“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.
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
"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.
"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.
Monday, February 15, 2010
FYI: Against Equality
An interesting take on queer politics & publics:
Against Equality
http://againstequality.wordpress.com/
The project is self-described:
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.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Human/Elf Same-Sex Sex Scene in Dragon Age RPG
In my discussion for today's Q+P+P Tea Time, I wanted to present a little bit about my own interests, work, and analyses of video games, particularly World of Warcraft, and to unpack some of the logics of race, gender, and sexuality in games. The current brouhaha over the male, same-sex sex scene in BioWare's Dragon Age provides a useful backdrop for my presentation:
Beyond the knee-jerk, neoconservative, religious right-wing responses over the game's promotion of homosexuality (and beyond the toothless claims by BioWare that the game is "just entertainment" and not meant to be "provoking" or "promoting"), the sex scene raises certain questions:
--Dragon Age is a game that highlights player "choice" and an immersive game world all about "choice;" the player then must "choose" to engage in the flirtation/romance. In a gamic and cultural context where the "choice" of homosexuality/queerness is not even on most menus, how might we read this game as an opportunity for imagining a queerer world? How might (see questions below) these "choices" be as essentializing, binary producing, or stereotypical?
--The sex scene ends with a discussion about "love" versus "sex," about "romance" versus "gratification." Does this fall into the stereotype of queer male promiscuity while simultaneously reinforcing the normative logics of coupledom and monogamy?
--The racial difference is important to consider. What role does the human male play? What role does the elf male play? And given the stereotypical taxonomies of fantasy race, elves are often feminized. Why does this self-professed assassin and sexual opportunist get figured as "bottom"?
--Finally, a more challenging question, where does the player him/herself play into this scene? How does the player's body and erotics and desires fit into the circuit here? What happens when a heterosexual player "chooses" to queer his character or to seek out the queer sex scene (even out of curiosity)?
Beyond the knee-jerk, neoconservative, religious right-wing responses over the game's promotion of homosexuality (and beyond the toothless claims by BioWare that the game is "just entertainment" and not meant to be "provoking" or "promoting"), the sex scene raises certain questions:
--Dragon Age is a game that highlights player "choice" and an immersive game world all about "choice;" the player then must "choose" to engage in the flirtation/romance. In a gamic and cultural context where the "choice" of homosexuality/queerness is not even on most menus, how might we read this game as an opportunity for imagining a queerer world? How might (see questions below) these "choices" be as essentializing, binary producing, or stereotypical?
--The sex scene ends with a discussion about "love" versus "sex," about "romance" versus "gratification." Does this fall into the stereotype of queer male promiscuity while simultaneously reinforcing the normative logics of coupledom and monogamy?
--The racial difference is important to consider. What role does the human male play? What role does the elf male play? And given the stereotypical taxonomies of fantasy race, elves are often feminized. Why does this self-professed assassin and sexual opportunist get figured as "bottom"?
--Finally, a more challenging question, where does the player him/herself play into this scene? How does the player's body and erotics and desires fit into the circuit here? What happens when a heterosexual player "chooses" to queer his character or to seek out the queer sex scene (even out of curiosity)?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Q+P+P Tea Time: "Queer/ing/s Online," Monday, 12/7, 3:30-5:00 PM, CMU 202
Queer + Public + Performance Tea Time
Monday, December 7
3:30-5:00 PM
Simpson Center Conference Room
University of Washington, Seattle
Queer/ing/s Online
The first of three Queer + Public + Performance Tea Times invites two PhD Candidates, Jessica Johnson of Anthropology and Edmond Chang of English, to share their current work, their research questions, and their objects of study. This quarter's Tea Time, entitled "Queer/ing/s Online," takes an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of queer scholarship, cultural studies, and online texts, publics, and technologies, even pedagogies. Each discussant will give a brief presentation of their work and a lively discussion will follow.
Q+P+P Tea Times will be held once per quarter. These colloquia hope to encourage conversation, exchange, and open discussion. Each Tea Time will invite two or three faculty members, graduate students, even undergraduates who will start the conversation by briefly sharing their work, highlighting how that work aligns with the working goals of the Q+P+P and how their work negotiates the intersections of queer critique, public theory, and performance studies. The main goal of the Tea Times is to foster intellectual, academic, and political exchange that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Refreshments will be served.
This Q+P+P Tea time is co-presented with the HASTAC Scholars at the University of Washington.
"Looking for Mr. Good Avatar: Playing & Queering World of Warcraft"
Edmond Chang, English, HASTAC Scholar
My discussion of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft attempts to identify and interrogate sexuality, gender, and race in WoW to theorize and analyze the ways these logics are both normative and subversive. In other words, in a game of fantasy race and cybermediated desire, how and where and why might real world queerness, gender, and race be rendered and taken for granted? Furthermore, in the imagining (perhaps intrusion) of real world logics into the game, how might other formations, such as sexuality, be left unsettled or open? Looking at game play and game narratives, particularly the in-game Valentine's Day holiday event "Love is in the Air," my work argues for a productive opportunity in the play of, with, and play in
sexuality, gender, and race to discover countergaming potential and practices that challenge and exploit in- and out-of-game stereotypes and normativity.
"The Circulation of Biblical Porn: Masculine Visuality, Evangelical Publics, and Shock as a Political Affect"
Jessica Johnson, Anthropology
In my presentation, I will explore how and what kind of evangelical publics are generated through the digital circulation of sermons, blogs, and visual texts. I examine discourses on gender, sex, and sexuality as produced by a Seattle megachurch that specifically targets the least likely demographic to attend Christian services in the United States: 18-30 year old males. Reading the texts generated for and in response to a particular sermon series that explicitly discusses sexual freedom within a "biblical" (normatively gender distinct, heterosexual) marriage, I ask what it means to deploy "shock" as a political affect in the transnational dissemination of "biblical porn."
Monday, December 7
3:30-5:00 PM
Simpson Center Conference Room
University of Washington, Seattle
Queer/ing/s Online
The first of three Queer + Public + Performance Tea Times invites two PhD Candidates, Jessica Johnson of Anthropology and Edmond Chang of English, to share their current work, their research questions, and their objects of study. This quarter's Tea Time, entitled "Queer/ing/s Online," takes an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of queer scholarship, cultural studies, and online texts, publics, and technologies, even pedagogies. Each discussant will give a brief presentation of their work and a lively discussion will follow.
Q+P+P Tea Times will be held once per quarter. These colloquia hope to encourage conversation, exchange, and open discussion. Each Tea Time will invite two or three faculty members, graduate students, even undergraduates who will start the conversation by briefly sharing their work, highlighting how that work aligns with the working goals of the Q+P+P and how their work negotiates the intersections of queer critique, public theory, and performance studies. The main goal of the Tea Times is to foster intellectual, academic, and political exchange that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Refreshments will be served.
This Q+P+P Tea time is co-presented with the HASTAC Scholars at the University of Washington.
"Looking for Mr. Good Avatar: Playing & Queering World of Warcraft"
Edmond Chang, English, HASTAC Scholar
My discussion of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft attempts to identify and interrogate sexuality, gender, and race in WoW to theorize and analyze the ways these logics are both normative and subversive. In other words, in a game of fantasy race and cybermediated desire, how and where and why might real world queerness, gender, and race be rendered and taken for granted? Furthermore, in the imagining (perhaps intrusion) of real world logics into the game, how might other formations, such as sexuality, be left unsettled or open? Looking at game play and game narratives, particularly the in-game Valentine's Day holiday event "Love is in the Air," my work argues for a productive opportunity in the play of, with, and play in
sexuality, gender, and race to discover countergaming potential and practices that challenge and exploit in- and out-of-game stereotypes and normativity.
"The Circulation of Biblical Porn: Masculine Visuality, Evangelical Publics, and Shock as a Political Affect"
Jessica Johnson, Anthropology
In my presentation, I will explore how and what kind of evangelical publics are generated through the digital circulation of sermons, blogs, and visual texts. I examine discourses on gender, sex, and sexuality as produced by a Seattle megachurch that specifically targets the least likely demographic to attend Christian services in the United States: 18-30 year old males. Reading the texts generated for and in response to a particular sermon series that explicitly discusses sexual freedom within a "biblical" (normatively gender distinct, heterosexual) marriage, I ask what it means to deploy "shock" as a political affect in the transnational dissemination of "biblical porn."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)