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.

December 2, Friday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Elizabeth R. Boskey, CSGS Visiting Scholar

The Pap smear was one of the great public health innovations of the 20th Century. However, the way in which the test is currently used brings up important issues of sexism, paternalism, [...]]]> a brown bag lunch talk with Elizabeth R. Boskey

December 2, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Elizabeth R. Boskey, CSGS Visiting Scholar

The Pap smear was one of the great public health innovations of the 20th Century. However, the way in which the test is currently used brings up important issues of sexism, paternalism, and autonomy in medical care. This talk will look at how oral contraceptive prescriptions have become linked to cervical cancer screening and examine the issue of birth control access through the lens of reproductive rights.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets

This event is free and open to the public.

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

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

Organized by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

November 11, Friday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Kane Race, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, and CSGS Visiting Scholar

How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events and drug effects? [...]]]> a brown bag lunch talk with Kane Race

November 11, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Kane Race, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, and CSGS Visiting Scholar

How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events and drug effects? In the context of proposals around biomedical prevention, there is a growing awareness of the need to find ways of responding to complexity, as everywhere new combinations of treatment, behavior, drugs, norms, meanings and devices are coming into encounter with one another, or are set to come into encounter with one another, with a range of unpredictable effects. In this paper I consider the operation of various framing devices that attribute responsibility and causation with regard to HIV events. I propose that we need to sharpen our analytic focus on what these framing devices do; their performativity – that is, their full range of worldly implications and effects. My primary examples are the criminal law and the randomized control trial. I argue that these institutions operate as framing devices: they attribute responsibility for HIV events, and externalize other elements and effects in the process. Drawing on recent work in science and technology studies as well as queer theory, I set out an analytic frame that may help clarify a new role for HIV social research. Attentiveness to the performative effects of these framing devices is crucial, I suggest, if we want better to attend to the global HIV epidemic.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets

This event is free and open to the public.  Bring your lunch, we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

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

Organized by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

April 4, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Elahe Haschemi Yekani, English and American Studies, Humboldt University Berlin

Situated at the interdisciplinary intersections of literary and cultural studies combining approaches from gender studies, postcolonial [...]]]> (M)OTHER SEACOLE’S WONDERFUL ADVENTURES: CLAIMING THE ENGLISH FAMILY IN THE CRIMEA

a Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Elahe Haschemi Yekani

April 4, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Elahe Haschemi Yekani, English and American Studies, Humboldt University Berlin

Situated at the interdisciplinary intersections of literary and cultural studies combining approaches from gender studies, postcolonial and queer studies, this project seeks to scrutinize conceptions of subjectivity and the family in the English novel. Central questions to the project are: in how far is the establishment of a ‘universal’ family (which becomes indispensable for the conception of modern subjectivity) reliant on narratives of the Other, the disavowed and excluded and how is the affective relationship of the white middle-class heterosexual family to be thought of in relation to space, migration and nation building.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Elahe Haschemi Yekani studied English and American Studies as well as Theatre Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Westminster, London. In 2009, she completed her PhD with a dissertation entitled The Privilege of Crisis on narratives of colonial and postcolonial masculinities which received the Britcult Award for the best new monograph in the field of British cultural studies awarded by the German Association for the Study of British Cultures. Currently, she is a lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies at HU Berlin. From 2005-2007 she was a scholarship holder at the Graduate Research Group “Gender as a Category of Knowledge” funded by the German Research Foundation. Her research interests comprise: Queer Studies and Postcolonial Theory, British fiction, Gender and Intersectionality. Publications include: The Privilege of Crisis: Narratives of Masculinities in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Photography and Film (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2011) (forthcoming); Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften: Perspektiven der Queer Theory (ed. with B. Michaelis, Berlin 2005); Erlöser. Figurationen männlicher Hegemonie (ed. with S. Glawion and J. Husmann-Kastein, Bielefeld 2007).

This event is free and open to the public.  Venue is wheelchair accessible.  If you need any accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.

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

March 7, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Maria Malmström, CSGS Visiting Scholar

In this talk, Dr. Malmström will discuss constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank through [...]]]> CREATING PROPER MEN: MASCULINITIES, EMBODIMENT AND AGENCY IN THE WEST BANK

a Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Maria Malmström

March 7, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Maria Malmström, CSGS Visiting Scholar

In this talk, Dr. Malmström will discuss constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank through the prism of violence. She will highlight the importance of analyzing the body in such processes – both as agential and as victimized. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as ‘violent’, and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence. This talk will discuss constructions of masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved in this process, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body actively is involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Maria Malmström is a Swedish anthropologist and her areas of interest are the MENA region, gender, body, sexuality, politics, violence, and security. She received her PhD from the School of Global Studies, Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg. Her dissertation examined how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. The study explored how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. She is today involved in the inter-disciplinary research project “Hamas between Sharia rule and Demo-Islam.” The study aims to investigate in what way Hamas will adopt to the new realities on the ground (together with Michael Schulz et al.). Additionally, Dr. Malmström is involved in ground research on sexual violence and armed conflict in a globalized world (together with Maria Stern and Maria Eriksson Baaz). Furthermore, she is a gender consultant (UNFPA and others), and member of several academic/policy networks, e.g. Think Tank for Arab Women.

This event is free and open to the public.  Venue is wheelchair accessible (see wheelchair access information above).  If you need sign language interpretation services or other accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.

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

February 7, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Darnell L. Moore, CSGS Visiting Scholar

Click here for a PDF transcript of the talk.

Does “coming out of the closet” properly function as the most useful way to [...]]]> COMING OUT OR INVITING IN?: REFRAMING DISCLOSURE PARADIGMS

a Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Darnell L. Moore

February 7, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Darnell L. Moore, CSGS Visiting Scholar

Click here for a PDF transcript of the talk.

Does “coming out of the closet” properly function as the most useful way to name one’s quest towards self and communal liberation and expression? Does usage of the “coming out” idiom–and “the closet” metaphor–facilitate or impede the liberatory potential of affirming theologies and pastoral counseling approaches? Moore’s talk will consider such questions and argue for a turn to a new intervention, or what he names, the process of “inviting in.”

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Darnell L. Moore’s research seeks to put the broad notion of religiosity (and the theologies and practices of African American denominational churches, in specific) in conversation with theoretical interventions like queer theory, cultural studies and ethnic studies. A central concern that figures in his writing is the notion of religiosity as an additional social force that aids in the construction, and constriction, of bodies and of human lives. His writing has appeared in Black Theology: An International Journal, Theology & Sexuality, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies (forthcoming), and Transscripts: A Journal in the Humanities and Social Sciences – UC Irvine (forthcoming). Darnell has served appointments as a Visiting Fellow at Yale Divinity School and Lecturer in the Women & Gender Studies Department at Rutgers-New Brunswick. He is also an active member of the queer activist community in Newark, NJ where he serves as the Chair of Mayor Cory Booker of Newark’s Advisory Commission on LGBTQ Concerns and Education Chair of the Newark Pride Alliance. During his “regular” life, he is the Associate Director of the Newark Schools Research Collaborative (NSRC) and an Affiliate of the Institute on Education Law and Policy (IELP) both at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark. He holds a BA in Social & Behavioral Sciences (Seton Hall University), MA in Counseling (Eastern University) and MA in Theological Studies (Princeton Theological Seminary).

Presented by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU; co-sponsored by the NYU Office of LGBT Student Services, and by Pride in Practice, a student group of the NYU Silver School of Social Work..

This event is free and open to the public.  If you need sign language interpretation services or other accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.

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

November 22, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Alpesh Patel, CSGS Visiting Scholar and Independent Art Historian/Cultural Arts Producer

In the Western art world, a curious alliance has formed between those that are sympathetic to identity politics and those that [...]]]> CAMP AESTHETICS AND DESI VISUAL CULTURE

A Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Alpesh Patel

November 22, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Alpesh Patel, CSGS Visiting Scholar and Independent Art Historian/Cultural Arts Producer

In the Western art world, a curious alliance has formed between those that are sympathetic to identity politics and those that have always been suspect of aesthetic judgment being tied to any notion of identity: both groups agree that we are in a post-identity era. The former does so purportedly to distinguish between different waves of artistic production concerned with primarily racial, gendered, and sexual difference, but seems to fall back on conceptualizing identity as positional or fixed; while the latter suggests that we are post or over identity, but only to return artistic value back to a dis-embodied art object. Drawing on camp theoretical models and their connections with theories of aesthetics, phenomenology, and identity construction (colonial, gender, and queer) and honing in on an exploration of Desi (the Hindi word meaning “from my country”) as affective and visual knowledge, this talk examines a series of contemporary artworks that suggest much more complex understandings of difference as multi-sensorial, spatial, and temporal configurations between and within subjects.

41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Image: detail of artist Rina Banerjee’s 2003 mixed media installation, Take Me, Take Me, Take Me . . . to the Palace of Love. Installed in Peabody Essex Museum, Essex, MA.

October 18, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Imani Kai Johnson, Department of Performance Studies, NYU

In a dance culture like breaking, how does movement shape gender politics and the cultural meaning of b-girling?

41-51 East 11th Street, Room [...]]]> THE POLITICS OF B-GIRLING AND BATTLING

A Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Imani K. Johnson

October 18, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Imani Kai Johnson, Department of Performance Studies, NYU

In a dance culture like breaking, how does movement shape gender politics and the cultural meaning of b-girling?

41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Imani Kai Johnson is an Academic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Performance Studies at New York University.

This event if free and open to the public.  If you need sign language interpretation services or other accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.  For more information, please call 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

September 20, Monday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Jian Chen, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU

Prior to the multimedia convergence initiated by mass digitalization, documentary and pornographic film/video offered the experiences of communicability and interactivity now attributed to “post-cinematic” multimedia. Pornography and documentary are arguably anti-cinematic [...]]]> A Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Jian Chen

September 20, Monday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Jian Chen, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU

Prior to the multimedia convergence initiated by mass digitalization, documentary and pornographic film/video offered the experiences of communicability and interactivity now attributed to “post-cinematic” multimedia. Pornography and documentary are arguably anti-cinematic forms that work through communicative relays between viewers and film/video, rather than immersive spectatorship, and through visible technological mediation, in contrast to aesthetic signatures or spectacle. Whether through claims to authenticity or the pleasure of fantasy, these two genres also initiate the kinds of cross-cultural contact celebrated more belatedly, and with more polished veneer, in global Hollywood cinema. Chen’s talk will focus on semi-documentaries on sex work and mainstream online pornography, which feature Asian feminine subjects. Chen contends that these docu/porn forms make potentially explicit the paradoxical relationships between autonomy and control, enjoyment and labor, shaping image consumption and cultural visibility within transnational neoliberal capitalism. And Chen’s talk will explore the racial, sexual fantasies that support the imagined free-flow circulation of images and information within multimedia public spheres.

41-51 East 11th Street, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
(wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets)

Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Talk Series — bring your own lunch and we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

Jian Chen is Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Chen’s current research explores new demands made on cultural consumption, representation, and politics, with the transnational circulation of sexed racial and ethnic images in post-cinematic film and media. Chen’s work brings into conversation the areas of queer and transgender critique; film, new media, and visual cultures; East Asian diasporas; and comparative racial politics. S/he received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine in 2009 and B.A. degrees in Ethnic Studies and English at the University of California, Berkeley. Chen’s article “Sex Without Friction: the Limits of Multi-Mediated Human Subjectivity in Cheang Shu Lea’s Tech-Porn” is forthcoming in the electronic journal Postmodern Culture.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute.