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 organiser Orsolya Petocz at okp20@cam.ac.uk or colloquiumqueercultures@gmail.com.

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.