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).

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)?

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."

Writing with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Museum of History and Industry, 2700 24th Ave. E, Seattle, WA
Friday November 13 & Saturday November 14
Doors 7:00pm / Curtain 7:30pm

Join Bent Writing Institute for 2 nights of Seattle's best in queer writing and spoken work featuring Leah Lakshmi (more info below). $15 Student w\ ID, $20 General Admission.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Mentor Writing Workshop
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, 1002 E Seneca, Seattle, WA
Saturday, November 14
11am-1pm

Secrets, stories, scars, survival: Writing your dirty laundry, transforming violence and living to tell. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a queer femme desi visiting town! The Bent Institute wants to encourage Trikone Northwest members to attend by offering the tickets to this event for $15, instead of the regular $25. Also, if you volunteer to table for the showcase events, you can get a FREE ticket. For more info on tickets, please contact nitika.raj@gmail.com

Brunch with Leah Lakshmi

Sunday, November 15

Time & Location: TBD (Please stay tuned!)