Speaker Series and Events Archive
Since Spring 2003, LGBT Studies has continued to sponsor a spring lecture series and events with the hopes of contributing stimulating and important conversations to the campus community.
Lecture Series Spring 2009
69/09: The Queer Afterlives of Stonewall
Seventh Annual Lecture Series in LGBT Studies
University of MarylandThe Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program at the University of Maryland is pleased to announce the schedule of events for its seventh annual spring lecture series. This year's series, 69/09: The Queer Afterlives of Stonewall, commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots of June 1969, a moment of activism often described as the catalyst for the modern movement for LGBT visibility and civil rights. At the same time, the series aims to unsettle a conventional framing of LGBT history that fetishizes one time and place as foundational while marginalizing other moments and sites of activism. Please join us as we honor the legacies and examine the still unfinished work of Stonewall.
All events are free and open to the public. Off-campus visitors may find directions to campus and information about parking here: http://www.transportation.umd.edu/visitor/directionstocampus.html.
"Gay Is Good": Stonewall-Era Activism in Washington, D.C.
5 p.m. Thursday, February 12
Art-Sociology 2309
Mark MeinkeAs a scholar of Middle Eastern politics, Mark Meinke lived abroad for most of his early adult life in Lebanon, Egypt, and Kuwait. When he returned to the U.S., Meinke co-founded The Rainbow History Project in 2000 with Bruce Pennington after noticing a lack of historical preservation of D.C. gay activism. Collecting oral histories, archiving social geographies, and creating intricate timelines, Meinke has made it a priority to preserve and promote LGBT voices in order to put D.C. back on the map in terms of gay history.
Joan Biren
Joan E. Biren, also known as JEB, is a documentary artist, and for over twenty years has been photographing, publishing and producing videos that chronicle the lives and times of lesbian and gay people. As president of Moonforce Media, Biren has released films that challenge people to work for social justice, such as "Lesbian Physicians on Practice, Patients and Power," and "For Love and for Life: The 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights." Her photographic work is housed in the collection of the Library of Congress and has been exhibited at the Lincoln Center in New York.
Carlene Cheatam
Affectionately known as the "queen mother," Carlene Cheatam has worked for 30 years as an LGBT community organizer in the D.C. area. As a member of Sapphire Sapphos, the Gay Activists Alliance and various other organizations, Cheatam has continually demonstrated the importance of networking and making connections between various communities. She was not only integral in organizing the P Street Beach festival (later to become Capital Pride), but later led the efforts to establish the Black Pride festival. In 2004, she was presented with the Wellmore Cook leadership award for her work with the D.C. Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, and her years of organizing.
Frank Kameny
Dr. Frank Kameny is one of the most public figures in LGBT rights movement. As co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, an organization that pressed aggressively for gay and lesbian civil rights, Kameny brought a different energy to the gay civil rights movement. He began efforts to reverse the classification by the American Psychiatric Association of homosexuality as a mental illness, helped launch the first public protests by gays and lesbians with a picket line at the White House in 1965, and drawing from Black activist slogans, coined the phrase, "Gay is Good." Within the political sphere, Kameny began the effort to overturn sodomy laws in 1963 and in 1971 was the first openly gay candidate for the U.S. Congress.
Boden Sandstrom
Dr. Boden Sandstrom is a lecturer at the University of Maryland specializing in gender studies and world popular music. She helped to create The Second Wave, a feminist journal, and is the owner and co-founder of Woman Sound Inc. (now City Sound Productions), one of the first all-women sound companies. As a sound engineer and producer in a male dominated music industry, Sandstrom co-produced a documentary, entitled , "Radical Harmonies," about an underground women's music network that emerged during the Second Wave of feminism. Sandstrom has also won the Philip Brett Award sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the American Musicological Association for exceptional musicological work in the field of transgender/transsexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay studies.
This roundtable discussion, moderated by Mark Meinke of the Rainbow History Project, will feature veteran LGBT activists and community historians of the Washington, D.C., area.
Jill Dolan
From Flannel to Fleece: Women's Music, Lesbian Feminism, and "Me"
4 p.m. Wednesday, March 4
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall
Jill Dolan is a renowned theatre scholar, teacher and author and currently a professor in Princeton University’s department of English and the program in theater and dance. Her most recent book is Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre (2005).
Susan Stryker
We Who Are Sexy: The Post-Colonial Transsexual Whiteness of Christine Jorgensen in the Philippines
4 p.m. Friday, April 3
Susquehanna 1120
Bonus Pre-Lecture Event: Screening of Screaming Queens and Discussion with Susan Stryker
7 p.m. Thursday, April 2
Hornbake 0302J
Susan Stryker is associate professor of gender studies at Indiana University and a pioneer in the field of transgender studies. Her most recent book is Transgender History (2008).
Screaming Queens (2005) is a documentary she co-wrote and co-directed that tells the story of a 1966 transgender riot in San Francisco.
Judith Halberstam
Queer Negativities
4:30 p.m. Friday, April 17
McKeldin Library 6137 (Special Events Room)
Judith Halberstam is professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California. An influential scholar of female masculinity, Halberstam is the author, most recently, of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005).
Note: This event is the keynote address for the DC Queer Studies Symposium, April 17-18, at the University of Maryland.
We are grateful to the Office of Undergraduate Studies for its support of the series. Additional sponsors include the departments of American Studies, English, and Theatre, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies in the department of History.
The DC Queer Studies Symposium
A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland
April 17-18, 2009, College Park, MD
Friday, April 17 offers presentations by graduate students from area schools, a reading by Washington-area poets Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, Richard McCann, and a keynote address by Judith Halberstam, professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California and author, most recently, of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005).
Saturday, April 18 features a full day of papers by faculty from area universities as well as discussion and socializing. The symposium is free and will include a reception on Friday as well as continental breakfast, lunch, and an off-campus dinner/reception on Saturday.
Lecture Series Spring 2008
Queer Living
Sixth Annual Lecture Series in LGBT Studies
University of MarylandThe taking of tea, the making (or not making or re-making) of vows, the telling of stories – Queer and LGBT lives are shaped and punctuated by moments of performance, ritual, and ceremony. Such moments help to form identities, build communities, and fuel social and political activism, but queer practices of intimacy and sociality vary widely from place to place and signify differently in different contexts. They also suggest divergent models of relationship between sexual minorities and the heterosexual, heteronormative majority. In this engaging series of events, four leaders in the field of LGBT/queer studies examine “queer living” through the lenses of legal and social history, ethnographic performance, and sociology. Please join us, and get in on what promises to be a lively conversation.
All events are free and open to the public. Q&A and reception to follow each lecture.
We are grateful to the Office of Undergraduate Studies for its support of the series. Additional sponsors include the departments of English and Theatre and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies is a unit in the Office of Undergraduate Studies.
George Chauncey
From Sodomy Laws to Marriage Amendments: A History of Sexual Identity/Politics
4 p.m., Thursday, February 21
Multipurpose Room, Nyumburu Cultural CenterGeorge Chauncey is professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic, 1994), which won numerous awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in history. He recently published Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate over Gay Equality (Basic, 2004), and has co-edited three books and special journal issues and published numerous articles on the history of gender and sexuality.
This event is part of the Provost’s Conversations on Diversity, Democracy, and Higher Education series.
Lisa Duggan
The End of Marriage: The War Over the Future of State Sponsored Love
4 p.m., Thursday, March 13
Susquehanna 1120Lisa Duggan is professor of social and cultural analysis and director of the American Studies program at New York University. She is the author of The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Beacon Press, 2003) and Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence and American Modernity (Duke University Press, 2000). She is co-editor, with Lauren Berlant, of Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest (New York University Press, 2001) and co-author, with Nan D. Hunter, of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (Columbia University Press, 2001).
E. Patrick Johnson
Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales
7 p.m., Wednesday, April 2
Kogod Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts CenterE. Patrick Johnson is chair, director of graduate studies, and professor of Performance Studies and of African American Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2003). He is co-editor, with Mae G. Henderson, of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press). His book, Sweet Tea: An Oral History of Black Gay Men of the South, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press. In addition to his published work, Johnson is also a performing artist. Pouring Tea is a staged reading based on the oral histories of black gay men of the South collected in his book.
Roderick A. Ferguson
To Be Fluent in Each Other's Narratives: Surplus Populations and Queer of Color Activism
4:30 p.m., Thursday, April 17
Atrium, Adele Stamp Student UnionRoderick A. Ferguson is associate professor of race and critical theory in the department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota, 2004). Currently, he is working on a book project titled The Re-Order of Things: Birth of the Interdisciplines.
This event is part of the DC Queer Studies Symposium being held at the University of Maryland April 17-18, 2008. The University of Maryland is host and lead sponsor of the symposium. Co-sponsoring institutions are American University, Georgetown University, and the George Washington University.
The DC Queer Studies Symposium
A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland
April 17-18, 2008, College Park, MDFree and open to the public
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland12:00 PM – 12:45 PM
Registration and Welcome (Atrium)quickanddirty IV: A Graduate Queer Studies Symposium
Presentations by graduate students from American University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland1:00 PM – 2:15 PM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium SessionsRegulation, Surveillance, and Queer Challenges to the State (Nanticoke Room)
Amy L. WASHBURN, University of Maryland, Women’s Studies
• “Power, Where Art Thou?: Queering Liberalism & Radicalizing Post/Modern Struggles for Revolution in the United States”Ned MITCHELL, George Washington University, Queer Studies/Sexuality
• “Mysterious Skin and ‘Vigilance’”Jed R. BRUBAKER, Georgetown University, Communication, Culture and Technology
• “I judged you at Starbucks – m4m (craigslist missed connections): digital communication and the regulation of real world contexts”Queerly Unstable: Alternate Histories and Competing National Narratives (Pyon Su Room)
Melissa YINGER, American University, Literature
• “Queering Concepts of Singularity: Metaphor and Identity in 1 Henry IV”Damion CLARK, University of Maryland, English
• “The Last of England?: Miscegenation, Queer Flesh, and Competing Cinematic Narratives of National History and the Future of Britain”Ramzi FAWAZ George Washington University, American Studies
• “Flame On!: James Sturm’s Unstable Molecules and the Queer History of The Fantastic Four”2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium SessionsA Shock to the System: Queer Engagements in Dueling Cultures (Nanticoke Room)
Jason HIPP, George Washington University, English/ International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
• “Shock to the Body: Queering Affect and Gary Fisher”Rigo MARQUEZ, University of Maryland, Education, Policy and Leadership
• “Queer like Me! A Revolution of Another Color: Queer Students of Color Creating Dialogues of Difference”Benjamin REDFIELD, Georgetown University. Communication, Culture and Technology
• “Guerrilla Confrontation: The ‘Smart Mob’ as a Social Experiment”Queer Identities and the Politics of Erasure (Pyon Su room)
Perry D. GUEVARA, Georgetown University, English
• “Desdemona’s Dildo: Female Queerness and Fetish in Othello”JV SAPINOSO, University of Maryland, Women’s Studies
• “‘Lost in an immersion of vanilla…frozen by an avalanche of snow’: One Queer of Color’s Lineage, Strategy, and Dreams for Queer Scholarship in the U.S.”Justin MAHER, University of Maryland, American Studies
• “The Way Who Lives?: Cultivation of Exclusionary Multiculturalism in The L Word’s Los Angeles”3:45 PM – 4:15 PM
Break (coffee or snacks on own in Union)4:30 –7:00 PM
Keynote Address & Reception (Atrium)Roderick A. FERGUSON, University of Minnesota
• To Be Fluent in Each Other's Narratives: Surplus Populations and Queer of Color ActivismFriday, April 18, 2008
Crist Boardroom, Samuel Riggs Alumni Center, University of Maryland
(Seating for Friday events is limited, so pre-registration is required. Contact lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu for information.)8:30 AM – 9:00 AM
Registration & Light Breakfast9:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Faculty Paper SessionKevin HAYNES, University of North Carolina School of Law
• Barack Obama’s Queer AppealDana LUCIANO, Georgetown University
• Rejoicing in the Time to Come: Spiritualism’s Spectral EroticsSiobhan B. SOMERVILLE, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Stuck in History: Howard Cruse’s Civil Rights Imaginary11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Faculty Paper SessionMichael COVENTRY, Georgetown University
• Show and Tell: Using Media to Facilitate Students’ First Engagement with Queer TheoryLaura MAMO, University of Maryland
• Does Lesbian Reproduction Queer Reproduction?Robert McRUER, George Washington University
• “Some Women Like To Be on Top”: National Fantasies and Queer Anti-National Sexual Positions12:45 PM – 1:45 PM Buffet Lunch
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Roundtable on Keywords in Sexuality StudiesWith Holly DUGAN, George Washington University; Christina HANHARDT, University of Maryland; Katie KING, University of Maryland; Salvador VIDAL-ORTIZ, American University
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM
Roundtable on Keywords in Sexuality StudiesWith Mandy BERRY, American University; Jeffrey McCUNE, University of Maryland; Ricardo ORTIZ, Georgetown University; Samantha PINTO, Georgetown University
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Wrap Up DiscussionWith Roderick A. FERGUSON, University of Minnesota, and Marilee LINDEMANN, University of Maryland
5:00 PM – 6:30PM
ReceptionDC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed in 2006 to discuss new works in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions.
Sponsored by: University of Maryland (Department of English, LGBT Studies Program, Office of Undergraduate Studies); American University (College of Arts and Sciences); Georgetown University (Department of English); the George Washington University (Columbian College of Arts and Sciences)
In 2007 we celebrated the 5th annual lecture series, "Now Queer This! Sexual Dissidence in Popular Culture." This series turned a scholarly eye on the queerness that so often puts the "pop" in popular culture. 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? To shed critical light on images and activities that surround us every day, whether we are aware of them or not, the following experts were invited to campus:
Pat Griffin |
"New Rules for the Old Ball Game: Challenging Homophobia in Women's Sports" |
March 12, 2007 |
Stacy Wolf |
"'Defying Gravity,' or How Wicked's Women Queered the Broadway Musical" |
April 3, 2007 |
Jonathan D. Katz |
"'Committing the Perfect Crime': Sexuality, Assemblage and the Postmodern Turn in American Art" |
April 17, 2007 |
Gayatri Gopinath |
"Queer Regions: Locating Lesbians in Ligy Pullappally's The Journey |
May 3, 2007 |
The 4th annual lecture series, "Queering the Spirit: Religion, Race, and Sexualities," was spurred by several questions. What happens when religion, race, and sexuality-particularly non-normative sexualities-meet up in the public sphere? Or within the often conflicted heart or soul of an individual? In what ways and in what kinds of faith tradition are practices is it fair to say that the spirit has been queered or made open to sex and gender variation? How have racism and colonialism shaped attitudes toward homo-sexualities among, for example, religious African Americans, Hindus, Muslims, or the Afro-Cuban practitioners of Santeria? What roles has religion played in 20th-century movements for civil rights for racial and sexual minorities? In the attempt to tackle these and other challenging questions, the series consisted of the following lectures. Select lectures are available for viewing.
The 3rd annual lecture series, "Here is a Queer Planet: LGBT Studies in Global Contexts," built upon Michael Warner's 1993 edited collection, Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory which heralded the arrival of a new way of doing cultural and political work on sex and sexuality. Audacious, antiassimilationism, and attentive to both the global underpinnings and the local specificities of sexuality and gender, queer studies aimed to travel widely and across a wide range of disciplinary and geopolitical boundaries. This year's lecture series created opportunities to continue that journey. Through speakers, film and discussions, the series presented multiple perspectives on global queerness and considered the face and the shape of LGBT Studies and queer activism beyond U.S. borders and within diverse communities. The events for this 3rd annual series included:
Spring 2005 - Here is a Queer Planet |
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Helen Zia |
"The Coming 'Minority' Majority and other Diversity Challenges: Margin Notes of an Asian American Writer" |
February 22, 2005 |
Irshad Manji |
"Confessions of a Muslim Dissident: Why I Fight for Gays and Lesbians, Women, Jews… and Allah" |
March 16, 2005 |
Martin Manalansan |
"Queers, Race and the Neoliberal City" |
April 14, 2005 |
Dangerous Living (a film by John Scagliotti) |
Film Screening |
May 5, 2005 |
Spring 2004 brought the 2nd annual lecture series, "Queer(ing) Citizenship: Before and After Lawrence". In June, 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that laws criminalizing consensual, private sexual contact between same-sex partners violated the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The decision, which has been compared to Brown v. Board of Education in terms of its civil rights implications, set off major public debates about marriage and transformed the meanings of citizenship for America's sexual minorities. This lecture series aimed to offer the campus community an opportunity to reflect upon the transformations and the history that preceded them. The distinguished speakers invited to campus included:
Spring 2004 - Queer(ing) Citizenship |
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George Chauncey |
"Lawrence v. Texas: Sexual Identity/Politics in the 20th Century" |
February 23, 2004 |
Dwight McBride |
"Straight Black Studies" |
March 15, 2004 |
Michael Warner |
"Whitman, Secularism, and the Whitmaniacs" |
April 5, 2004 |
Elizabeth Birch |
"Queer Politics in the 21st Century" |
April 26, 2004 |
In Spring 2003, in conjunction with its inaugural seminar, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program sponsored its first annual spring lecture series. The series and the seminar were entitled, "A Queer Decade: Taking Stock of Studies in Sex, Culture, and Society."
Marking its official coming-out through this lecture series, the program's goal was to offer students, faculty, and the campus community an opportunity to reflect upon the then current state of studies of sexuality in a range of disciplines and sub-disciplines. To this end, four distinguished speakers were invited to campus:
Spring 2003 - A Queer Decade |
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Jose Esteban Munoz |
"A Phenomenology of Brown Feelings: La Lupe in New York" |
February 17, 2003 |
Judith Halberstam |
"Shadows on a Dime: Subcultural Lives and Queer Temporalities" |
March 10, 2003 |
Chai R. Feldblum |
"Rectifying the Tilt: Equality Lessons from Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, and Transgender" |
April 7, 2003 |
Steven Seidman |
"Beyond the Closet: Lesbians and Gays Today" |
April 28, 2003 |
LGBT Studies • 2212 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742Phone: 301.405.5428 • Fax: 301.314.2529 • LGBT Studies is a unit of the Office of Undergraduate Studies