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

Black Lesbians In The 70s, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the initial planning session for In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 70s Spring Series, there was lack of clarity about the activity of Black Lesbians in the early part of the 1970s. The aim for Black Lesbian Herstory in the 70s: An At Home Tour and Guide to the Black Lesbian Herstory of the Collection was to present information to the lesbian community and increase Black Lesbian invisibility.

"I Am", Sonali Gulati

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It was the summer of 1999 in Toronto at my very first public screening of my film titled "sum total" that someone asked me what my next film project was. And I had barely formalized my ideas in my head but I spoke from my heart and spoke of this film about parents of gay and lesbian youth living in India. It had only been a year and a half since my mother had passed away and that feeling of regret of not having come out to her before she died was on my mind.

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Dear Friends: Welcome to our redesigned CLAGSNews! As you can see, CLAGS is going through a number of chances, both stylistic and substantial. We've moved CLAGSNews to a mostly electronic format, in part to save precious resources, but also to take advantage of the endless possibilities of web-based text. We'll also be updating our logo and the CLAGS website to make it a real resource for LGBT Studies.

International Resource Network (Irn) Presents Seminars In The City, Naveed Alam

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

One of the major achievements of the IRN this year was our collaboration with CLAGS's ongoing Seminars in the City series. The Seminars in the City series is part of CLAGS's mission to make scholarly research in Queer Studies accessible to the general public.

Focusing On Black Queer Writing: Clags At The Fire & Ink Cotillion Iii In Austin Texas, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On October 8-11th, 2009, an historic event occurred in Austin, Texas. The Fire & Ink III: Cotillion brought together LGBT writers and artists of African descent from around the nation and beyond. In 2002, its founding year, Thomas Glave, editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Duke University Press) and author of The Torturer's Wife (fiction), provided the keynote, later published in both his essay collection, Words to our Now as well as the Summer 2003 issue of Callaloo (literary journal) under the name: "Fire and Ink: Toward a Quest for Language, History …

An Excerpt From The 2009 Kessler Lecture: Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia And Its Consequences, Sarah Schulman

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Despite the emphasis on gay marriage and parenthood that has overwhelmed our freedom vision, how gays and lesbians are treated IN families, is far more influential on the quality of individual lives and the larger social order, than how we are treated AS families. Tonight I will try to articulate how and why systems of familial homophobia operate and more importantly, how they can be changed.

A Beautiful People, Arianne Benford

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

We are a beautiful people. People of the drum and open spirit. People with the strength to live our lives that bring us one-step closer to whole. We are beautiful when we constantly push and pull at the traditional American social fabric by just being ourselves.

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

La historiografía musical y la cultura popular nos han legado una imagen de Chopin como un ser débil y asexual. Este tópico incluso ha marcado la obra de pensadores como Sartre en su obra La náusea. Sin embargo, la lectura de la correspondencia del compositor nos brinda el perfil de un ser humano con unas inquietudes sexuales bastante “normales”. En su juventud, Chopin mantuvo una estrecha relación, que algunos definirían como homosexual, con Titus Woyciechowski y años más tarde frecuentó el círculo de Altolphe de Custine, erudito aristócrata de prestigio y reconocido homosexual. La correspondencia –posiblemente fraudulenta– entre Chopin …

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

El protagonista de La nàusea, Antoine Roquentin, té una existència grisa i soporífica a la provinciana i asfixiant ciutat de Bouville. Afortunadament té temps per redactar un diari en el qual anota les poques vicissituds de la seva vida. La falta d'activitats externes es compensa amb temps per reflexionar, rumiar i escriure. Antoine realment no riu sinó que únicament sobre in. Tot i que no li manquen conforts materials, la seva vida no té sentit. Així, anhela una vida amb una existència més plena, una vida que vagi més enllà de l'existència biològica quotidiana.

Forget Burial: Illness, Narrative, And The Reclamation Of Disease, Marty Melissa Fink

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a theoretical and archival analysis of HIV/AIDS literature, this dissertation argues that the AIDS crisis is not an isolated incident that is now "over," but a striking culmination of a long history of understanding illness through narratives of queer sexual decline and national outsiderhood. Literary representations of HIV/AIDS can be read as a means of resistance to the stigmatization of people of color, women, immigrants, and queers, debunking the narratives that vilify these subjects as threats to national security and health. In drawing connections between illness, history, and the African diaspora, my work adopts a queer theoretical approach to …

Ghost Dances: A Trans-Movement Manifesto, Susan Stryker

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Several things coincided to shape the space from which this lecture emerged. The first was an email from a list I'm on, soliciting creative, artistic responses to climate change. The second was a call for proposals for a symposium on "subversive imaginaries." The third, an ongoing conversation with a dancer friend about critical embodiment practices. Fourth, the tangle of thoughts sorting themselves out into various bits of prose and syllabi then being demanded by editors and administrators. Fifth, the backdrop of an historical presidential election soliciting us all to dwell upon "the fierce urgency of now." And finally, the call …

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Dear Friends: We all have guilty pleasures, and one of mine is the end-of-year top ten list. I love the condensing of the past twelve months in digestible morsels of best, worst, most important, most outrageous; it's as though I can live the year about to expire all over again from the comfort of my own home and in record time. This past year, though, resists easy summing-up.

Brooklyn College To Offer Minor In Lgbtq Studies, Jesse Bayker

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Brooklyn College became the first CUNY school to offer undergraduates a minor in LGBTQ Studies when college faculty approved the proposal in December.

Giard Fellowship Evokes Enthusiastic Response, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In his 1997 book, Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, Robert Giard captures nearly 200 photographs of his contemporaries. Giard's compilation of these portraits of lesbian and gay writers, carefully accompanied with textual excerpts, led this coffee-table monograph to stand as a supreme example of what Giard himself describes as "the autobiography of one gay reader."

Reclamation: The Value Of Black Gay Writing Lgbtq Studies Panel, Lisa C. Moore

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

How gratifying to see a packed house on October 14, 2008 for a discussion of Reclamation: The Value of Black Gay Writing! Co-sponsored by CLAGS and Freedom Train Productions (www.freedomtrainproductions.org), the panel of scholars—Terry Rowden, Professor of African-American Literature, College of Staten Island (CUNY), Jafari Sinclaire Allen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies/American Studies, Yale University, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, Ph.D. student, African-American/American Studies, Yale University—and me, publisher Lisa C. Moore (Redbone Press) came to discuss the impact of black gay writers on the community and academia... and to bear witness, reclaim and critique the work within the first …

Sources On Lesbian Subjectivities For The Production Of Lesbian Of Color Identity Formation Through Literature, Art, Film, Or Documentation: An Annotatated Bibliography, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Historically, coming out as a lesbian and then forming an identity of a "lesbian of color" includes seeking out like voices and stories. Librarians who hold an understanding of the lesbian of color coming out process as well as the fluidity of language in Queer Studies will be better equipped to service lesbian of color patrons. This paper holds three tools for reference librarians: A literature review outlining the history of lesbian of color identity formation, secondly, a bibliography with interdisciplinary humanities reference annotations that source lesbians of color in literature, film, performance art, and identity, and thirdly, a model …

Testimonial, Rosalyn Deutsche

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It's an honor and a pleasure to introduce Douglas Crimp, whom I've known for more than thirty years. In that time, Douglas has been my fellow student, my inspiring colleague, my attentive editor, my concert, opera, film, and dance-going companion, and, most important, my dear friend.

Testimonial, Henry Abelove

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Douglas Crimp was born in 1944 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where his brother and sister still live. As a boy, Douglas imagined that he might become an architect, and he went to Tulane University specifically to study architecture. But soon after beginning his university life, he shifted his concentration to Art History. One Tulane Teacher of Art History in particular enthralled him. This was Bernard Lehman, an eloquent, learned, and effervescent lecturer, and a campy gay man, whom Douglas credits as a primary influence.

Allan Bérubé: A Visionary Historian, John D'Emilio

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I first met Allan in the spring of 1979. In the two preceding years, in the time he carved out from the odd jobs that kept him afloat, he had systematically pursued leads from Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History, in the process amassing his own trove of queer historical documents. One thick line of research especially delighted him. To his surprise, 19th-century San Francisco newspapers ran extended stories, amounting at times to almost mini-biographies, of "women who passed as men."

Gay And Lesbian Studies In Brazil: A Field In Construction, Berenice Bento

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Traditionally, sexuality studies in Brazil have been organized around ideas of normalization. Specialists in the field have been trained to observe and comment on behaviours that did not conform to the imperatives of heterosexuality. Gender was polarized and hierarchical, and gained meaning from the idea of separate, complementary sexes. Heterosexuality gave meaning to human existence and reproduction, and every other kind of sexual expression was measured according to the rule of heteronormativity.

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It was hard not to be inspired, moved, and thrilled by Douglas Crimp's remarkable Kessler Lecture on November 2nd. Combining personal history, art criticism, political analysis, and trenchant commentary on the intersections between them, Douglas gave us a guided tour of the long-abandoned, much-used piers of lower Manhattan.

The Lgbtq Short Story, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

“The LGBTQ Short Story” is a lengthy entry in the three-volume encyclopedia LGBTQ America Today, edited by queer scholar John Hawley. The entry explores the characteristics of the genre and synthesizes the work of the top 25 living queer short story writers.

Sexuality Studies And Lgbtqi Rights In Africa, Sybille Ngo Nyeck

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The first meeting of the International Research Network, Africa (IRN-Africa) was held in Saly, Senegal, February 8-10, 2007. The meeting was attended by twenty six scholars, artists, and human rights activists from ten countries including Cameroon, Canada, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and the United States.

Letter From Paisley Currah, Outgoing Executive Director, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

"Unzipping the Monster Dick." I thought nothing of this title when planning the fall 2003 CLAGS and a speaker, Santiago Solis, suggested it. It seemed to me, a denizen of the world of queer studies, unremarkable, even normal as I jotted it down. Solis, who was finishing his PhD in Learning Dis/abilities at Teachers College, Columbia University at the time, had the requisite explanatory subtitle: "Deconstructing Ableist Penile Representations in two Ethnic Homoerotic Magazines."

Letter From Sarah E. Chinn, Incoming Executive Director, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I'm not the kind of person who procrastinates — I'd rather do something right away than worry and further feed the procrastination. But I have been putting off writing this inaugural column as the new executive director of CLAGS. The challenge, I think, has been where to begin: taking on a position that has been so magnificently filled by Paisley Currah, Alisa Solomon, Jill Dolan, and Martin Duberman is already such a challenge that contemplating actually writing about it seems even more insuperable.

Transgender Justice, Richard M. Juang

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Proceedings from CLAGS's Trans Politics, Social Change and Justice conference will be available in January 2007 under the title Transgender Justice.

Some Thoughts On China's Sexual Revolution: Sexuality And Social Change In Contemporary China, Sun Zhongxin

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The last two years saw several changes in the public discourse around sex and sexuality in China. So what are some of the most controversial sex-related topics to be raised in China recently?

Letter From The Executive Director: Queer Studies Goes Digital, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Google books, journals available only online, Wikipedia. With so much knowledge going digital, is print culture on its way our? While print probably won't disappear as a scholarly medium in the foreseeable future, it is important that CLAGS remain at the cutting edge not just in terms of the kinds of research we support, but in terms of how we disseminate that research. We are currently involved in several long-term projects to share digital resources with our membership and the community at large, expanding on our longstanding commitment to making print and analog materials available that are often not accessible …

Lessons In Sex And Fascism: Dagmar Herzog's Pedagogy Workshop, Megan Jenkins

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On December 4, 2006 Dagmar Herzog, Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, led a lively workshop titled "What's So Sexy about Fascism? And Why is it Important to Think About it in the Classroom?" as part of the CLAGS/CSGS LGBTQ Plans Pedagogy Workshop.

From The Scenes Of Queens: Genre, Aids And Queer Love, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.