Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

Update From The International Resource Network, Kalle Westerling

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The International Resource Network (IRN), the global network of researchers, activists, artists, and teachers sharing knowledge about diverse sexualities, hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, as so far had a time of reorganization and applying for future funding. Meanwhile, the local organizations and projects associated with the network continued to grow and expand.

5th Annual Rainbow Book Fair, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Each year, the Rainbow Book Fair grows larger and more exciting: as the largest LGBT book expo in North America, the RBF is the place to learn about new trends in queer publishing. Exhibitors at the Fair range from academic presses to romance and erotica, from trade presses to art books and literary journals and beyond: it’s the Fair’s goal to represent the amazing variety of queer and trans writers and publishers.

Letter From The Executive Director: An Accidental Protester, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past January, I spent a cold, wet, and fabulous week in Paris. One evening while strolling along the Left Bank, sauntering in the shadows of the imposing grandeur of L’Hôtel national des Invalides, I found myself caught up in a massive wave of protesters, who were dispersing from a demonstration in front of the Eiffel Tower. The crowd moved like a protean organism through the narrow Parisian streets, growing in immensity as other protest groups siphoned into the throng from criss-crossing thoroughfares.

Clags Fellowships And Awards, Noam Parness

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past fall, CLAGS awarded two fellowships: The Paul Monette-Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize, and the CLAGS Fellowship Award. Our fantastic fellowship winners are profiled in this newsletter, and on our website. Please check out our current winners to read more about their scholarly endeavors! Additionally, we are excited by all of the applications that we have received for the three fellowships that CLAGS will be awarding this spring: The Martin Duberman Fellowship, The Robert Giard Fellowship and the Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies.

Clags Events And Outreach, Spring 2013, Benjamin Gillespie

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past semester, CLAGS held many successful and provocative events that effectively supported our mandate as a platform for historical and contemporary issues affecting the LGBTQ community. We hosted the book launch for Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing up Gay by Paul Vitigliano, featuring such guest speakers as Noah Michelson (Huffington Post Gay Voices) and Michael Musto (Columnist, Village Voice).

Performing Que(E)Ries: Nina Arsenault With J. Paul Halferty, Benjamin Gillespie

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This exciting conversation and performance demo with one of Canada’s leading queer performance artists took place on October 26th, 2012 in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. The event featured two short films made by Arsenault and filmmaker Jordan Tannehill, Plane of Immanence and Guadalajara, as well as an extended monologue by Arsenault retelling an autobiographical story on her quest for feminine beauty entitled The Ecstasy of Nina Arsenault: a surgical pilgrimage through a waking facelift.

Performing Que(E)Ries, Charles Busch, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Charles Busch, renowned New York performer, playwright, director, and drag extraordinaire, participated in the second iteration of this new CLAGS series in the Fall. He discussed his astonishing career in the theatre and on film, as well as the changes he has seen in LGBTQ performance over the last four decades in New York and beyond. The conversation was moderated by CLAGS Executive Director James Wilson.

Surviving The City: Resistance And Plant Life In Woolf’S Jacob’S Room And Barnes’ Nightwood, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

In Jacob’s Room (1922) and Nightwood (1936), Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes use plant life to express a profound ambivalence about the masculine-inflected ordering functions of art and morality. They show that these processes codify lived experience and distance it from the feminine and sexual. To counter this turn towards the urban inauthentic, both novels depict non-urban spaces to upend conventional notions of usefulness. They fixate on evanescent flowers, wild forests, and untillable fields as sites of resistance whose fragility and remoteness are strengths. In Jacob’s Room, I argue that the eponymous protagonist is destroyed by his conventional education …

Lgbt Community Faces Stigma, Stereotypes, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Forgetting Act Up, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Study Guide For United In Anger: A History Of Act Up, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film’s role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

Risky Rights? Gender Equality And Sexual Diversity In Muslim Contexts, Anissa Helie

Publications and Research

In her contribution to Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance (ZED Book, UK), Anissa Hélie contrasts the emphasis on victimization of both ‘Muslim women’ and ‘gay Muslims’ in mainstream Western discourses with actual strategies designed by advocates of gender equality and sexual rights from Muslim contexts.These strategies include religious reinterpretation efforts in South Africa and Indonesia, and organizing geared towards public visibility in Lebanon, Turkey and Morocco.

Deconstructing the false dichotomy between an ‘enlightened West’ and ‘oppressive Muslim contexts’, Hélie insists on the need to take into account a broad range of factors that impact the ability of both …

2010 Kessler Lecture With Urvashi Vaid / From The Development Desk, Jasmine Burnett

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This year's Kessler Lecture featured the dynamic Urvashi Vaid, who was described by Nan Hunter as "a force of nature and a multi-dimensional activist serving roles as street activist, fundraiser, mentor and an intellectual leader of the LGBT movement." The Kessler Lecture is the premier event for CLAGS highlighting Scholarship, Art, and Activism.

Lgbtq Womyn Of Color Conference — Crossroads And Crosswinds Connecting Across Race And Space, Arianne Benford

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

When I first arrived at the Second Annual LGBTQ Womyn of Color Conference, I was nearly knocked over by the embrace the conference's coexecutive director, Adrienne Williams. We had only spoken on the phone a few times, yet the last time I can remember being so warmly received was during one of my infrequent trips home to see my mother. While I was sure that in that moment she had a long list of other things to do, she still made time to ensure that I was being treated well. Adrienne's hug was not a singular experience, but more of …

In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past October, CLAGS hosted a historic conference to commemorate, celebrate, and evaluate the diverse contributions of lesbians over the course of the 1970s. The conference culminated a semester-long series of events that unfurled over the Spring 2010 term. In planning for the conference, the organizing committee (made up of Melissa Gasparotto, Andrea Freud Loewenstein, Roberta Sklar, Urvashi Vaid, and myself) imagined this conference as embracing as broad a field of lesbian lives as it could.

Welcome To Our New Interns!, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Since all of CLAGS's staff is part time, we depend upon interns to keep the wheels of the CLAGS locomotive rolling smoothly. Our interns come from a variety of places: some intern with us for college credit, others because they’re dedicated to CLAGS's mission. We’re welcoming four new interns for the Spring semester: Tamiris Diversi, Allison Silber, Krysten Tom, and Sharika Valerio.

Fellowship Winners 2010, Lolan Sevilla

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The Martin Duberman Fellowship: An endowed fellowship named for CLAGS founder and first executive director, this award is given to a senior scholar from any country doing research on the LGBTQ experience. The 2010 Duberman fellowship was awarded to Ellen Lewin for "Out in Spirit: An Ethnography of an LGBT African American Pentecostal Church." This project is a study of the Fellowship, a coalition of about 100 churches and ministries that serves a predominantly African American LGBT population across the US. Lewin is Professor of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology at the University of Iowa, and is a …

Clags Awards And Guidelines, Lolan Sevilla

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The Martin Duberman Fellowship— An endowed fellowship named for CLAGS founder and first executive director, Martin Duberman, this fellowship is awarded to a senior scholar (tenured university professor or advanced independent scholar) from any country doing scholarly research on the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer (LGBTQ) experience. University affiliation is not necessary. All applicants must be able to show a prior contribution to the field of LGBTQ studies.

Palestinian Queer Activists Talk Politics, Sarah Schulman

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Palestinian queer activists Haneen Maikey and Abeer Mansour will be touring 6 US cities for a series of open conversations hosted by locally and nationally known US activists. Their New York host is CLAGS—please join us for this exciting expansion of the Global LGBT.

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

As I write this, the snow is slowly melting: the residue of the blizzard that brought 2010 to a close (and ground the East Coast to an almost complete halt). The stillness of the air outside fosters a kind of meditativeness, although it's hard to get a firm grasp on the events of the past few weeks. After what seemed like an endless parade of false starts, Congress finally overturned Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a policy that came into being at the same time as our newest crop of undergraduates. And at almost the same moment, the DREAM Act, legislation …

Welcome To Clags.Org!, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Have these words appeared different to you lately? Visit CLAGS on the web, and you’ll notice a change occurred this past Fall 2010 semester. CLAGS would like to introduce you to the new CLAGS.org website redesign!

Visiting Clags As A Scholar In Residence, Tuula Juvonen

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

A year ago I was most excited to receive a letter of invitation from CLAGS' executive director Sarah Chinn to spend the autumn term 2010 as a Scholar in Residence. The idea of returning to CLAGS after 16 years of absence was particularly intriguing for me because I found my last visit there in 1994 most valuable and inspiring for my scholarly work. And I was not to be disappointed this time either.

Securitizing Gender: Identity, Biometrics, And Transgender Bodies At The Airport, Paisley Currah, Tara Mulqueen

Publications and Research

It is widely assumed that the more information surveillance apparatuses can collect about an individual, the less risk she poses. In this article, we examine how gender figures into and potentially disrupts the link between identity and security. Our analysis centers on one very particular event: the confusion that erupts at the airport when US Transportation Security Administration agents perceive a conflict between the gender marked on one's papers, the image of one's body produced by a machine, and/or an individual's perceived gender presentation. Gender has been so deeply naturalized—as immutable, as easily apprehended, and as existing before and outside …

Wow Cafe Theater Unveils 30th Anniversary Festival After Three Decades, Fierce Performers Prove The Show Will Go On, Esther Zinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

WOW Cafe Theater, a collective for female and and trans performance artists, strutted its stuff during its Pearl festival in May by celebrating thirty years of producing risk-taking, genre-defying theatre during the entire month of May 2010. Featuring more than twenty performances and fifty artists spanning a broad spectrum of music, dance, and multi-media, the Pearl festival was arguably the biggest and longest running theatrical event for women in New York during this summer, made possible by a generous grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Lesbians In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The 1970s was a period of intense excitement, change, activism, and activity for lesbians. As lesbian feminism redefined what qualified as a "political issue" and challenged every assumption about gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and any number of other social categories, lesbians of all kinds created cultural, social, political, economic, and regional organizations and networks.

The Robert Giard Fellowship, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

For several years we at CLAGS had wanted to work with the Robert Giard Foundation on a project for LGBT artists, but couldn't come up with the right vehicle. Eventually we hit on a perfect project: a fellowship for photographers and video artists working on queer and trans themes that would honor Robert Giard's legacy while directly supporting emerging and mid-career artists.

The Robert Giard Foundation Fellows Enlighten Our World, Carl Sylvestre

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This spring, the Robert Giard Foundation's partnership with CLAGS completed the first of what is anticipated to be an annual event in both organizations' calendars.

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Dear Friends: CLAGS's mission to nurture LGBT scholarship means that we're often looking into the past and into the future at the same time, remembering the queer past as we encourage cutting-edge scholarship. This feels especially true right now, since we're preparing for our 20th anniversary and putting the finishing touches on our historic (in all senses of the word) conference, "In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 1970s."

International Resource Network (Irn) News–Middle East Participates In The 5th Annual Anti-Homophobia Conference In Turkey, Naveed Alam

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

"No disenfranchised minority is free unless all disenfranchised minorities are free." With this introductory statement Judith Butler went on to draw the links between precarity, performativity, and sexual politics as she delivered the keynote lecture during the 5th Annual Anti-Homophobia Conference at Ankara University on May 15, 2010.