The aim of the conference is to consider interdisciplinary approaches to the transgressive potential of queerness today. Considering grassroots LGBTQ+ activism, artistic practices, as well as academic discourse of queer theory, we seek to identify and address issues arising in the current transnational socio-political conditions. How can biopolitics be challenged by queer temporalities? How can radical activism of preceding decades be re-contextualised and employed now? Can queer social formations, based on friendship, kinship, and affective communities, be used to reconsider the heteronormative structures aided by the legislation in the international context?
Looking forward, we are interested in restoring the potential of transgressive queer activism, much of which has been now directed into the struggle of LGBTQ+ communities to enter the realm of normative domesticity, compromising its ability to challenge the state apparatus. Based on interdiciplinary, cross-national, and transhistorical research practices, we seek to address these questions in relation to nationhood, citizenship, and human rights. We encourage academic and practical responses to the analysed problem from interdisciplinary, cross-generational, and multinational perspectives.
The possible themes might include, but are not limited to:
- Challenging chronobiopolitics
- Community-based approaches to academic research
- Radical potential of queer archives
- Queer spatialities and temporalities
- De-centralising HIV/AIDS narratives
- Engaging with marginalised LGBTQ communities
- Queer citizenships and nationalisms
- Queer utopias and activism
- Radical art-making
- Queer artistic methodologies
- Now what? Explorations of queer futurities
- Disrupting centre/margins discourses
- Practices of resilience and stigma management
Please include 350-word abstracts for 20-minute presentations and a short biographical note in your application.
The proposals should be sent to imaginequeer2018@gmail.com by 31st May 2018.
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Prof Plummer has written extensively in Sociology and LGBTQ Studies during his formal working years. He is the founder editor of the journal Sexualities (edited it from 1996 to 2012), and the author of several textbooks: “Sociology: The Basics and Sociology: A Global Introduction.” His notable works include “Sexual Stigma” (1975), “The Making of the Modern Homosexual” (1981), “Telling Sexual Stories” (1995), “Documents of Life” (2001), “Intimate Citizenship” (2003) and “Sociology: The Basics” (2010). In “Intimate Citizenships,” Prof Plummer explores some ongoing public debates around the personal life – from ‘test tube babies’ to ‘lesbian and gay families’ – whose essence may be captured by Plummer’s prominent concept of “Intimate Citizenship,” and which he will revisit in his keynote address. https://kenplummer.com/
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a Montreal-born artist and diarist based in Edinburgh. His artistic work mediates emotional encounters with musical, art historical and Queer cultural material, encouraging deep listening and empathic viewing. In his work you will find bells, bouquets, ceramic vases, enchanted forests, folding screens, gay elders, glitter, gold leaf, love letters, imaginary paintings, madrigals, megaphones, mirrors, naked men, sex-changing flowers, sign language, subtitles, and the voices of birds, boy sopranos, contraltos, countertenors, and sirens. Nemerofsky’s work has been exhibited internationally, and is part of the permanent collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, the Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Thielska Galleriet Stockholm and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. His current artistic research involves audio portraits of the private libraries and gardens of Queer scholars and community elders. www.nemerofsky.ca
Contact Email: imaginequeer2018@gmail.com
