Shelly Mars, solo performance artist

followed by a discussion led by: Una Chaudhuri, English, New York University Carolyn Dinshaw, English and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Performance Studies Studio 721 Broadway, Room 612

For more information about the Homobonobo Project, click here.

For more [...]]]>

March 1, Thursday
6 to 7:30 pm

Shelly Mars, solo performance artist

followed by a discussion led by:
Una Chaudhuri, English, New York University
Carolyn Dinshaw, English and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, Room 612

For more information about the Homobonobo Project, click here.

For more information about this event, please contact the NYU Department of English at 212-998-8800.

This event is free and open to the public.  Venue is wheelchair accessible.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies Initiative; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Joe A Callaway Series in Dramatic Literature of the Department of English; and Department of Performance Studies.

February 21, Tuesday 6 to 7:30 pm

Marjorie Garber, English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

Hemmerdinger Hall 31 Washington Place

Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Her work ranges broadly across literary studies, [...]]]>

a lecture by Marjorie Garber

February 21, Tuesday
6 to 7:30 pm

Marjorie Garber, English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

Hemmerdinger Hall
31 Washington Place

Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Her work ranges broadly across literary studies, gender and sexuality studies, animal studies, and cultural studies. Her books include Shakespeare After All, Patronizing the Arts, Dog Love, and Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety.

This event is free and open to the public.  Venue is wheelchair accessible.

For more information, please call 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Department of English

February 16 & 17, Thursday & Friday

For more information: abelove.wordpress.com

February 8, Wednesday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

T.L. Cowan, Women’s and Gender Studies and English, University of Saskatchewan; Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University

The cabaret—or, more broadly, the variety show—is arguably the most open and resilient form of live [...]]]> a lunch talk with T.L. Cowan

February 8, Wednesday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

T.L. Cowan, Women’s and Gender Studies and English, University of Saskatchewan; Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University

The cabaret—or, more broadly, the variety show—is arguably the most open and resilient form of live expressive culture in radical feminist and queer scenes in North America. It is, at once, an eclectic, genre-troubling performance space; a vital, if incoherent, form of entertainment and social commentary; a community-building and sustaining set of activities; a dynamic, responsive and transformative site of political activism and aesthetic innovation; and, ultimately, a mode of existence and way of knowing that is both produced by, and produces, radical feminist and queer lives. Central to my work on the contemporary variety show is the concept of “cabaret consciousness”: a mobile ontology and episteme that privileges unpredictability, pleasure, risk, excess, failure, challenge and confusion, characteristics of the cabaret that are mutually constitutive with their translocal radical feminist and queer scenes. This paper will consider the ways in which the variety format of cabaret reminds us of the importance of confusion. I suggest that a feminist and queer “cabaret consciousness” is a mode of living, being and knowing in confusion; to apprehend the mutually constitutive relationship between political cabaret and feminist and queer scenes across North America, for example, is to apprehend confusion as a political/erotic/social affective register shared across demographic and geographic borders.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor Gallery
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Facebook event page here.

This event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please call CSGS at 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

image: 2boys.tv perform “Hot Voodoo” in Chiapas, Mexico, 2010. Photo by Marlene Ramirez Cancio. Photo Courtesy of the Artists.

January 27, Friday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Satarupa Dasgupta, Postdoctoral and Transition Program for Academic Diversity Fellow, New York University

Articulation of sex work entails the commonly observed connection between sex work and trafficking, proposed delegitimization of sex work, and rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers. [...]]]>

a lunch talk with Satarupa Dasgupta

January 27, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Satarupa Dasgupta, Postdoctoral and Transition Program for Academic Diversity Fellow, New York University

Articulation of sex work entails the commonly observed connection between sex work and trafficking, proposed delegitimization of sex work, and rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers. I analyze the policy documents of global aid organizations and legislations, and examine the case of Sonagachi Project, a HIV/AIDS intervention program that targets sex workers in one of the largest red light districts of South Asia. The project is spearheaded by the sex workers themselves, who act as peer outreach workers, and there are no external organizations involved. By conducting interviews with commercial female sex workers from Sonagachi area I examine the sex workers’ perspectives on the articulation of trafficking and sex work, anti-trafficking legislations in India, the delegitimization and criminalization of sex work, rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers, compulsion and abuse in sex work, and the reasons for pursuing sex work as a profession. I also assess the strategies adopted by the Sonagachi Project to restrict trafficking and the entry of unwilling and minor individuals in sex work.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor Gallery
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Facebook event page here.

This event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please call CSGS at 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

Saturday, December 17 2 to 4 pm

Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan 164 West 100th Street near Amsterdam Avenue 1, 2, or 3 train to 96th Street.

Organized by sex worker support and advocacy [...]]]> On December 17, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Marks One Year Since Bodies Discovered on Gilgo Beach

Saturday, December 17
2 to 4 pm

Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan
164 West 100th Street near Amsterdam Avenue
1, 2, or 3 train to 96th Street.

Organized by sex worker support and advocacy groups the Red Umbrella Project and the Sex Workers Outreach Project New York. Attendees will be people currently or formerly involved in the sex trades and our friends, family, allies, and those concerned for our health and safety.

In December 2010, the bodies of four women, later identified as Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes were discovered on Gilgo Beach in Long Island, after the family of missing woman Shannan Gilbert insisted on a police investigation of her disappearance. The cases remain unsolved, and since December the remains of another six people have been discovered in the area. The Suffolk County Police Department, which is responsible for the investigation, believes that it is likely that there are multiple local killers who are preying on people who sell sexual services.

On December 17, 2011 people in the sex trade and the people who love and support us will gather at Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan from 2 to 4 pm to hold a vigil for the victims of the Long Island killers and the many other people killed every year because they trade sex and are vulnerable to violence. The event will feature community activist speakers, a candle lighting, and a reading of the names of people in the sex trade who have been murdered this year.

The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers was first organized nearly a decade ago by sex workers in San Francisco to memorialize the people murdered by serial killer Gary Ridgway. Ridgway captured the attitude that cultivates violence towards sex workers: “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.” At the event, we create a space that challenges this assumption by demonstrating that we have a caring community.

Co-sponsors:

Thursday, December 15 7 to 9 pm

The Performance Studies Studio Tisch School of the Arts 721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Free and opent to the public, with reception to follow.

Julie Tolentino creates intimate solo movement-based installations including her time-based durational performances, sculptural endurance events and [...]]]> Presented by the NYU Performance Studies Lecture Forum

Thursday, December 15
7 to 9 pm

The Performance Studies Studio
Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Free and opent to the public, with reception to follow.

Julie Tolentino creates intimate solo movement-based installations including her time-based durational performances, sculptural endurance events and audio soundscapes. Currently, her work centers on the body’s (inevitable) disintegration, the excesses of aging and the body’s attempt at secrecy via hidden texts, history, emotion and memory. Tolentino was a lead senior member and company tour manager in David Rousseve/REALITY Dance Theater, a co-director, choreographer, and performer with Ron Athey Company, and has collaborated extensively with many others. She was the original creator of the NY Clit Club, and appeared in Red Hot and Blue’s “Safe Sex is Hot Sex” poster and Gran Fury’s national bus campaign “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” in the early 1990s. She is the co-author of the Lesbian AIDS Project’s Women’s Safer Sex Handbook, and was a member of ACT UP New York affinity groups, House of Color Video Collective and Art Positive. She received an ART MATTERS 2010-11 grant for research/travel to the Philippines and two Yellow House Fund/Tides Foundation grants for curatorial research and programming. She is co-director with Ron Athey of the PRAXIS MOHAVE BOOTCAMP FOR PERFORMANCE ARTISTS, a bi-annual ten-day intensive workshop for international artists, and divides her time between Joshua Tree, Los Angeles, New York City.

Ron Athey’s performance and body art explores stagings of crisis, sexuality, religion, ritual, and death, interrogating the intersections between punk, queer and alternative cultures as well as the practices and politics surrounding HIV/AIDS. His work often engages directly with the ideas of queer philosophers and artists like Georges Bataille, Pierre Molinier and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Athey began performing at underground clubs and galleries with Rozz Williams in 1981, and rose to international prominence during the US Culture Wars of the early 1990s, touring extensively with a large company managed by Julie Tolentino, as well a creating solo and duo works. He has been a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers including Honcho and the L.A. Weekly, as well as curated performance art festivals in the U.S. and in Europe. Most recently, Athey has been a Visiting Artist in the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. He is studying towards a PhD at Greenwich University, and currently lives in London. The first ever publication devoted to the work of Ron Athey, Pleading in the Blood: The Art of Ron Athey (edited by Dominic Johnson), will be co-published by the Live Art Development Agency (UK) MIT Press (USA) in 2012.

The Performance Studies Lecture Forum is a series of evening events featuring preeminent scholars and practitioners in the fields of art and performance. The events are presented on weekday evenings in the department’s studio space, and are designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among artists, students and scholars.

For more information, please contact the Department of Performance Studies at NYU: 212-998-1620

Evelyn Fox Keller Professor Emerita of the History and Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friday, December 9:30 pm The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, Room 6112 NYC

Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor of the History and Philosophy [...]]]> Presented by the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center

Evelyn Fox Keller
Professor Emerita of the History and Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friday, December 9:30 pm
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave, Room 6112
NYC

Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, Emerita (Program in Science, Technology, and Society) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of several books, including A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (1983), Reflections on Gender and Science (1985), The Century of the Gene (2000), Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines (2002), and The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture (2010). Keller’s research focuses on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science. Co-sponsored by The Sociology Doctoral Program, Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, and Center for the Study of Women & Society

Free and open to the public.

For more information see the Women’s Studies website: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/womenstudies

Pablo Gomez, History & Geography, Texas Christian University

Friday, December 9 2 pm

The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, Room C203 NYC

Please join us to discuss this paper by Pablo Gomez (History & Geography, Texas Christian University) which explores the [...]]]> A Caribbean Epistemologies Seminar presented by the CUNY Center for the Humanities

Pablo Gomez, History & Geography, Texas Christian University

Friday, December 9
2 pm

The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave, Room C203
NYC

Please join us to discuss this paper by Pablo Gomez (History & Geography, Texas Christian University) which explores the routes followed by ideas and rites about the body emerging in seventeenth century black Atlantic Caribbean locales like Cartagena de Indias and Havana. Data related to the circulation of bodily knowledge in the Spanish Caribbean evinces a largely ignored process in which black ritual practitioners experimented with new materials and techne they found in the Americas and transmitted a corpus of “bodily knowledge” during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Perambulating and interconnected black health practitioners, using oral tradition, performance, and material culture, functioned as the primordial links for the diffusion of black ideas about corporeality in the Spanish Caribbean. Within their epistemological realms, these healers probed the Caribbean landscape for medical products and explored the particular socio- cultural make up of the places where they would deploy their practices. As their European counterparts, seventeenth century Spanish Caribbean ritual practitioners of African origin –– coming from Europe and Africa or born in the New World –– engaged in procedural, conceptual, material, and social practices that had the specific objective of inquiring about the human body. Through these practices Caribbean black communities entered a larger conversation about the very nature of knowledge in the early modern era.

Our discussant for this paper will be Professor Tamara Walker (History, University of Pennsylvania).

Reading Required. Professor Gomez’s essay is available on the seminar website: http://centerforthehumanities.org/seminars/caribbean-epistemologies

Jack Drescher, M.D.