Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit
Thursday, April 16, 2015 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room 9205
7:30pm – 9:30pm
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Professor of Gender Studies and American Studies at Indiana University, Marlon M. Bailey presents his rich first-person performance ethnography and memoir of dance, dress, and vogue ballroom competitions in Detroit’s black and Latino LGBTQ communities. By sharing his stories and experiences, Bailey demonstrates the ways such cultural formations are spaces of resistance that disrupt dominant notions of gender, sexuality, and community, and create alternative kinship structures.
Film and Q&A: Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger
Thursday, April 22, 2015 | CUNY Graduate Center | Segal Theater
7:00pm – 9:30pm
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For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender-and her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering gender outlaw. This documentary joins her on her latest tour, capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist-theorist-activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style and astonishing candor. The film invites us on Kate’s journey to seek answers to some of life’s biggest questions. Q&A with director Sam Feder and Kate Bornstein to follow.
Beyond the lens of ‘African homophobia’: Queer sexualities in Africa
Tuesday, April 28, 2015 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room C205
6:30pm – 8:30pm
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The issue of LGBTI rights has come under increasing international spotlight over the past five years. Within Western political and media discourses, much attention has focused on Africa and the human rights abuses faced by queer people living on the African continent. However, what are often missing from these discussions are the voices and experiences of queer Africans themselves. This panel seeks to look beyond the lens of ‘African homophobia’ and to surface the diversity of queer sexualities across the continent, in film, literature, and empirical research. The panel comprises papers that address the themes from different disciplinary perspectives. Speakers include Nathalie Etoke, Associate Professor of French and Africana Studies at Connecticut College and Ellie Gore, CLAGS Visiting Scholar and doctoral candidate in the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham, UK.