Where is Queer Studies?
Friday 11 November 2011, 15.00-18.30, King's College London
This afternoon symposium will explore the position of queer studies in the contemporary political landscape of widespread economic and social unrest, seeking to cross borders between queer scholarship within the academy and the broader public culture with which it is enmeshed. National culture and citizenship, like neoliberalism and its family values, are terrains indelibly marked by the politics of the sexual, but in the current social and political climate—in which higher education in the UK is facing unprecedented modifications to its funding structures; in which the welfare state is subject to major restructuring along neoliberal lines; and during which we have seen wellsprings of revolutionary energies and the rebirth of youth activism—how have queer scholars responded?
Topics for discussion will include:
The position of queer studies in relation to
● the nation-state, both in the UK, elsewhere across the EU, and beyond
● the institutional arrangements and disciplinary structures of British academia
● contemporary activism, political movements, and revolutionary energies outside the academy
What histories—national, transnational, activist, governmental, and institutional—inform these relationships, and what kinds of interventions into these discourses might queer scholarship be uniquely positioned to offer? How might the knowledge production of queer studies be mobilized and placed in conversation with contemporary movements for social change and political resistance? Where has queer studies been in the evolution of these discourses about the national public sphere, and what new horizons might queer theory enable us to conceptualize as possible vistas for the future?
Opening panel featuring Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory, Hamburg/Berlin), Kaye Mitchell (University of Manchester), William Spurlin (Brunel University) and Hector Kollias (King's College London). Breakout sessions will be organized around themes of Activism and Affect, Legacies and (Il)legibility, and Queering Democracy.
FREE AND ALL WELCOME BUT ADVANCED REGISTRATION IS NECESSARY. To register please contact queer@kcl.ac.uk with affiliation and contact details.
Organized by Matias Gardin and Skyler Hijazi on behalf of Queer@King's.
Venue: room 1.10, Franklin Wilkins Building, Waterloo Campus, King's College London.
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