are
globally based on race, religion, gender,
and geography.
CALENDAR 2013
HOMONATION
AND PINKWA
CONFERENCE
CARMELITA TROPICANA
IN CONVERSATION WITH
ARNALDO CRUZ-MALAVÉ
PERFORMING
QUE(E)RIES PART III
Renowned New York-based
performance artist, writer, and actress Carmelita
Tropicana will discuss her
astonishing career spanning almost three decades
in theatre, performance art,
and film on the transnational stage. A critical conversation with moderator
Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé on the
intersection of queer, feminist, and racial politics,
which have remained central in Tropicana’s performance work from the cultural
climate that pushed her to create her performance persona in the late 80s to her more current political, social,
and cultural interests.
> Feb 26, 7pm–9pm
> Segal Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center
> RSVP to rsvp@clags.org
HOLLY HUGHES
IN CONVERSATION WITH JILL DOLAN
PERFORMING QUE(E)RIES PART IV
CLAGS
EVENTS
SPRING
CALENDAR 2013
Lauded queer performance artist Holly Hughes joins theatre scholar Jill Dolan to discuss the genealogy of her politics and aesthetics as a queer artist in New York. Many artists like Hughes have transitioned into the university in order
to sustain their work as queer performers. How is the lived
experience of collective queer artistic communities transferred to the institutional atmosphere and how does queerness translate into pedagogy and remain transgressive?
> May 7, 7pm–9pm
> Segal Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center
Performing Que(e)ries
takes place over the
2012/13 academic year
and explores LGBTQ
performance in the
21st century, particularly the ways in which
contemporary queer
performance is tied
to past, present, and
future explorations of
queer identity. Performances and discussions
will track the legacy of
queer performance onstage and off, querying
the efficacy and vitality
of live performance in
the age of media-based
and digitized communication.
“FLAME ON!”: NUCLEAR FAMILIES, UN- ON FIERCENESS
STABLE MOLECULES, AND THE QUEER MADISON MOORE
HISTORY OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR Fierceness is a term that’s
This historic event will feature a vari
representing various countries, eth
genders, ages, communities, univer
fields in discussion around a new are
cally the concepts of Homonationali
These concepts have been addressed
ars of all racial, cultural, and religio
vealing that Homonationalism and Pi
ing, urgent, and inspiring topics in in
work. This conference, which sold o
its date, is already significant, respec
> April 10–11, at CUNY Graduate C
> Event is sold out, but will livestr
eostreaming.gc.cuny.edu
YOU GOTTA SERVE S
RACE, QUEER POLIT
URVASHI VAID, DEAN SP
Does a politics pursuing equal rights
an accommodation to neoliberal ec
norms? Why does the LGBT movem
racism? Has queerness bound itself t
ti-feminism in order to be normalized
ture of the civil rights organization for
tized? Where are the new practices o
expression, and resistance? Three ve
and scholars tackle these critical que
how the movement could be transfo
terests of all parts of the queer comm
> Mar 22, 6pm–8pm
> Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Gradu
> RSVP required, to rsvp@clags.or
This talk explores how Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four used
the mutated bodies of its four heroes to depict the transformation
of the social types of the 1950s nuclear family into icons of 1960s
radicalism, including the left-wing intellectual, the liberal feminist, the political activist, and the potential queer or neurotic. The
Fantastic Four placed the four heroes outside the bounds of Cold
War gender and sexual norms, their bodies were mutated in ways
that placed into question their assumed gender and sexual identification. Ramzi Fawaz argues that The Fantastic Four recasts the
superhero’s body as a site of radical transformation while encouraging readers to take pleasure in the body’s vulnerability to
outside forces as a catalyst for social transformation.
generally used to compliment
a person’s style—it’s the go-to,
sassy way of describing a job
well-done. But fierceness isn’t
always about compliment.
In queer communities, and
queer of color communities in
particular, fierceness is an expression of creativity as well as
the labor of that creativity. ON
FIERCENESS addresses the
critical and creative implications of “fierceness” — what fierceness is, what it does, and how it opens up alternative possibilities
of identification.
> Mar 13, 6pm–8pm
> Room 8304, CUNY Graduate Center
> Apr 26, 7pm–9pm
> Room C201, CUNY Graduate Center
RAMZI FAWAZ
Be a p
5th Ann
100 pu
1500+
to the w
open to
> Ap
> Ho
YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY: RETHINKING
RACE, QUEER POLITICS, AND PRACTICE
URVASHI VAID, DEAN SPADE AND ROSAMOND S. KING
Does a politics pursuing equal rights produce freedom or
an accommodation to neoliberal economic and political
norms? Why does the LGBT movement ignore structural
racism? Has queerness bound itself to nationalism and anti-feminism in order to be normalized? How can the structure of the civil rights organization form itself be democratized? Where are the new practices of organizing, cultural
expression, and resistance? Three veteran queer activists
and scholars tackle these critical questions as they explore
how the movement could be transformed to serve the interests of all parts of the queer communities.
> Mar 22, 6pm–8pm
> Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center
> RSVP required, to rsvp@clags.org
SON MOORE
ss is a term that’s
used to compliment
s style—it’s the go-to,
y of describing a job
e. But fierceness isn’t
about compliment.
communities, and
color communities in
r, fierceness is an exof creativity as well as
of that creativity. ON
ESS addresses the
nd creative implications of “fierceness” — what fiercewhat it does, and how it opens up alternative possibilities
cation.
26, 7pm–9pm
m C201, CUNY Graduate Center
P to rsvp@clags.org
Be a part of the most exciting LGBT book event in the U.S. The
5th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair will feature more than
100 publishers, writers, poets, editors, booksellers, and the
1500+ readers who love and buy their books–from the serious
to the wild, from the zany to the super hot. Rainbow Book Fair is
open to the public with book discounts and giveaways.
> Apr 13, 12pm–6pm
> Holiday Inn Midtown, 440 W. 57th Street
> Feb 21, 7pm–9pm
> Skylight Room,
CUNY Graduate Center
Coming Up
> April 10–11, at CUNY Graduate Center
> Event is sold out, but will livestreame at http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu
In this multimedia presentation, Michael Schiavi discusses the life and times of Vito
Russo (1946-1990), author
of The Celluloid Closet (1981),
the first study of Hollywood’s
treatment of lesbians and gay
men. The Celluloid Closet was
subsequently adapted into a
documentary film in 1995 by
Oscar-winning directors Rob
Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
This historic event will feature a varied group of speakers
representing various countries, ethnicities, nationalities,
genders, ages, communities, universities, and academic
fields in discussion around a new arena of thought, specifically the concepts of Homonationalism and Pinkwashing.
These concepts have been addressed by a number of scholars of all racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds, revealing that Homonationalism and Pinkwashing are pressing, urgent, and inspiring topics in international academic
work. This conference, which sold out six months before
its date, is already significant, respected and pioneering in
burgeoning arenas of academic study and inquiry.
BY MICHAEL
SCHIAVI
ALL OF CLAGS EVENTS
ARE FREE AND OPEN TO
THE PUBLIC.
IERCENESS
THE LIFE OF
VITO RUSSO
Photo: Massimo Consoli
ming Que(e)ries
lace over the
3 academic year
plores LGBTQ
mance in the
ntury, particue ways in which
porary queer
mance is tied
present, and
explorations of
dentity. Perfors and discussions
ck the legacy of
erformance onnd off, querying
cacy and vitality
performance in
of media-based
itized communi-
HOMONATIONALISM
AND PINKWASHING
CONFERENCE
PLEASE RSVP TO
RSVP@CLAGS.ORG
013
5TH ANNUAL RAINBOW BOOK FAIR
BY SARAH E. CHINN
Each year, the Rainbow Book Fair grows
larger and more exciting: as the largest
LGBT book expo in North America, the RBF
is the place to learn about new trends in
queer publishing. Exhibitors at the Fair
range from academic presses to romance
and erotica, from trade presses to art
books and literary journals and beyond:
it’s the Fair’s goal to represent the amazing variety of queer and trans writers and
publishers.
CLAGS has sponsored the RBF for the past
4 years, and brings to the Fair an intellectual engagement with queer writing that
has been the RBF’s trademark. As always,
the Fair will feature over 100 exhibitors, an
all-day Poetry Salon, panels, readings, and
appearances by major queer writers. Panel
themes represent the depth and breadth of
LGBT literary production: the efflorescence
of new trans fiction, Asian American queer Rainbow Book Fair is totally free to the
writers, the popularity of queer detective public with book discounts and giveaways.
novels, and what happens when poets write Join us for a day of queer book thrills!
fiction and fiction writers turn to poetry.
For more information, visit www.rainbowAnd speaking of poetry, the RBF Poetry bookfair.org Salon curated by Nathaniel Siegel and Regie Cabico is one of the high points of the
queer literary calendar. We’ll also have a 5th ANNUAL RAINBOW BOOK FAIR
full roster of prose readings throughout the 4/13/2013
day.
Holiday Inn Midtown
440 W.57th Street
The 5th annual Rainbow Book Fair will be
(between 9th and 10th Avenues)
in a new space this year, the Holiday Inn
Noon to 6pm
Midtown, from noon to 6pm. Come and be a
part of the most exciting LGBT book event
in the U.S. featuring more than 100 publishers, writers, poets, editors, booksellers, and the 1500+ readers who love and
buy their books—from the serious to the
wild, from the zany to the super hot. The
2012 ANNUAL KESSLER AWARD
PHOTOS BY KALLE WESTERLING
Coming Up
mances to engage in site specific research. The group convened
for three consecutive weeks in order to critique performances by
Coco Fusco, José Muñoz, Elizabeth Grosz, Judith “Jack” Halberstam,
Joseph Roach, and many others in relation to the various readings
provided by the seminar leader. Unfortunately, because of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the final session was cancelled. RegardLast fall, this bi-annual seminar discussed the ways in which trans- less, the seminar was a great success and was enjoyed by all who
gressive art shocks, titillates, enlightens and, perhaps most impor- attended.
tantly, provides a space of inclusion for marginalized or neglected
communities. A participant discussed how, at this vital moment, the CLAGS would like to thank the WOW Café for allowing us to use
role of queered bodies in transgressive art has become increasingly their space. The theatre proved to be a fitting location for the subthreatened and equally necessary. The seminar used the city as a ject of transgressive performance in New York. canvas for their research, attending various artistic spaces around
the city, including MOMA, the New Museum, and theatrical perfor-
Queering the Frame: Transgressive Performance and
the Possibility of Freedom
Seminar Leader: Sujay Pandit
Oct. 13, 20, and 27, 11–1pm
WOW Cafe Theatre, 59–61 E 4th St.
BY SUJAY PANDIT
QUEERING THE FRAME
SEMINAR IN THE CITY FALL 2012
PERFORMING
QUE(E)RIES
NINA ARSENAULT
WITH J. PAUL HALFERTY
BY BENJAMIN GILLESPIE
This exciting conversation and performance
demo with one of Canada’s leading queer
performance artists took place on October
26th, 2012 in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY
Graduate Center.
The event featured two short films made by
Arsenault and filmmaker Jordan Tannehill,
Plane of Immanence and Guadalajara, as well
as an extended monologue by Arsenault retelling an autobiographical story on her quest
for feminine beauty entitled The Ecstasy of
Nina Arsenault: a surgical pilgrimage through
a waking facelift. A provocative question and
answer period provided attendees the chance
to discuss the development of Arsenault’s
aesthetic practices, moderated by J. Paul Halferty from the University of Toronto.
Plane of Immanence (2012) began as a guerilla intervention at the (re)construction site of
Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, which artists
Jordan Tannahill and Nina Arsenault found in
a gutted, liminal state of transition. In this
video, this iconic space rich with national
cultural significance—an area of masculinity—is realized into a new potentiality as a
Nina Arsenault, Still from video recording of the event.
metaphysical labyrinth and virtual womb. The
queering presence of the body of Arsenault,
both naked and constructed, climbing through
a jungle of rebar, front-end loaders, and caution tape, reveals to us a multilayered allegory
for the alienation of the trans body, the Deleuzian notion of the “body without organs,”
and permutations of the divine within the Self
and the material world. The film premiered at
Pleasure Dome’s New Toronto Works, 2011
with a subsequent showing at CLAGS. Guadalajara (2012) is a documentary triptych
that artistically documents Nina’s pilgrimage
to Guadalajara for a waking facelift. The first
part, which was shown at CLAGS, depicted
Arsenault under the hydraulic surgical table
when the doctor steps out of the room. The
event was the premiere showing of this film.
The Ecstasy of Nina Arsenault: a surgical pilgrimage through a waking facelift comes out
of Nina’s solo installation/durational piece 40
Days + 40 Nights: Working Towards a Spiritual
Experience as part of Toronto’s 2012 SummerWorks Festival. The monologue contextualizes
J. Paul Halferty, Still from video recording of the event.
Nina Arsenault, Still from video recording of the event.
Arsenault’s experience in Guadalajara during
her most recent cosmetic procedure.
Nina Arsenault is a Toronto based multi-disciplinary artist. She works in live performance,
video art, photography, and writing, using
these mediums and popular national and international media to document her continuing
physical and psychic transformations. She
thrives in the exploration of new and profound
ways of living her art practice. Her work has
been called “profoundly moving,” “absolutely
unforgettable,” “brutally honest,” “a spiritual
gift” as well as “stunning and ruthless.” You
can see more about her work on her website,
ninaarsenault.com. In honor of the 100th anniversary of Harry
Hay’s birth, the Harry Hay Centennial Committee and the Center for Lesbian and Gay
Studies at the City University of New York are
presenting a four-day conference from Sept.
27 to 30, 2012 in New York City, exploring
Hay’s life, ideas, and the multiple facets of
LGBT life that Harry Hay himself pioneered.
The conference is organized around four
major themes: arts, political activism, spirituality, and sexual identities. It will feature
panels, lectures, films, and live performances from scholars, activists, and artists, all
exploring the evolution of LGBT life in the
60-plus years since Hay founded the modern
American LGBT movement.
The event gets started on Thursday, Sept.
27, at 7 p.m. at the CUNY Graduate Center
with a keynote address by anthropologist and author Will Roscoe, followed by a
staged reading of excerpts from playwright
John Maran’s award-winning play about Hay,
The Temperamentals. Other featured key-
note speakers throughout the conference
include feminist historian Bettina Aptheker,
poet Cheryl Clark, and LGBT historian John
D’Emilio. Over 100 scholars, artists, and
activists will be participating in the conference, including authors Mark Thompson and
Perry Brass and historians Jonathan Ned
Katz and Susan Stryker. Playwright Tony
Kushner has prepared a staged reading of an
excerpt from his most recent play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and
Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. Film
programming includes Hope Along the Wind:
The Life of Harry Hay, presented by director
Eric Slade, and a selection of contemporary
West Coast queer avant-garde short films. A
Saturday evening program at the New York
LGBT Community Center features live performances based on aspects of Hay’s life,
hosted by the New York (dis)Order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and emceed by
Justin Sayre with Agnes de Garron, Reverend
Yolanda, and Pistol Pete, as well as fashions
by Cody Sai and a host of surprises, followed
by a masked Mattachine-style procession
to an after party at the historic Stonewall
Bar. Sunday will be dedicated to the exploration of Radical Faerie circle process and
culture. (Reprinted from Huffington Post)
An actor, communist, labor organizer,
teacher, musicologist, gay theoretician,
and political activist, Harry Hay left a lasting mark that continues well into the 21st
century. Hay was active in the avant-garde
arts movement of 1930s Los Angeles, where
he worked as an actor. He participated in
the San Francisco General Strike of 1934
and fought against fascism, racism, and
anti-Semitism in the 1940s. In 1948, he
conceived of and organized the first sustained gay activist group in America, the
Mattachine Society, kicking off the modern
American gay freedom movement. Throughout the 1950s, he conducted research into
areas of anthropology, science, history, and
mythology for evidence of what he termed
“my people”—gay people. In the 1970s, he
worked for and supported Native American
struggles and helped to define and bring together the gay men’s group the Radical Faeries. Hay continued theorizing and organizing
his “people” and supporting social justice
for all people, right up to his death in 2002.
Coming Up
In 1948, homosexuals were considered sick
and/or degenerate heterosexuals, and a gay
community (as we now know it) did not yet
exist. That year, one man had the visionary idea that homosexuals were a “cultural
minority” and could organize themselves
to create a community and fight for their
human dignity and civil rights. Sixty years
later, that vision has developed into a worldwide civil rights movement and inspired the
creation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities on every continent. The
man who had that exceptional vision was
Harry Hay.
BY JOEY CAIN,
SAN FRANCISCO-BASED COMMUNITY ACTIVIST AND INDEPENDENT HISTORIAN
FOUR-DAY CONFERENCE
CELEBRATED HARRY HAY
FOUNDER OF MODERN
AMERICAN GAY MOVEMENT
CHARLES BUSCH
AND JAMES WILSON
ON NOVEMBER 13, 2012, CHARLES BUSCH WAS IN CONVERSATION
WITH JAMES WILSON, CLAGS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. IN THIS
EXCERPT, TRANSCRIBED BY ILYSSA SILFEN, CHARLES BUSCH
DESCRIBES THE GENESIS OF THEATRE IN LIMBO, THE COMPANY
THAT PRODUCED BUSCH’S EARLY WORKS, SUCH AS VAMPIRE
LESBIANS OF SODOM, PSYCHO BEACH PARTY, AND THE LADY IN
Photo: David Rodgers
QUESTION.
Charles Busch, renowned New York performer, playwright, director,
and drag extraordinaire, participated in the second iteration of this
new CLAGS series in the Fall. He discussed 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 in New York and
beyond. The conversation was moderated by CLAGS Executive Director James Wilson. Below you will find a partial transcript of the
event. Video of the event will be made available soon at clags.org
In the early 1980s I was a solo performer, but I could never earn a living
doing it. And it was very frustrating because I was getting better. I was
really learning a lot. It was a wonderful education on characterization,
exposition, and developing a relationship with an audience—and as a solo
performer, that’s who you’re playing with. It was very frustrating that I
could sell out on a rainy Tuesday in San Francisco, and I would get rave
reviews in the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, and I
had a following in each city, but then I would come back to New York, and
I still couldn’t totally support myself. I had all these weird jobs. I draw
well, so I worked as a quick sketch portrait artist, which I did a lot. I was a
receptionist in a zipper factory. And it just seemed like things weren’t quite
progressing. By the time I got to 1985, I just didn’t seem closer to that
thing of earning a living, and that’s what you want, to earn a living doing
what you love. It’s the most difficult thing, and you’re so blessed if you are
a person who can do that.
And just when I was at the lowest ebb, I had a friend, a very exotic woman,
Bina Sharif, who’s a performance artist, and she invited me to see her
act at a place called the Limbo Lounge, between Avenue A and B. The
East Village, Alphabet City, in the mid 1980’s was a very different
place. It was really kind of creepy, and there were a lot of crack
problems and blocks of burnt out buildings; it was really very
Berlin after the War. But it was about the last place in Manhattan
with cheap rents, so there were very interesting art galleries,
and clubs would spring up. I went to the Limbo Lounge to see
Bina’s act, and it was just this tiny storefront after-hours bar
and art gallery with these very peculiar installations. I was
so dazzled at the whole audience, which was this kind of
punk-gay crowd, and I thought, “I’ve just gotta do a play
here. I’ve just gotta do something.” I always thought it
would be really cool to do a play in a real funky, weird
place. I was never like, “Oh this is so humiliating.” I
was more like, “Oh this is so cool!” And I loved it!
So I immediately went to see [Michael Limbo] the
young man who owned the Limbo Lounge. It was
so loose there, he just looked at the calendar
and said, “Oh, we have a weekend in a
month from now,” and I said, “I’ll take
it!” I knew I didn’t want to do my solo
And it really is true: we spent about
$36. It was purely postage. Today
we wouldn’t even have spent that. I
wrote Vampire Lesbians of Sodom
so we could do it cheap. I figured if I
set it in the ancient world, we could
just wear G-strings and heels.
act; my act was so minimalist. I wanted to do something decadent and
outrageous, and I think I probably read Interview with a Vampire around
that time and so I thought, “Oh, I’ll be a glamorous vampire actress.” I’ll be
in drag, and it’ll be kind of [Charles] Ludlam-ish. And so I just asked different friends of mine, who were all basically unemployable, who were very
discouraged completely with no place in the theatre.
And it really is true: we spent about $36. It was purely postage. Today we
wouldn’t even have spent that. I wrote Vampire Lesbians of Sodom so we
could do it cheap. I figured if I set it in the ancient world, we could just
wear G-strings and heels. For the 1920s, I could sort of fake that silhouette easy. (You can’t do the 1890s and fake it.) We just put it on for one
weekend, and we had the best time. Then we decided to do a second weekend. Then we decided, “Oh, let’s do another little skit,” and I wrote this
other piece called Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium. Michael, who ran the
Limbo Lounge, said “Why don’t you just be our resident theatre company?”
And every three weeks we’d do another show. And so we ended up having
a theatre company, which wasn’t the original idea. What was so sweet and
moving about the whole thing is that while I had had an awful experience
in Chicago, where I felt so betrayed and people didn’t seem to get me, here
was this group of oddballs in New York who just all loved me and felt—I
get really choked up talking about it—I had something to offer.
It was a childlike thing since they wanted to play, and I could be inspired.
They were all such big personalities, you know, Julie Halston, Theresa
Marlowe, Meghan Robinson, Arnie Kolodner, Andy Halliday, Robert Carey,
and everyone was so defined. It was fun to write parts for them all. Each
person had what we called their “trip,” which was something unique about
them. It was like having my own old movie studio with contract players,
and I wrote for them to sort of do their same trip but with a little more of
a twist, so it was not the exact same play each time. But we did all these
plays that just came out of fantasies of my own: “Wouldn’t it be fun to
be in mod London in the 60s, or Spain during the Inquisition?”’ We were
in the right place at the right time, and suddenly all the magazines, like
People magazine and New York magazine, were doing stories on the crazy
performance art scene in the East Village. And our titles, like Vampire Les-
bians of Sodom, were so outrageous they were
a good punch line. We got so much publicity,
and people were lined up down the block to see
these little plays. It was just thrilling.
Ken Elliot, who was my roommate and who
directed the plays, said maybe this is the commercial venture that had eluded us for a decade.
We produced Vampire Lesbians ourselves
because we couldn’t get anybody else to do it.
We raised the money, and we opened at the
Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street
and got a rave review in the New York Times.
Everybody got mentioned—all these people who
were so discouraged and felt so without worth
in theatre—everybody got a rave review. It was a
big hit, and it ran five years. And from that point
on I could earn a living! PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT
PHOTOS BY KALLE WESTERLING
Apr 26, 10:00am, Elebash Recital Hall
Keynote Talk by Jonathan Culler
Apr 26, 5:00pm, Room 9204–05
Keynote Panel with Diana Knight, D.A. Miller, and
Lucy O'Meara
Gender and Sexuality Seminar Series
Harrington Park Press, formerly an imprint of
The Haworth Press, has been re-launched as a
specialized book/ebook publisher. The initial
focus will be on gender/LGBTQ studies, health,
and social services. Related fields will be added later.
Our aim will be to maximize dissemination of research and impact
in the scholarly and practitioner community, while at the same time
taking advantage of the global reach increasingly made possible
through ebook co-publication. Interests will be primarily in those
scholarly works which have a potential cross-over to the broader
market and non-specialist audience.
www.HarringtonParkPress.com
April 24, 2013
12:00pm – 2:00 pm
Room 6112, The Graduate Center, CUNY,
365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY
Sahar Sadjadi, Visiting Assistant Professor and Mellon
Postdoctoral Fellow, Committee for Interdisciplinary Science
Studies, Graduate Center. Dr. Sadjadi is an anthropologist
and medical doctor whose research lies at the intersection
of science and technology, gender and sexuality and
childhood studies. She studied medicine at Tehran University
of Medical Sciences, worked as an emergency room
physician, and received her PhD in medical anthropology at
Columbia University. Her work, which has been funded by the
Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science
Foundation.
Part of The Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series. Cosponsored
by the Center for the Study of Women and Society and CLAGS.
Center for the Study of
Women and Society
The Graduate Center, CUNY
For additional information, go to:
THE BRAIN, TRUTH AND UNDERWEAR:
THE CLINICAL MANAGEMENT OF GENDER IN
CHILDREN
Apr 25, 6:30pm, Room 9206–07
Keynote Talk by Rosalind E. Krauss
Coming Up
Apr 25–26, 2013
Room 9206-9207
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave, New York NY
See website for more details:
http://centerforthehumanities.org/conference/
renaissance-roland-barthes
The Renaissance of
Roland Barthes
The theoretical significance and formal innovation of
Roland Barthes’s late work, especially his lectures,
has yet to receive the international attention it
deserves. This conference will explore Barthes’s
oeuvre in light of the publication of How to Live
Together (2012), the final installment of his lecture
courses. The tightrope he walks between the forms of
the novel and the essay, the evolution of his writing
and thinking, the engagement of his work with literary
or cultural texts, and the relationship of his work to
critical theory, as well as to any and all other
disciplines, is open for discussion. Cosponsored by
the PhD program in Comparative Literature, the
Doctoral Students’ Council, and the English Student
Association.
PHOTO: MARTHA BURGESS
ACCEPTANCE AT WHAT PRICE?
THE GAY MOVEMENT RECONSIDERED
BY MARTIN DUBERMAN
The Annual Kessler Award Lecture was given by Martin Duberman, 2012 Kessler Award winner and CLAGS’s founder. The
ceremony took place on December 5th, 2012 in the Proshansky
Auditorium at the CUNY Graduate Center. An introduction was
given by James Wilson (CLAGS E.D., LaGuardia Community
College/The Graduate Center) followed by testimonials from
Blanche Wiesen Cook (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/
The Graduate Center, CUNY), Marcia M. Gallo (University of
Nevada), and a presentation by Amber Hollibaugh (Executive
Director, Queers for Economic Justice). Below is an excerpt
from Martin Duberman’s Kessler Address. The full lecture is
available online at clags.org and the entire lecture will be
included in the forthcoming anthology, Against the Grain: A
Martin Duberman Reader (2013).
I’d like to begin by defining my personal political position in order
to help you better evaluate the subsequent argument I’ll be making.
First, to state the obvious, I strongly believe that gay people are entitled to all the rights and privileges of other citizens in this country,
including marriage.
Second, and perhaps less obvious: I’m speaking to you as someone
who self-identifies politically as radical, not liberal. “Isn’t ‘radical’
the same as ‘liberal?’” People often ask me. No, it isn’t. Liberal and
radical are often lumped together, usually to be denounced, but to
explain my own politics, I think it’s important and necessary to distinguish between the two. Both do share a belief in the need for progressive social change in this country, but there the similarity ends.
Liberals struggle to integrate increasing numbers of people into
what’s viewed as a beneficent system. Radicals believe that the system does have beneficent aspects, but also believe that it requires
substantial restructuring.
Social justice movements in this country have often been started
by radicals who have then, and usually in short order, been repudiated and supplanted by liberals. Thus in the nineteenth century, the
Garrisonian abolitionists gave way to the Free Soil Party—meaning
that the call for the immediate abolition of slavery slid into the mere
refusal to allow slavery to expand further. Thus, too, the Knights of
Labor—“One big union,” skilled and unskilled combined—mutated
into the AFL, which catered only to skilled workers and denied admission to people of color. A final example might be the broad-gauged
Seneca Falls declaration of womens’s rights, with its open challenge
to male domination; that got transmuted into the suffragists’ single-
In describing how liberalism—with much help, of course, from
conservatism—has historically swallowed up any fragile shoots of
radicalism in this country, I make no exception for the gay rights
movement itself, in which I’ve been periodically active for some
forty years.
Following the Stonewall riots in 1969, which inaugurated the modern LGBT movement, the radical Gay Liberation Front (GLF) initially
emerged as the dominant political force. It offered a far-ranging
critique of traditional notions of gender and sexual behavior. And
Gay radicals, then and now, oppose reducing our critique of mainstream values to an agenda that pledges allegiance to them, as is
currently the case. That critique ranges from economic to sexual
issues, from the demand for a genuine safety net for all citizens to
Part of the problem, as all the surveys I’ve seen agree, is that a questioning of the universal superiority of lifetime monogamy.
Americans are twice as likely to blame themselves rather than More than sixty years ago, the (heterosexual) philosopher Herbert
structural obstacles if their income and status remain low—that, Marcuse wrote in his classic work Eros and Civilization a sentence
in other words, we’re a good deal less class-conscious than Eu- that has become a kind of mantra for me: “because of their rebelropeans. Thus in the 1970s it proved impossible to draw together lion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procrethe class-based politics of the labor unions of the 1930s with the ation, homosexuals might ƒ one day provide a cutting-edge social
demand for racial justice of the 1960s into what we most need—an critique of vast importance.”
inter-racial class identity. Yet there is hope, and it resides, in my It’s precisely the loss of that “cutting-edge social critique” that so
view, in the eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-old cohort, the genera- much bothers me and others on the left. For us to reach the potion that spawned Occupy, which is far and away the most progres- tential Marcuse envisioned for us, it seems to me that we need to
sive force on the scene today.
assert our differentness from the mainstream rather than continue
Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street movement—the radical element
in this generation—will manage to solve this conundrum. I dearly
hope so, though I have my doubts, given the history of radical protest in this country.
Coming Up
Today, GLF has long since disappeared. It has been replaced by
national LGBT organizations—of which the Human Rights Campaign is currently the largest—that work toward assimilationist
goals like gay marriage and the right of gays to serve openly in the
military. And it’s precisely this agenda that for twenty years has
swept the field, pushing aside and ignoring a host of other issues
Those in this country who self-identify as left-wing, as I do, have and insisting that we’re “just folks,” exactly like you mainstreamnever been able to solve the conundrum of how to prevent a radi- ers in our perspectives and values, with the sole exception of this
cal impulse from degenerating into reformist tinkering—which insignificant little matter of sexual orientation.
comes down to how to mobilize a large constituency for substan- It isn’t true. Gay people are not carbon-copy straight people—just
tive change when most of its members (think the Human Rights as black people aren’t carbon-copy whites. Gay radicals insist that
Campaign here) prefer to focus on winning certain kinds of limited our special historical experience has provided us, just as it has
concessions (like, for gay people, the right to marry or to serve in black people, with special perspectives and insights into mainthe military) and show little interest in joining with other dispos- stream American culture—insights we feel should be affirmed, not
denied.
sessed groups to press for a broader social reconstruction.
to plead for the right to join it.
We need to assert the fact that, despite enormous variations in
our individual lifestyles, a distinctive set of perspectives—reflecting our distinct historical experience—exists among gay people in
regard to how they view gender, sexuality, primary relationships,
friendships, and family. Gay “differentness” isn’t some secondrate variation on first-rate mainstream norms, but rather a decided advance over them. Gay subcultural values could richly inform
conventional life and could open up an unexplored range of human
Over and over, the deeply conservative undertow of American ideology has undermined and diminished progressive goals. Central
to that ideology is the conviction that any individual willing to work
hard enough can achieve whatever he or she desires. It follows from
this pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps assumption that all
presumed barriers based on race, class, gender, or sexual orientation automatically evaporate or are reduced to insignificance when
confronted by the individual’s determined drive for success. And if
you believe that, there’s this little bridge in Brooklyn for sale that
I’d like to interest you in.
it emphasized the ideal of androgyny—that is, combining in every
individual the characteristics and drives previously parceled out
as “natural” to one gender or the other. It also aimed at making
alliances with other oppressed groups, like the black Panthers and
the Young Lords.
issue concentration on winning the right to vote.
ACCEPTANCE AT WHAT PRICE? (CONT’D)
interested in having our primary relationships sanctioned by church
or state. Not being carbon copies, we at least aim at equality in
our unions, rather than at the privileging of one partner’s personal,
sexual, and career needs over the other’s. And we do not believe that
When I speak of our specialness, I mean the challenge the radical being part of a couple should convey special status and reward, for
GLF presented in the years following Stonewall. I mean the chal- that reduces the vast number of single people in our midst to some
lenge to the gender binary, to the assumption that everyone is either sort of second-class, second-rate status.
male or female and that certain biologically induced traits adhere We are, of course, entitled to all the rights and privileges of everynaturally to each gender—that women, for example, are intrinsically one else in this country. But the recent concentration of our resourcemotional, men intrinsically aggressive. That gender binary is not es and energy on the narrow agenda of marriage and the military
has implicitly denigrated both the unmarried state and the refusal
true of gay people in general.
But what is true, as a number of studies have shown, is that gay to maim and kill in war. Our current national organizations for the
people score consistently higher than straight people in empathy most part have not only failed to challenge mainstream American
and altruism. Also true is that lesbians as a group have been shown values, but also have ignored the actual needs of most gay people
to be far more independent-minded and far less subservient to au- themselves. Organizations like the Human rights Campaign speak
primarily to a middle- and upper-class white constituency and all
thority than straight women.
but ignore the gay world’s black, Asian, and Latino members, the
Many gay men, moreover, put a premium on emotional expressiveplight of its own poor, and the history of our challenges to traditional
ness and sexual innovation. Studies have shown that lesbians and
gender and sexual norms.
gay men hold a view of coupledom that is far more characterized by
Though you’d never know it from the current gay agenda, most gay
mutuality and egalitarianism than is true of straight couples.
people are working class—and that’s true whether “class” is defined
If you don’t believe me, surely you’ll believe the New York Times.
by income, educational level, or job status. The chief concern these
Back in 2008 the Times published an article summarizing recent
days of gay working-class people is finding a job with decent wages
scholarly evidence that (in the words of the Times) “conclusively
and benefits—and keeping that job, since in half the states employshows that same-sex couples are far more egalitarian in sharing reers still can legally fire workers simply because they’re gay.
sponsibility both for housework and finances than are heterosexual
ones, where women still do much more of the domestic chores (and The workplace itself remains strongly defined by heterosexual
live with a lot of anger as a result) and where men are more likely norms. Most straight workers believe gender does and should come
to pay the bills.” As a result, the Times concludes that same-sex in two, and only two, packages: the traditionally defined male or the
couples “have more relationship satisfaction” and—hold on to your traditionally defined female. The heterosexual norm also explicitly
claims—at least officially—that lifetime, monogamous pair-bondbeads—“have a great deal to teach everyone else.”
ing is the sole guarantee of a contented, moral life. Of course official
In other words, there really is a gay subculture, a way of looking
rhetoric and actual behavior are often far apart, as you might have
at life and coping with its joys and sorrows that has much to offer
noted recently with a certain high-ranking general.
the mainstream—and also to offer the multitude of gay people who
prefer to claim that we’re just like everybody else. Those of us on The large majority of working-class gay people, like most straight
the left feel much the way James Baldwin did when he asked why ones, have nonunion jobs. The union movement currently enrolls
blacks were begging to rent a room in a house that was burning less than 12 percent of the workforce. Even where a union exists,
down. Wouldn’t it be better, Baldwin asked, to build a new house? gay people often don’t feel comfortable talking openly to fellow
workers about their lives. Nor are their needs, like domestic partIn the same spirit, gay radicals denounce the killing machine known
nership benefits, forcefully represented during contract negotiations
as the military and have no wish to become part of it. Nor are we
possibilities for everyone. Could, that is, if the mainstream were listening, which it isn’t. And the reason it isn’t is due in part to us—to
our denial or concealment of our own specialness in the name of being let into what is essentially a middle-class white male clubhouse.
In closing, I have to tell you that I think it’s a disgrace that our country as a whole is far more entranced with improving the technology
of drone strikes, those anonymous killers in the sky, than with the
plight of the poor. And I’m afraid I have to add that I also consider it
a disgrace that our assimilationist-minded national gay movement
does a far better job at representing the white middle- and upperWhy? Because we’re deeply concerned that the gay movement in its class elements in our community than it does representing those
current incarnation is essentially devoted to winning inclusion into of our own people who suffer from a variety of deprivations—to say
nothing of the non-gay multitude who are also afflicted.
an unequal, greed-haunted, oppressive society.
The national gay movement’s efforts, in Cohen’s words, to “sanitize,
whitenize, and normalize the public and visible representations”
of the community—to focus, in other words, on mainstream assimilation—has led her to ask, with what I feel is justifiable anger,
“Can I have radical politics and be part of this gay movement?” Her
answer and mine, I’m sorry to say, is, “We’re not sure.”
There are currently 46 million Americans who subsist on food
stamps, an increase of more than 14 million over the past four
years. More than a quarter of blacks and Latinos in this country—
compared to 10 percent of whites—live below the governmentdefined poverty line of $11,000 a year for an individual and roughly
$22,000 a year for a family of four.
One in every five children lives in a family below the poverty line,
and they often go to bed at night hungry; again, if you doubt me,
have a look at the recent Frontline television program “Poor Kids.”
It is time, in my view, to reassess and revise our goals as a movement. To do otherwise is to implicate us in the national disgrace of
caring much more about the welfare of the privileged few than the
deprived many. We are in danger of becoming part of the problem.
My hope is that we may yet become part of the solution. In Review CLAGS Newsletter Spring 2013 Page 31
Do we see any signs in the national LGBT movement that it seeks
coalition with others suffering oppression, that it must cease to be
a one-issue movement and instead must stand with those suffering
from assorted forms of racial, class, and gender discrimination?
Yes, on the local level there are a few struggling LGBT organizations
centered on dealing with the plight of its own poor people, and also
on creating bridges to others. Here in New York City, there’s Queers
for Economic Justice. How many of you have even heard of QEJ? It
attempts, with a small budget and staff, to deal with the multiple
issues of the gay poor, including those living in shelters.
Coming Up
Remember, if you will, that as far back as 1998, the Human Rights
Campaign endorsed Alfonse D’Amato for the Senate, and later
GLAAD—the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation—accepted money from the right-wing, union-busting Coors beer corporation.
Surely, it’s long past time for the gay movement, and for the country as a whole, to refocus its agenda. What is needed is nothing
less than a massive antiracist, pro-feminist, economic justice
movement. I know—easier said than done. But easiest of all is to
continue to do nothing about the country’s gross inequities.
Alas, the national LGBT organizations, enamored of the marital arts
and traditional marriage, have shown scant comprehension or interest in the hidden wounds of class and the open wounds of race.
In a brilliant essay entitled “What is this Movement Doing to My
Politics?” The lesbian political scientist Cathy Cohen has argued
that, ever since the demise of Queer Nation and the refocusing of
Act-Up on issues relating to global AIDS, there is no longer a radical
domestic wing of any import in the national lesbian and gay movement—which is to say, the gay movement no longer represents a
genuinely transformative politics.
with employers. The gay employee feels fortunate if homophobic One in every four adult black men are either in jail or have recently
harassment—literal physical assault—is absent from his or her been released from it, often for minor drug charges. Again, don’t
take my word for it: read Michelle Alexander’s recent book, The
workplace.
Under the leadership of John J. Sweeney, the AFL has made some New Jim Crow. In sum, for 46 million Americans—which includes
strides in including and protecting gay union members, but ho- many gay people—basic human needs and minimal levels of secumophobia in the workplace, unionized or not, is still formidable. rity are going unmet.
SEMINAR SERIES:
CLAGS’s Performing Que(e)ries is a new series that takes place
over the 2012/13 academic year and explores LGBTQ performance
in the 21st century, particularly the ways in which contemporary
queer performance is tied to past, present, and future explorations of queer identity. The series includes 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 onstage and off, querying the efficacy and vitality
of live performance in the age of media-based and digitized communication.
Jerome Foundation, and the Rockefeller Suitcase Fund. She has received
numerous awards including fellowships from the New York Foundation for
the Arts as well as an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance.
PART IV: HOLLY HUGHES WITH JILL DOLAN
5/7/2013 7–9pm Segal Theatre
Queer Institutionalization. Lauded queer performance artist Holly
Hughes joins theatre scholar Jill Dolan to discuss the genealogy of her
politics and aesthetics as a queer artist in New York, informed by her
experiences at venues like the WOW Café, to the development of her
pedagogy as a professor at the University of Michigan. Many artists like
Hughes have transitioned into the university in order to sustain their work
as queer performers. How is the lived experience of collective queer artistic communities transferred to the institutional atmosphere, and how
does queerness translate into pedagogy and remain transgressive? How
EVENTS
do we deal with the taboo of a faculty member as a sexual creature? Can
PART III: CARMELITA TROPICANA WITH ARNALDO CRUZ-MALAVE queerness be translated through teaching and/or training in a way that
students can experience queerness outside of the community for which
2/26/2013 7–9pm Segal Theatre
A Queer Feminist Demo and Retrospective. Renowned New York- it was intended? What is it mean to teach LGBT history by asking your
based performance artist, writer, and actress Carmelita Tropicana will students to embody lesbians and lesbian desire? An excerpt from The Well
discuss her astonishing career spanning almost three decades in theatre, of Horniness will be performed by Hughes’ current and former students in
performance art, and film on the transnational stage. The event will in- addition to the talk.
clude demos of Tropicana’s past work in an archival retrospective made Holly Hughes is a renowned writer and performance artist. Hughes began
available by the artist’s own collection of her recorded works alongside a her career in New York City’s club scene on the Lower East Side and concritical conversation with moderator Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé on the intersec- sidered the WOW Café her home base. Currently, she holds the position of
tion of queer, feminist, and racial politics, which have remained central Professor at the University of Michigan, with appointments in Art and Dein Tropicana’s performance work from the cultural climate that pushed sign, Theatre and Drama and Women’s Studies and is Director of the new
her to create her performance persona in the late 80s to her more current BFA program in Interarts Performance. Hughes’s performance work includes plays such as The Well of Horniness, Dress Suits to Hire, Let Them
political, social, and cultural interests.
Carmelita Tropicana (a.k.a. Alina Troyano) is a performance artist, play- Eat Cake and solos such as World Without End, Clit Notes, Preaching to
wright, and actor. In Tropicana’s work, humor and fantasy become subver- the Perverted, and The Dog and Pony Show (Bring your own Pony). Five
sive tools to rewrite history. Tropicana’s performances plays and videos of her plays are included in Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler, published by
have been presented at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Grove Press. She is also co-editor with David Roman of O Solo Homo: The
in London, Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea New Queer Performance, which received a Lambda Book award. She is
in Barcelona, the Berlin International Film Festival, the New Museum the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, and is currently co-editof Contemporary Art in New York, the Mark Taper Forum’s Kirk Douglas ing two anthologies, “Animal Acts: Performing Species Today,” with Una
Theater in Los Angeles, and El Museo del Barrio in New York. Her work Chaudhuri and “Memories of the Revolution” with Carmelita Tropicana,
has received funding support from the Independent Television Service, the both for the University of Michigan Press.
ALL CLAGS EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
PLEASE RSVP TO: RSVP@CLAGS.ORG.
Performing Que(e)ries Spring 2013 are co-sponsored by
In China, we are currently focusing on translating and compiling primary
sources from Chinese into English to provide resources for English-speaking scholars and facilitate access to first-hand voices. Another project
that is ongoibg and started as an IRN project is SeekQueer, a chineselanguage interactive website on queer theory and sexuality resources,
available at seekqueer.com.
In the summer, the Caribbean IRN region is creating and presenting an
short course in Advanced Sexuality Studies 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.
The region will also further its collaboration with the Digital Library of the
THE IRN MAP
In North America, we are focusing on an attempt to build a network linking university-based LGBT, gender and sexuality programs and research
centers with similar non-academic centers and related initiatives across
the continent.
In the Middle East, we continue to work on the free online network
designed to facilitate exchange and dialogue between the transnational
community of scholars and students working on or in the Middle East,
called The Transnational Peer Review Network. The other major project in
the region is “Turkey’s Queer Lives: LGBTQ Oral Histories Archive,” which
aims to address the lack of large scale academic project on the LGBTQ
community in the country by collecting life stories of people in Turkey who
identify as LGBTQ. The goal is to construct an archive that will be made
available to academics, independent researchers and activists who work in
the field.
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. IRN Africa
Coordinator: Naijeria Toweett
Contact: ntoweett@irnweb.org
IRN Middle East
Coordinator: Rustem Ertug Altinay
Contact: middle-east@irnweb.org
IRN Asia
Coordinator: Ana Huang
Contact: asia@irnweb.org
In Latin America, the IRN provides a space for discussion for strategies for
the strengthening of LGBT rights in the region through its listserve “The
Advocacy Network for Latin America and the Caribbean.”
IRN Latin America
Coordinator: Jasmin Blessing
Contact: latin-america@irnweb.org
IRN Caribbean
Coordinator: Vidyaratha Kissoon
Contact: caribbean@irnweb.org
IRN North America
Coordinator: Mark Blasius
Contact: north-america@irnweb.org
In our Africa region, we have two ongoing projects: one which aims to
publishing interviews with leaders of the LGBTI rights movement in African
countries where they are less visible, the other which will result in a
Kenyan radio drama series dealing with issues of LGBTI communities in
Kenya.
Caribbean and create a collection of oral history interviews.
Coming Up
The International Resource Network (IRN), the global network of
researchers, activists, artists, and teachers sharing knowledge
about diverse sexualities, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies, as so far had a time of reorganization and applying for
future funding. Meanwhile, the local organizations and projects
associated with the network continued to grow and expand.
BY KALLE WESTERLING
UPDATE FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCE
NETWORK
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.

FEATURING CLAGS UPDATES UPCOMING EVENTS

Transcription

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