Queer Cultures Colloquium
The Queer Cultures Colloquium is intended to link itself to the Queer Cultures Symposium and Conference Series as advertised on the University of Cambridge Faculty of English website Queer Cultures Research Seminar site.
The seminar and conference series is intended to provide an interdisciplinary forum for visiting academics, faculty members, and postgraduate students across the arts and humanities engaged in the critical discussion of contemporary queer and trans* studies. The sessions endeavor to promote boundary-pushing research in contemporary queer studies, conceived in the broadest terms, within a lively and open culture of participation. Examining the crossing of boundaries, resistance to and transgression of social, sexual and identity norms, the seminar is a space to experiment with ideas and readings, to respond to provocations and to commit to thinking about queer and trans* cultures in a creative and collegial manner. We echo Susan Stryker’s inciting call: “I challenge you to risk abjection and flourish as well as have I.”
Whilst closely linked to QC (Queer Cultures), the Colloquium will both follow and diverge from the topics of focus of QC.
The Queer Culture Colloquium is hoping to meet weekly and will aim to modulate its timings and topics according to the attendees wishes.
For an outline of previous meetings and topics covered, please see below (in reverse chronological order).
For further information please email founder and co-organiser Orsolya Petocz (okp20@cam.ac.uk), co-organiser Aaron Muldoon (amm316@cam.ac.uk) or colloquiumqueercultures@gmail.com.
Queer and Trans Testimony and Memory Reading List and Session Outline
The current meeting-series of the Colloquium leads up to the CRASSH symposium and roundtable Queer and Trans Testimonies: From the Holocaust to 2023, on November 22nd 2023, and the accompanying premiere of the 2022 film C’è un soffio di vita soltanto (A Breath of Life) directed by Matteo Botrugno and Daniele Coluccini, on November 21st 2023. Tickets for the film premiere can be booked here.
The Colloquium sessions will consist of introductions to and discussion about the topic of Queer and Trans Testimony and Memory. The readings for each session will be circulated via the mailing list.
All sessions of the reading group will take place from 10am to 11.30am in Selwyn College Old Library Room 4. The space is wheelchair accessible. Please feel free to bring hot drinks and snacks.
Week 1 (23 October) Queer Testimony
*Wieviorka, Annette, 2016, ‘“I” in the plural: A New Writing of History’, tr. Jane Kuntz, in Lia Brozgal and Sara Kippur, eds, Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture and Politics Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 214–215.
Wieviorka, Annette, 1999, The Era of the Witness, tr. Jared Stark (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
Assmann, Aleida, 2006, 'History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony', in Poetics Today, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 221–273.
Week 2 (30 October) Allofiction, Autotheory and Somatheques
*Andueza, María, 2012, ‘Somatheque. Biopolitical production, feminisms, queer and trans practices. Interview with Beatriz Preciado’. Museo Reina Sofía Radia, July 6 2012, https://radio.museoreinasofia.es/en/somatheque-biopolitical-production-feminisms-queer-and-trans-practices.
Kotin Mortimer, Armine, 2009, Autofiction as Allofiction: Doubrovsky’s L’Après-vivre, in L’Esprit Créateur, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 22–35.
Preciado, Paul B., 2022, Can the Monster Speak? (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions). *Wiegman, Robyn, 2020, ‘Introduction: Autotheory Theory’, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of America Literature, Culture and Theory, vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 1–14.
Week 3 (6 November) Queer Holocaust Testimony
*Evans, Jennifer, 2016, ‘Why Queer German History?’, German History, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 371–384.
Heger, Heinz, 2023, The Men with the Pink Triangle (Chicago: Haymarket Books).
Müller, Klaus, 2023, ‘Introduction’, in Heinz Heger, The Men with the Pink Triangle (Chicago: Haymarket Books).
*Sebastian Meise, dir., 2021, Great Freedom.
Week 4 (13 November) Queer Holocaust Testimony part 2
*Jensen, Erik N., 2002, ‘The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 11.1/2, 319–49
*Doan, Laura, 2017, ‘Queer History, Queer Memory: The Case of Alan Turing’ GLQ, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 113-136.
*Mathias Sean, dir., 1997, Bent.
Week 5 (20 November) Queer Holocaust testimony and the Memory Boom
Winter, Jay, 2001, ‘The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the "Memory Boom" in Contemporary Historical Studies’, Canadian Military History, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 57-66.
*Hervé Joseph Lebrun, dir., 2004, Albrecht Becker, Arsch Ficker Faust Ficker (8 mins) (further film material by Lebrun via email)
Week 6 (27 November) Queer Holocaust Testimony part 4: trans survivors
*Botrugno, Matteo, Daniele Coluccini (dir.) A Breath of Life (screening on 22 November at Arts Picturehouse)
Week 7 (4 December) Queer Holocaust Testimony part 4: Italian exiles
Reading material details via the Colloquium mailing list.
Week 8 (11 December) Queer Testimony Today: Generations and Postmemory
Dragojlovic, Ana, 2018, ‘Politics of Negative Affect: Intergenerational Hauntings,
Counter‐Archival Practices and the Queer Memory Project’, Subjectivity, vol 11., pp. 91-107.
Further reading material via the Colloquium mailing list.
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Autumn 2022 Reading List and Session Outline
Monstrosity and Abjection in (recent) Queer/Trans* Works, Introductory Series
Week 1 (17 October)
Introduction: Margrit Shildrick, ‘Monsters, Marvels and Meanings’ in Embodying the monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage, 2002.
Anson Kock-Rein, ‘Monster’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014 1 (1-2): 134-135.
Robert Phillips, ‘Abjection’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2014 1 (1-2): 19-21.
Further: Margrit Shildrick, ‘“You are There, Like my Skin”: Reconfiguring Relational Economies’ in Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey (eds) Thinking Through the Skin. London: Routledge, 2001.
Week 2 (24 October)
Paul B Preciado, Introductory session.
Week 3 (31 October)
Paul B. Preciado, Can the Monster Speak? Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021. Extracts.
Week 4 (7 November)
Paul B. Preciado, Can the Monster Speak? Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021. Extracts.
Week 5 (14 November)
Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory, chapter ‘King Kong Girl’ Further recommendation: Mutantes (2009)
Week 6 (21 November)
Susan Stryker, ‘My words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix’, in Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, The Transgender Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2006). Susan Stryker, ‘More Words About “My Words To Victor Frankenstein”’, GLQ, 25.1 (2019), 39–44.
Week 7 (28 November)
Donna Haraway, ‘The promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,’ in Cultural Studies, eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler (New York: Psychology Press, 1992), 295–337.
Donna Haraway and Cary Wolf, ‘Companions in Conversation’ in Manifestly Haraway (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2016).
Week 8 (5 December)
Wagner, Anthony Clair, ‘Artist Statement’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2.2 (2015), 341–44
Tija Uhlig, ‘Failing Gender, Failing the West’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 8.2 (2021), 223–37.
Spring 2022 Reading List and Session Outline
Towards Monstrosity and Abjection (with sessions dedicated to the Queer Cultures Talk Series, this series continues the Autumn 2021 series)
Week 1
Tom Roach. Friendship as a Way of Life, chapters 2 and 4. Discussion of activism, AIDS buddy system, Foucault’s conceptions of friendship (a concluding session of the material discussed in autumn and segway into upcoming topics).
Week 2
Sara Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Second ed. 2014. Chapter 7: ‘Queer Feelings’ (Following the previous week’s discussion around negative affect).
Week 3
Sara Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Second ed. 2014. Chapter 6: ‘In the name of Love’.
Week 4
Extracts from the work of Juliet Jacques (session related to the 11 February Queer Cultures Talk Series with Juliet Jacques)
Week 5
Leah Devun, ‘Mapping the Borders of Sex’, in Trans Historical Gender Plurality Before the Modern, Greta Lafleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Klosowska (eds). Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021. As well as ‘Introduction: The Benefits of Being Trans Historical’ (This session is related to the Queer Cultures Seminar Talk with Leah Devun, 18 February).
Week 6
Monstrosity and Abjection, for a segway from last term’s reading into Foucault’s writing: Michel Foucault and Graham Burchell, Abnormal : Lectures at the Collége de France, 1974–1975 (Verso, 2016), 15 January 1975 Lecture
Week 7
Michel Foucault and Graham Burchell, Abnormal : Lectures at the Collége de France, 1974–1975 (Verso, 2016), 5 February 1975 Lecture
Week 8
Michel Foucault and Graham Burchell, Abnormal : Lectures at the Collége de France, 1974–1975 (Verso, 2016), 19 March 1975 Lecture W
Week 9
Extracts from Stuart Elden, Foucault: The Birth of Power. Polity Press, 2017.
Autumn 2021 Reading List and Session Outline
Following the work of the Autumn 2021 speakers of QC, which include Pratibha Parmar and Paul Rowley, the opening term of the Colloquium will focus on strands of (queer) activism. The Colloquium proposes a starting point in the activism of Daniel Defert, partner of Michel Foucault and pioneer of AIDS activism in France through the organisation AIDES following Foucault’s death. The Colloquium thus strives to start off from a lesser researched point, diverging from the lines of American activism, following a non-straight-line through these discussions. The Colloquium, in its first term, aims to work through an interdisciplinary approach to activism blurring politico-social, philosophical and literary lines of thought.
Week 1
Reid-Henry, S. 2004. ‘Activism and the Academy: An Interview with Daniel Defert Paris, 30 Octobre 2004’. Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London.
Week 2
Didier Éribon. 2004. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Translator: Michael Lucey. Dunke University Press. extracts: ‘Resistance and Counterdiscourses’, ‘Making Differences’
Week 3
Didier Éribon. 2004. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Translator: Michael Lucey. Dunke University Press. extract: ‘Addendum: Hannah Arendt and “Defamed Groups”’
Didier Éribon. 2004. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Translator: Michael Lucey. Dunke University Press. Further extracts.
