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.

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