DC Queer Studies Symposium, April 17-18, 2009

Dear Colleagues,

I write on behalf of DC Queer Studies, a group of faculty from schools in the Washington, DC area working in LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies, to bring you up to date on plans for the second annual DC Queer Studies Symposium, to be held April 17-18, 2009 at the University of Maryland.  Attached to this message is a registration form, which I invite you to fill out and return to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu at your earliest convenience.  The symposium is free, but we need you to register for Saturday's events for catering purposes and because of space limitations in the room.  Our hope is that all requests for registration will be accommodated, but we do need to know how many to expect.

For those of you who attended last year's inaugural symposium, this year's will be similar but even more grand.  We have a full two-day schedule this time around.  The graduate symposium will take place Friday morning and will feature papers by students from American, Georgetown, George Washington, and Maryland.  Friday afternoon, thanks to the efforts of Maryland poet and PhD student Julie Enszer, we will have a poetry reading featuring Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, and Richard McCann placing their work in conversation with writers from pre-Stonewall queer literary history.  At 4:30, Judith Halberstam will deliver the symposium's keynote address, "Queer Negativities."  The day will conclude with a reception.  Saturday will be a full day of faculty paper sessions on a broad range of subjects (titles and presenters below).  The symposium will conclude with an evening of celebration and conviviality at my home in Takoma Park.  We'll have a reception and dinner and, if we're lucky, some quality time under the stars.

We hope you will be able to join us for any or all of these festivities.  A condensed version of the schedule is below.  We will have a more complete version up on the symposium web site in the next couple of weeks.  For those of you not familiar with the Maryland campus, rest assured the web site will have detailed information about parking and building locations.

On behalf of DC Queer Studies and LGBT Studies at Maryland, we look forward to seeing you in April and wish you a happy early spring in the meantime.

All best,
Marilee Lindemann

The DC Queer Studies Symposium
A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland
April 17-18, 2009, College Park, MD

Free and open to the public

Friday, April 17, 2009
Riggs Alumni Center and McKeldin Library, University of Maryland

9:30 – 10:00 AM   
Registration and Welcome (Riggs Alumni Center)

quickanddirty V:  A Graduate Queer Studies Symposium
Presentations by graduate students from American University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland

10:00 – 11:15 AM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium Sessions

Speaking Truth to Power:  Lesbian Performances, Politics, and Production (Chaney Library)

Deviant at the Core:  Reading Queerness in Iconic Texts (AAI Conference Room)

11:30 – 12:45 PM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium Sessions

Heteronormativity:  Seductions and Subversions (Chaney Library)

Paranoia, Trauma, and Laughter:  Combating Queer Invisibility in the 1960s and 1970s (AAI Conference Room)

1:00 – 2:15 PM
Lunch on own

2:30 – 4 PM
Queer Writers Read
McKeldin Library 6137, Special Events Room

Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, Richard McCann

4:30 – 6:30 PM
Keynote Address and Reception
McKeldin Library 6137, Special Events Room

Queer Negativities
Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California, English/Gender Studies

Saturday, April 18, 2009
Benjamin Banneker Room, Adele Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland
(Seating for Saturday events is limited, so pre-registration is required.  Contact lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu for information.)

9:30 – 10:00 AM
Registration and Coffee

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Faculty Paper Session:  Queer Pasts

Falstaff’s Fairies: Queer Ravishment in Shakespeare’s Windsor, Holly Dugan, George Washington University
 
History as Quick Cash: The Female Husband and the Pregnant Man, Mandy Berry, American University

What It Feels Like for a Grrrl: Susan and Emily Dickinson, Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland

“Where’s That Partner of Mine?”: Ethel Waters and the Management of Black Queer Desire, Samantha Pinto, Georgetown University

12:00 – 1:00 PM
Buffet Lunch

1:00 – 2:30 PM
Faculty Paper Session:  Constructing Queer Knowledges

Period Cramps, Madhavi Menon, American University

My Love for Hip Hop Is In Its Queerness, Jeffrey McCune, University of Maryland

Queer Transdisciplinarities, Katie King, University of Maryland

2:30 – 3:00 PM
Break

3:00 – 5:00 PM
Faculty Paper Session: Sex, Sexuality, Politics

Creating Kenyan Intimacies, Keguro Macharia, University of Maryland

Men Get Lean and Mean, Women De-Clutter: Weight Loss, Heteronormative Temporality, and the Thin Contract, Abby Wilkerson, George Washington University

LAUREL: The Irony of Lesbian Identity?, Christina Hanhardt, University of Maryland

Left Melodrama, Elisabeth Anker, George Washington University

7:00 – 10 PM
Reception and Dinner
(Off campus.  Please RSVP, by April 3, for the dinner when you register for the symposium.)

DC 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 (Comparative Literature Program, Departments of American Studies, English, and Women’s Studies, Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies in the Department of History, LGBT Studies Program, Office of Undergraduate Studies); American University (College of Arts and Sciences); Georgetown University (Department of English, Graduate School); the George Washington University (Departments of American Studies and English, University Writing Program)

For detailed program and event information, visit the Symposium web site:
lgbts.umd.edu/dcqueerstudies-symposium