Queer Listening Publics

Here is my interview regarding the exhibition I worked on at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, "Across the Spectrum: Stories from Queer Asian Pacific America." For those who want to get involved with Winter Quarter's Tea Time and readings, this will give you an idea of the exhibition (we're planning a joint public program with the Museum in conjunction with this exhibition):

http://kuow.org/program.php?id=18652

Also, listening to it, I'm curious if anyone else has thoughts about how to talk about queer projects in the public sphere. That is to say, my read about queer scholarship and arts projects is that they're rather esoteric and jargony. Moreover, my sense is that much of the queer "stuff" that's out there doesn't speak to everyday practices as well as it could. How should we approach public discourse about queer practices so that it both 'queers' the discourse and meets the general public where they are at, such as, talking about "gay" or "lesbian" people versus "queer"?

Thanks!

Josh

Autumn Reading Group: "Queer"

Autumn Reading Group

Queer + Public + Performance's Reading Group is meeting on Monday, November 2, 6 PM, in COM 226, Seattle-UW campus. The readings selected for the Autumn Reading group think about, rearticulate, and open the thematic "queer." The hope of the reading group is to identify and discuss lines of inquiry and investigation beyond the usual queer theory canon -- queer on the edges as it were. We open with several keywords from the Keywords for American Cultural Studies collection and include several short readings from After Sex, the Summer 2007 special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly.

Please print out the readings and bring them with you to the Reading Group:

Keyword: Queer
Keyword: Public
Keyword: Performance
Keyword: Sex
Keyword: Gender

After Sex: Intro
After Sex: Still After
After Sex: Cvetkovich's "Public Feelings"

Blog About Town: Film (Festivals) as Public Scholarship

The first Q+P+P "blog about town" asks participants of current and upcoming local queer-friendly film festivals -- Tasveer's South Asian Film Festival, the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, HUMP -- to write up short-short critiques of films thinking about how they engage questions of queerness, how they might function as public scholarship, and what provocations they make about intersection of queer scholarship, performance, art, and technology.  To take up this blogging challenge, simply attend a film, post your critique as a comment to this thread, provide film info and a very brief summary, and engage the prompts above -- all under 250 words.  One film per comment.  Post as many as you'd like.  Q+P+P will collect these mini-critiques and use them as part of our November Reading Group discussion.  Blog away!

Q+P+P Inaugural Meeting & Reading Group

Thanks to everyone who attended the Q+P+P inaugural meeting.  It was nice to see new and familiar faces.  The meeting's agenda was pretty simple: 1) introduction to the Q+P+P and our objectives, 2) outline of the upcoming Q+P+P year, 3) planning for autumn quarter's Reading Group and Tea Time. 

The Year

Each quarter will be given a general thematic and framing lens: Autumn = "Queer," Winter = "Public," Spring = "Performance."  Events, readings, speakers, and productions would be geared toward thinking about each thematic.   Of course, we would maintain an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to these terms every quarter.

We are looking for speaker suggestions for the Winter.  And we are looking for performance suggestions for the Spring.  Please comment with people and performances (preferably who are local or will be local and who will offer their time pro bono) that might suit the Q+P+P project. 

Autumn Reading Group

Q+P+P is soliciting suggestions for the Autumn Reading Group (Monday, November 2, 6 PM, COM 226).  Readings should expand, challenge, rearticulate the thematic "Queer," perhaps identifying and showcasing lines of inquiry and investigation outside of the usual queer theory or queer studies canon -- queer on the edges as it were.  For example, a suggestion was made to make the Reading Group in part about discussing the various queer-friendly film festivals happening in Seattle (e.g. Tasveer's South Asian Film Festival, the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, even HUMP).  Please post your suggestions via comments for readings for the Reading Group for this upcoming quarter (and others). 

Autumn Tea Time

Tentatively, the autumn Tea Time will feature the intersection of 'queer' and 'technology', in particular online spaces and technologies.  If you have suggestions of faculty, community member, local queer website purveyor that would be good to invite, please leave a comment below.  If you would like to present your work, please contact the Q+P+P.  Tea Times are meant to be intimate colloquiums where presenters briefly sketch their work and interests and the majority of the time is devoted to discussion and exchange.

UW Out List

An interesting thing to think about: there has been a great deal of analysis, critique, and apprehension around "coming out" and its teleology/epistemology. The idiom "coming out" has moved into mainstream usage (though still invoking/evoking ambivalent undertones of hope and shame). But even in the US context, coming out does provide an entrance into the intersections of queer, public, and performance. With "National Coming Out Day" (October 11) approaching, might we revisit this seemingly hashed out issue?

Meanwhile, from the Q Center at UW: It is that time of year! Let's all come out as allies or qltstqqigb folks!!! If you are interested in having your name appear in our annual outlist that will appear in The Daily on Monday, October 12th. Please go to this link: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jms13/85248

Queer + Public + Performance Inaugural Meeting, 10/5, 6 PM

Queer + Public + Performance
INAUGURAL MEETING
Monday, Oct 5 - 6:00 PM
Communications 226
UW-Seattle

At this inaugural meeting, the group will open the floor to introductions of attendees and their work.  Also on the agenda is charting the course for the series of quarterly reading groups and tea times to be held throughout the year, as well as beginning to answer one of the questions that speaks to the very existence of a queer research collective such as this: To what extent and with what investments is a queer public formed in and through queer performance and the performance of queerness?

Q+P+P invites collaboration and coalition.  Please come with suggestions for: 1) a reading you'd be interested in discussing at one of our reading groups, 2) an idea for a tea time discussion, 3) a faculty member you know who would be willing to participate in our teas, 4) on and off campus groups you think should be a part of our "public," and 5) local performers and artists that might embody, evoke, or complicate the work of the group.

Queer + Public + Performance is a working group that engages the intersection of queer scholarship, performance, art, and technologies within the university and beyond. The group intends to engage cross-disciplinary, crossplatform public cultural and intellectual work. This year will focus specifically on queer publics and counterpublics to explore the practices, projects, and lived experiences situated on the peripheries of official publics. We hope to emphasize the co-constitutive and at times antagonistic intersections between “sex,” “gender,” “race,” “class,” and “nation” as we think about how keywords such as “sexuality,” “intimacy,” “queer theory and performance,” and “publicity” are constituted and complicated by changes (both conservative and transgressive) in regional and global political, economic, academic, and cultural interchanges.

For more information, go to http://queerpublicperformance.blogspot.com/ or http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/projects_0910_queer_public_performance.htm