Call for Papers: Queer Places, Practices, and Lives III at Ohio State University

Call for Papers

Queer Places, Practices, and Lives III

The Ohio State University Columbus, OH May 12-13, 2017

Confirmed keynote speakers: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Mel Y. Chen* We invite proposals for the third queer studies conference at The Ohio State University. Following on the successes of the previous “Queer Places, Practices, and Lives” conferences—the first held in honor of former Buckeye Samuel Steward, who donated funds to further research in LGBTQ studies—we seek proposals on any topic related to the field. Scholars, faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, artists, activists, teachers, social workers, community members, and anyone else interested in discussing LGBTQ issues are encouraged to submit. We welcome individual submissions as well as panels and roundtables of three to four participants.

Although the call is open to all topics, we hope to highlight, in part through the keynote speakers, current work being pursued on queer and trans relations; Black liberation; Native sovereignties; trans/queer of color critiques and movements; trans and queer feminisms; migration and diaspora; dismantling sexual and intimate violence; abolishing prisons and state violence; de-colonization; transpecies; disability and intersex justice.

Send a 300-word abstract, 2-page CV, and, if appropriate, a brief panel or roundtable description to osuqueerconference@gmail.com. Please include 3 keywords with your submission. DEADLINE: Dec. 16, 2016. Direct inquiries to Joe Ponce at ponce.8@osu.edu.

For information and continuing conference updates, visit https://sexualitystudies.osu.edu/QPPL.

* Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a formerly incarcerated Black transgender elder and activist who has been fighting for the rights of trans women of color for over 40 years. She is a veteran of the Stonewall Rebellion and a survivor of Attica State Prison, a former sex worker, and a community leader and human rights activist. Miss Major is simply “Mama” to many in her community. Her personal story and activism for transgender civil rights intersects with LGBT struggles for justice and equality from the 1960s to today. At the center of her activism is her fierce advocacy for her girls, trans women of color who have survived police brutality and incarceration in men’s jails and prisons. As part of Miss Major’s keynote, we are proud to screen MAJOR!, the new documentary film exploring her life and campaigns. MAJOR! is more than just a biographical documentary. It’s an investigation into critical issues of how the Prison Industrial Complex represents a widespread and systematic civil rights violation, as well as a historical portrait of diverse LGBT communities, told with love and humor, and personalized through the lens of a vibrant and charismatic woman. Through first-person narration and innovative visual storytelling, MAJOR! seeks to create a living, breathing history of a community’s struggle and resilience, as seen and experienced by those who lived it. The documentary, produced by filmmakers Annalise Ophelian and StormMiguel Florez, continues to win awards and to be featured at film festivals across the US and internationally. Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. Chen’s 2012 book, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Duke UP, MLA Alan Bray Award), explores questions of racialization, queering, disability, and affective economies in animate and inanimate “life” through the extended concept of animacy. Chen’s second book project concerns the relationships among the conceptual territories of toxicity and intoxication and their involvement in histories of the shared interanimation of race and disability. Writing on cognitive disability and method, the racialization of pollution, and more can be found in Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Discourse, Women in Performance, Australian Feminist Studies, and Medical Humanities, and GLQ. Chen coedits, with Jasbir K. Puar, a book series entitled “Anima,” highlighting scholarship in critical race and disability post/in/humanisms at Duke University Press.