Now Queer This!
Sexual Dissidence in Popular Culture
5th Annual Lecture Series in LGBT Studies
Hasn't popular culture always been a little bit queer?
From the homoeroticism of sport to the gender-bending of fashion and musical
performance, from cross-dressing on the Renaissance stage to same-sex
kisses on TV shows, from the pop art of the 1950s to the queer comics
and anime of the 2000s--Sexual dissidence and gender variation
have been staples of mass culture and entertainment. But how does
queerness signify in these cultural spaces and forms? Is it subversive
of a dominant, heteronormative order, or are queer energies inevitably
captured or contained by that order? Why is Broadway so welcoming
to queer people and style, while the sports world is still so anxious
about sexual minorities in the locker room?
This year's lecture series in LGBT Studies turns a scholarly eye
on the queerness that so often puts the "pop" in popular culture.
We bring four experts on athletics, theatre, art, and international
film to shed critical light on images and activities that surround
us every day, whether we are aware of them or not. We invite you to
tune in for a series of lively and provocative conversations.
Q & A and reception to follow each lecture.
All are welcome to informal colloquia with the speakers. See details
below.
We are grateful to the Office of Undergraduate Studies for its
support of the series.
View series poster
Speaker: Pat Griffin
Title: New Rules for
the Old Ball Game: Challenging Homophobia in Women's Sports
Time/Date 4 p.m., Monday, March 12, 2007
Location: Health and Human Performance 1312
View event poster
and event flyer with extended biography
Colloquium: 2 p.m., Monday, March 12, 2007, Student Lounge, HHP (ground
floor)
Co-Sponsored by the Department of Kinesiology – Joan S. Hult
Women’s History
Distinguished Lecture
Pat Griffin is an Emerita Professor in Social Justice
Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her publications
include Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in
Sports, the co-edited Teaching For Diversity and Social Justice:
A Sourcebook for Teachers and Trainers, and several anthologized
short stories and first person accounts. She has appeared on ESPN
Outside the Lines, HBO Real Sports, and ABC
Sports as an expert commentator on LGBT issues in athletics.
Speaker: Stacy Wolf
Title: "Defying
Gravity,” or How Wicked’s Women Queered the Broadway
Musical
Time/Date: 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Location:Art/Sociology 1213
Colloquium: 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 4, 2007, Susquehanna 3105
Suggested reading:
"'We'll Always Be Bosom Buddies: Female Duets and the Queering of
Broadway Musical Theater"
Stacy Wolf is Associate Professor of Theatre at
the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include A
Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical.
She has published articles on theatre spectatorship, performance pedagogy,
and musical theatre in many journals, including Theatre Journal,
Modern Drama, and Women and Performance. She was
the editor of Theatre Topics in 2001-2003.
Speaker: Jonathan D. Katz
Title: "Committing The Perfect Crime": Sexuality, Assemblage and the Postmodern Turn in American Art
Time/Date: 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Location: Art/Sociology 1213
Colloquium: 12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, 2007, Art/Sociology
4304
Suggested readings:
"The
Silent Camp: Queer Resistance and the Rise of Pop Art"
"Jasper
Johns' Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage"
Jonathan D. Katz is the former executive coordinator
of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale
University. He is a former chair of the Department of Lesbian and
Gay Studies at the City College of San Francisco, and was the first
tenured faculty in Gay and Lesbian Studies in the United States. Katz
was an associate professor in the Art History Department at the State University of New York
at Stony Brook, where he also taught Queer Studies. He received his
Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University in 1996.
His forthcoming book, The Homosexualization of American Art: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg
and the Collective Closet, will be published by the University of Chicago Press. An internationally
recognized expert in queer postwar American art, Katz has recently published "Jasper Johns' Alley Oop:
On Comic Strips and Camouflage" in Schwule Bildwelten im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Thomas Roeske,
and "The Silent Camp: Queer Resistance and the Rise of Pop Art," in Plop! Goes the World,
edited by Serge Guilbaut.
Speaker: Gayatri Gopinath
Title: Queer Regions: Locating Lesbians in Ligy Pullappally’s The
Journey
Time/Date: 4 p.m., Thursday, May 3, 2007
Location: Tydings 1101
Screening of The
Journey: 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 2, 2007,
Room H, Nonprint
Media Services, 0302 Hornbake Library
Colloquium: 2 p.m. - 3:15 p.m., Thursday, May 3, 2007, Susquehanna
3105
Suggested readings:
"Impossible Desires:
An Introduction"
"Local Sites/Global Contexts:
The Transnational Trajectories of Fire and 'The Quilt'"
Gayatri Gopinath is Associate Professor of Women
and Gender studies at the University of California, Davis. She is
the author of Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas in South Asian
Public Cultures, and she has published articles in GLQ: A
Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Journal of
Homosexuality, Diaspora, and positions: east asia
cultures critique.
