Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS)
CUNY Graduate Center
The Life of Vito Russo: A Lecture by Michael Schiavi
2/21/2013
7pm-9pm
Skylight Room (9100)
CUNY Graduate Center
RSVP to: clagsevents@gc.cuny.edu
In this multi-media presentation, Michael Schiavi discusses the life and times of Vito Russo (1946-1990), author of The Celluloid Closet (1981), the first study of Hollywood’s treatment of lesbians and gay men. Celluloid Closet was subsequently adapted into a documentary film in 1995 by Oscar-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, with narration by Vito’s dear friend Lily Tomlin. Russo was also a giant of post-Stonewall gay and AIDS activism. He was an early and important member of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), as well as a co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and a co-founder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). In addition to Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, Michael’s recent biography, Vito’s legacy is also detailed in Vito (HBO Documentary Films), Jeffrey Schwarz’s new documentary, in which Michael appears as Vito’s biographer. Michael’s talk incorporates readings from his book, lecture, and archival footage for a dynamic portrait of an undisputed hero of LGBT activism.
Michael Schiavi is Professor of English and Coordinator of English as a Second Language at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)’s Manhattan Campus. He is the author of Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), and he appears in the documentary Vito (HBO Documentary Pictures, 2012) as Russo’s biographer. He teaches LGBTQ-themed courses both at NYIT and in Pace University’s new Queer Studies minor. His articles have appeared in Cinema Journal, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and College Literature, among other publications, including the forthcoming Our Naked Lives: Essays from Gay Italian-American Men (Bordighera Press, 2013).
Performing Que(e)ries Part III: Carmelita Tropicana in Conversation with Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé
2/26/2013
7pm-9pm
Segal Theatre
CUNY Graduate Center
RSVP to: clagsevents@gc.cuny.edu
Renowned New York-based performance artist, writer, and actress Carmelita Tropicana will discuss her astonishing career spanning almost three decades in theatre, performance art, and film on the transnational stage. The event will include demos of Tropicana’s past work in an archival retrospective made available by the artist’s own collection of her recorded works. A critical conversation with moderator Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé on the intersection of queer, feminist, and racial politics, which have remained central in Tropicana’s performance work from the cultural climate that pushed her to create her performance persona in the late 80s to her more current political, social, and cultural interests.
Carmelita Tropicana (a.k.a. Alina Troyano) is a performance artist, playwright, and actor. In Tropicana’s work, humor and fantasy become subversive tools to rewrite history. Tropicana’s performances plays and videos have been presented at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea in Barcelona, the Berlin International Film Festival, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Mark Taper Forum’s Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles, and El Museo del Barrio in New York. Her work has received funding support from the Independent Television Service, the Jerome Foundation, and the Rockefeller Suitcase Fund. She has received numerous awards including fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance.
Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé is Professor of Spanish, Comparative Literature, and Latin American and Latino Studies at Fordham University in New York. His most recent book is Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails (Palgrave 2007), a book about the relationship between high art and queer Latino popular culture in the gentrifying New York of the 1980s. He is also author of a study on the intersections of nationalism and queer sexuality in the prose fiction of the Cuban author, José Lezama Lima, El primitivo implorante, and coeditor, with Martin Manalansan, of Queer Globalization: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism (New York UP 2002). He has published widely on Hispanic Caribbean and U.S. Latino literatures and cultures. His essays have appeared in anthologies such as Entiendes? Queer Readings/Hispanic Writings (Duke 1995), Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (NYU 1997), and Queer Representations (New York UP 1997), and in journals such as Revista Iberoamericana, differences, Revista de Crítica Cultural, Cuban Studies, and Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
The Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series presents Notes on a Queer Brain: Can there be a Critical Research on Sex/Gender in Neuroscience?
2/13/2013
12-2:00pm
Room 6112
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY
Anelis Kaiser, associate researcher at the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Dr. Kaiser recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Neuroethics on gender and brain science. She is co-founder (with Isabelle Dussauge) of the interdisciplinary network NeuroGenderings, which brings together experts from the brain sciences, the humanities and science studies (STS) to critically study the sexed brain. She has published on sex and gender as constructed categories in science as well as on the topics of multilingualism and language processing in the brain.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Women and Society and CLAGS.
Minding the Body: Dualism and its Discontents
February 28, 2013 – March 1, 2013
CUNY Graduate Center
Minding the Body is an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the English Student Association in the English program at The Graduate Center (CUNY). This conference will include work by graduate students that considers theoretical perspectives and scholarship that explores the mind-body problem via a wide range of disciplines, including the humanities (literary studies, philosophy, visual arts, and performance studies), the social sciences, technology and media studies, neuroscience, medicine, psychology, and cognitive science. Intersections between recent theoretical currents, including theories of mind and consciousness, ideas about emotions and affect, and the relationship between neuroscientific findings and understandings of embodiment, will be explored.
http://mindingthebodyconference.wordpress.com/
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All CLAGS events are free and open to the public.
Please RSVP at clagsevents@gc.cuny.edu.
To view CLAGS’ complete spring calendar of events, click here: tinyurl.com/clags-spring-2013
