"Life In Marvelous Times" Conference & Screening of Criminal Queers

Coming up this week (please distribute to interested lists and parties):

“Life In Marvelous Times”: Cultural Work in the Racial Present
Conference, University of Washington, Seattle
Thursday - Friday, May 14 - 15, 2010
http://www.raceknowledgeproject.org/

Situating these times within ongoing local and global histories of decolonial struggle, this conference explores how cultural work and cultural workers help to comprehend, re-think, and transform the racial present. Events include the following:

• Performances by Amber Flame, Ananya Dance Theatre (Minneapolis), Dean Spade (Seattle U.; Sylvia Rivera Law Project), Cristien Storm, and many more
• Presentations by the Prisoners Education Network, the Black Student Union, the Philippine United Students Organization (PUSO), and others
• Workshops and panels by cultural workers, scholars and activists from near and far

Special Events:

Thursday, May 13, 2010 - 6:00 PM Kane 210
Keynote address by Vijay Prashad (South Asian History & International Studies, Trinity College), "Ends Don't Meet Where the Arms Can't Reach: Looking to DuBois to Bring Imperialism Back to American Studies"

Friday, May 14, 2010 - 8:00 PM HUB Auditorium
A special screening Criminal Queers, followed by a conversation with the filmmakers

Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan, and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas. Presented by The Race/Knowledge Project and the Queer+Public+Performance working group as part of the Life in Marvelous Times conference.

Race & Culture in these Marvelous Times Conference @ UW

“Life in Marvelous Times: Cultural Work in the Racial Present,” a conference and community dialog event

Keynote Address: Vijay Prashad, May 13th, 6pm, Kane 210 UW, Seattle Campus
Conference: May 14th, 9:00a.m-5:00pm, UW HUB, Seattle Campus
Film Screening: Criminal Queers, May 14th, 7:00pm, UW HUB Auditorium
All events are free and open to the public

Seattle, WA, May 13th-14th—The University of Washington’s Race/Knowledge Project presents, “Life in Marvelous Times: Cultural Work in the Racial Present,” a free conference and community dialog event open to the public.

Vijay Prashad, author and professor of International studies at Trinity College, gives Thursday evening’s keynote address, “Ends Don’t Meet Where the Arms Can’t Reach: Looking to Du Bois to Bring Imperialism Back to American Studies.” Friday features a full day of presentations by local and
national activists, cultural workers and scholars with performances by Amber Flame, Dean Spade, Cristien Storm and Ananya Dance Theatre. Closing the conference will be a screening of Criminal Queers, a film exploring a radical transgender and queer struggle against the prison industrial complex.  Co-presented by the Queer + Public + Performance research group, the filmmakers will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion.

The conference takes inspiration from the 2009 single, “Life in Marvelous Times” in which Mos Def declares that “we are alive in amazing times.”  The song suggests that we be amazed and marvel at how “basic survival requires super heroics,” at “revelations, hatred, love and war,” and at “delicate hearts” and “diabolical minds.”  Taking this cue from Mos Def, this event will marvel at the crisis, the beauty, the apathy, and the critical potential of our “marvelous times.”  The presenters will explore how cultural work and cultural workers help to comprehend, re-think and transform the racial present.
The Race/Knowledge Project is sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. More information is available at www.raceknowledgeproject.org

Life in Marvelous Times is also sponsored by Associated Students of the University of Washington, The Center for South Asian Studies, Student Activities and Union Facilities, University of Washington English Department, Q-Center, University of Washington Department of Women Studies, Queer+Public+Performance, The Hilen Fund, The Center for Global Justice at Seattle University, Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University, and Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University.

"Be Queer, Buy Queer!" International Video Contest

Win $10,000
"Be Queer, Buy Queer!"
International Video Contest

In partnership with Campus Pride, OUTmedia is seeking college students throughout the world to submit original videos on the theme, “Be Queer, Buy Queer!”

http://www.campuspride.org/outmedia.asp

Slams, rants, stand up, sketch, music frenzy, spicy splicing are all welcome. We want you to speak boldly, and outrageously on the vision, expressed by OUTmedia’s Founder, Shelly Weiss, “care about where you spend your every dime, invest in the businesses that believe and invest in you. Build your queer vision of your future, with what and where you buy today!”

Submit your own video responding to concept of "Be Queer Buy Queer," with a friend, your LGBTQQIA campus group, or run wild with your entire campus community! Present in video form "What Does Be Queer Buy Queer Mean To You?"

PRIZE: One winner will receive $10,000 in OUTmedia entertainment* and the opportunity to host the First Annual OUTmedia Queer Campus CultureFest! at their university --hosted by Kit Yan and being developed for TV airing. An additional prize of a performance by one OUTmedia artist will be given to the school with the most number of registered voters.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: Submissions will be accepted through April 15, 2010, voting from April 16-29, 2010 -- and the winner announced at the culmination of Diversity Month on April 30, 2010.

Winter Reading Group: "Public"

Queer + Public + Performance's Reading Group is meeting on Monday, March 1, 6 PM, in CMU 202, Seattle-UW campus. The readings selected for the Winter Reading group will draw on the recent experiences of our Tea Time at the Wing Luke Asian Museum as we focus on the concept of "public." Opening with the "public" entry from Keywords for American Cultural Studies , and including discussion of Lauren Berlant's "Sex in Public" and selections from Michael Warner's Publics and Counterpublics , the group hopes to consider the following questions:

• How does queer (re)define the dichotomy of private and public? Can queerness ever actually be a private matter?
• To what extent and with what investments is a queer public formed in and through queer performance and the performance of queerness?
• How might we conceive of counterpublics and what is the political utility of a queer counterpublic? That is, if a counterpublic is defined through mobilizing around the shared experiences of oppression and the shared endgoals for navigating those oppressions, can queer groups, suspicious of any stable identity formation, arrange themselves as counterpublics and at what cost?
• What material and immaterial media are necessary for the enactment of queer publics and are those media differently hospitable to queer aims and interests?

The readings are available here:
Keyword "Public"
Berlant & Warner, "Sex in Public"
Warner, Chapter Three, "Styles of Intellectual Publics"

Queer + Public + Performance is a working group that will engage the intersection of queer scholarship, performance, art, and technologies within the University of Washington and beyond. Q+P+P is sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/projects_0910_queer_public_performance.htm

FYI: Against Equality

An interesting take on queer politics & publics:

Against Equality
http://againstequality.wordpress.com/

The project is self-described: 

Against Equality is an online archive, publishing, and arts collective focused on critiquing mainstream gay and lesbian politics. As queer thinkers, writers and artists, we are committed to dislodging the centrality of equality rhetoric and challenging the demand for inclusion in the institution of marriage, the US military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation.

We want to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility.

Q+P+P Tea Time for the Senses, Thursday, Feb. 4, 4 to 8 PM, Wing Luke

Q+P+P Tea Time for the Senses
Thursday, February 4, 2010 / 4 to 8pm Wing Luke Asian Museum719 South King Street, Seattle, WA
http://www.wingluke.org/


Explore the spectrum of Queer Asian Pacific America by connecting, watching, hearing, and interacting with community members who creatively make Queer Asian space. Join us at The Wing Luke Asian Museum for Tea Time activities, including story time, art creation, a film screening and a discussion.  This event is held in conjunction with the exhibit, “Across the Spectrum: Stories from Queer Asian Pacific America."  The Queer + Public + Performance research cluster has organized this event alongside the Across the Spectrum Community Advisory Committee.

FYI: Panel Discussion: Status of LGBT Rights Under U.S. Immigration Law, 2/2, UW School of Law

Are you passionate about LGBT rights?

Do you care about immigration issues and immigrants' rights?

Ever thought about how U.S. immigration laws affect LGBT people?

Come to a fascinating, stimulating panel discussion about the Status
of LGBT Rights Under U.S. Immigration Law!

Organized by Outlaws, the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project, and the
Center for Human Rights and Justice.

When: February 2, 2010 at 5:30pm
Where: UW School of Law, William H. Gates Hall, Room 127, UW Seattle
Reception to follow (21+ only), Room 115

Who: Three distinguished panelists with diverse backgrounds and experiences

AARON C. MORRIS
Immigration Equality
As a Staff Attorney at Immigration Equality in Washington, D.C., Morris provides direct representation to indigent LGBT and HIV-positive foreign nationals in asylum proceedings, at adjustment-of-status and naturalization interviews, and in the federal
courts. Morris also represents transgender individuals in marriage-based green card applications and in obtaining gender-appropriate identity documents from U.S. immigration authorities. He also provides general legal advice to same-sex binational couples in navigating the immigration system. Currently, he serves as Secretary of the New York City Bar Associations Committee on AIDS.

JACQUE LARRAINZAR
Seattle Office for Civil Rights
Larrainzar joined the Seattle Office for Civil Rights in 2000, and in 2008 she became the manager for the Policy and Outreach Unit. Larrainzar has worked in many issues that impact LGBT communities in Seattle, including the passage of anti-discrimination legislation, hate crimes, same sex marriage, domestic partnership benefits, transgender issues, and police and LGBT community relations. She is most proud of having served on the steering committee of Unid@s a National LGBT Latino Civil Rights Organization, the Northwest Women’s Law Center Board of Directors, and UW’s “Q” Center, but her greatest accomplishments are having been selected Seattle’s Miss Gay Latina in 1998 and being the first lesbian from Mexico to win political asylum based on her sexual orientation.

ANGÉLICA CHÁZARO
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Cházaro currently works as a Staff Attorney in the VAWA and Impact Litigation Unitsof the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP). Before NWIRP, she worked with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Unit in New York, and Sanctuary for Families. She is author of "Witnessing Memory and Surviving Domestic Violence: The Case of Rodi Alvarado Peña," a chapter in an immigration text from the Rockefeller Series on Latin American Studies.

We hope to see you at this exciting, informative discussion!

Sponsored by: University of Washington Graduate & Professional Student Senate (GPSS); ASUW GBLT Commission; UW Student Bar Association (SBA); University of Washington School of Law Student Organization Sponsored Speaker Grant; and the following Registered Student Organizations - Outlaws, Center for Human Rights & Justice (CHRJ), and the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project (IFAP).

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability accommodations, contact the Office of the ADA Coordinator, at least 10 days in advance of the event.
(206) 543-6450 (voice); (206) 543-6452 (TDD); (206) 685-3885 (FAX); access@u.washington.edu (email).