Call For Proposals: The Non-State of Queer Theory

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THE NON-STATE OF QUEER THEORY
Graduate Symposium

Location: Brown University, Providence, RI
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2013

**CALL FOR PROPOSALS**

Keynote Speaker:
José E Muñoz
Professor of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

In his 1995 conference address, “Queer Theory: Unstating Desire,” Lee Edelman proposed that “To inquire into the state of queer studies–as if it had a state and all of us happened to live in that state together–is to presuppose a fantasy…that the very fact of a conference like this should serve, instead, to disrupt.”

This Brown Graduate Student Symposium, “The Non-State of Queer Theory,” seeks to keep in tension both the generative and nonproductive aspects of imagining a “non-state” of queer theory.

What is the “non-state” of queer theory now? Over a decade after Edelman’s call for rupture, queer of color critique, diasporic and trans-national perspectives and affect and performance studies have upended the seemingly static relationships between race and sexuality, feeling and being, queerness and space. We would like to invite projects that participate in these disruptions.

Proposals can include paper presentations and/or media projects.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, explorations of the following:

  • Queer of Color Critique
  • Queer Feminisms and Sexualities
  • Queer Performance
  • Queer Sexual Historiography
  • Queer Genealogies
  • Queer Sexuality and Eroticism in film, art, literature, music, television, gaming, or digital/online technologies
  • Queerness in Popular Culture
  • Queer Icons
  • Queer Bodies and Aesthetics
  • Queer Labors and Sex Work
  • Queer Sexual Undergrounds
  • Pornography, Erotica, or Obscenity
  • Neoliberalism and Queer Sexuality
  • Queer Cartographies and Space
  • Queerness and Class
  • Queer(ing) Social Movements

Submission Guidelines:

Proposal Deadline: January 15, 2013.

For individual 15-minute presentations, please submit an abstract of 250 words to browngradsymposium@gmail.com by January 15, 2013. Include a 2-3 sentence biographical statement that includes your institutional affiliation and research interests. For complete panels, please submit a 100-word proposal along with three (3) paper abstracts with biographical statements for each panelist. Please note any technology/multimedia services needs.

Successful candidates will be notified by Friday, February 8, 2013.

This event is sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of English, the LGBTQ Center, the Department of Modern Culture and Media, the Pembroke Center, and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies.