Roderick A. Ferguson kicked off the fall CSGS calendar of events with a chapter from his provocatively titled forthcoming volume, The Reorder Of Things: On The Institutionalization of Difference. Professor Ferguson contextualized this project in relation to his previous [...]]]> The Racial Genealogy of Excellence:
“Excellence Is The Watchword”
New York University, 14 September 2011

Roderick A. Ferguson kicked off the fall CSGS calendar of events with a chapter from his provocatively titled forthcoming volume, The Reorder Of Things: On The Institutionalization of Difference. Professor Ferguson contextualized this project in relation to his previous work,the influential Aberrations in Black, which he called a book he wrote because “[he] wanted to write a book [he] wanted to read.” Following that trend, he began The Reorder of Things in 2009,when he became chair of the American Studies Department at University of Minnesota, and wanted to write a book to “make sense of [his] own life,” as well as “the life we all inherited.”

He described the project as his attempt to answer the question: “how did we get here?” by examining the institutionalization of interdisciplinarity and “rethink[ing] some shibboleths about the contemporary university” as strictly a corporate setting. Instead, he asked: how do we inhabit and exceed corporatization, and what might be in excess of corporate culture? His talk resonated with the roundtable discussions on negotiating institutionalization from last spring’s New Majorities II conference, as he thoughtfully considered “how we might be in the university but not necessarily of it,” using both historical context and examples from his own experience at the University of Minnesota.

The chapter he presented, “The Racial Genealogy of Excellence,” focused on the discourse of excellence in relation to what he called the “undertheorized” open admissions movement at New York’s City College—particularly as articulated in June Jordan’s essay “Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person”—in order to track the contradictory impulses that shape our contemporary experience of institutionalization. While excellence was circulated as a discourse that promised a future of anti-racist liberal democracy, Jordan described excellence as “fundamentally antagoniz[ing] democratic understandings of the people, constructing them as the antithesis of that category’s principles.” This “critical suspicion of excellence” prompted Ferguson to consider the exclusivity of the category of excellence, and its intimate ties to racial and economic projects.

In 1969, when Jordan was on faculty at City College, 200 students shut down campus for two weeks before the college agreed to the students’ demands for the admission of more minority students. In his close readings, Ferguson described Jordan’s essay, which elaborates the demands made by student activists, as a prompt that “begs us to interrogate the histories of racial domination that make up the underside of excellence,” pointing to the ways standards of excellence are part of racialized genealogies of slavery, racism and neo-colonialism. He argued that the discourse of excellence– and the activist responses to its effects– are crucial in comprehending contemporary social relations. The category of excellence in the 60s “shaped social relations nationally and globally,” with real effects on ideological and economic spheres through the dynamic relationship between governments and universities. College campuses, which were more and more coming to be funded by the state, were considered a way to “restage the degradations of slavery” because excellence theoretically allowed minoritized subjects to “break free from days of debasement,” signaling instead “that long-awaited morning” when the “past could finally be sloughed off and the day could begin anew.” Yet the tension between getting as many people into classrooms as possible and maintaining high standards of admission demonstrated the difficulty of preserving an ideal of excellence while striving for the creation of an egalitarian society—a still-relevant dilemma.

The demands from City College activists in the face of the discourse on excellence demonstrate the contradiction that shapes our contemporary moment, as their demands included what Ferguson described as both a desire for the “dynamism of community,” and a “desire for institutional forms that would ultimately restrict that dynamism.” Now, interdisciplinary fields are “inheritors and negotiators of this living contradiction,” between the seductive and restrictive potential of institutionalization.

Having thus answered his initial query—“how did we get here?”—Ferguson followed up in the Q&A with a volley of responses to the implicit next question: what do we do now? Calling on James Baldwin’s desire to educate students in ways the academy never intended, Ferguson insisted that the work of scholarship must be tied to institutional transformation and “change we can see,” for both scholars and students. “We have to assume power over this stuff,” he said; and sometimes that means recognizing funding as a technology of interpellation in the university, and paying for our own lunch.

–Julia DeLeon

Julia DeLeon is a PhD student in Performance Studies at NYU.

New Majorities II had a double task: First, the day-long forum continued an initiative launched at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW), and co-conceived by CSW director Kathleen [...]]]> New Majorities II:
A Cross-Country Duet on the State of Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Academy
New York University, 29 April 2011

New Majorities II had a double task: First, the day-long forum continued an initiative launched at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW), and co-conceived by CSW director Kathleen McHugh and NYU Professor Lisa Duggan, to respond to the uneven budget cuts affecting gender and sexuality departments—as well as other interdisciplinary programs, such as African-American and Latino/a Studies—nationwide. This conversation/duet began with a one-day conference hosted by UCLA in early March.  Second, the NYU forum was also a celebration of the 11th anniversary of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS). (As CSGS Director Ann Pellegrini mock protested, “why celebrate the even when you can celebrate the odd.”)

The linked conferences proactively, instead of defensively, addressed the attacks on interdisciplinary programs in gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, and related fields. These programs are often derided as “identity studies” departments, and this ideological attack along with the increased monetization of higher education has made these programs especially susceptible to budget cuts. In her framing remarks at the beginning of the day, Pellegrini, who, in addition to serving as CSGS director, is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies, acknowledged the necessity of learning to speak to administrators who control university budgets in the language of dollars and cents. But she also expressed the hope that the day’s conversation might generate a way of talking about the ongoing value of interdisciplinary projects like gender and sexuality studies and ethnic studies that was not reducible to economic inputs and outputs. She stressed that monetary value is not the only – nor even most important — measure of value.

The first panel, Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU: History, Futures, Institutional Possibilities and Dilemmas, discussed CSGS’s history and the current challenges and possibilities for gender and sexuality studies at NYU. Rahma Abdulkadir, Research Fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi, kicked off the event with unfettered optimism by discussing the interdisciplinary possibilities of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYU-AD). NYU-AD is a research institution with an integrated liberal Arts and Sciences college with an international student body. In the nascient stages of its development, NYU-AD has only 19 majors. Although it currently offers only three classes in gender and sexualities, Abdulkadir believes that the open nature of the core areas of study, which includes “pathways of world literature,” as well as the eagerness of NYU-AD’s leadership to be in conversation with NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and CSGS, has significant space to expand its activities with a deeper incorporation of gender and sexuality-oriented research and pedagogy.

Next Carolyn Dinshaw, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English at NYU, founding director of CSGS, and and self-professed “living archive,” addressed the changing nature of the center since 1999, when NYU was not yet the global institution it is today. At its inception, CSGS was linked to the Gender and Sexuality degree program in the College of Arts and Sciences, a union that gave the research group a medium to forge long bonds not amenable to the “one night stands” of CSGS events. The relationship between the Gender and Sexuality Studies program (GSS) and CSGS, Dinshaw explained, was multifold: the academic program provided an excellent foundation for the creation of a core audience for CSGS events while the political and pedagogical agenda of the Center helped influence the curriculum of the GSS program with the creation of elective courses like “Transgender histories, identities and politics.”

Don Kulick, who succeeded Dinshaw as CSGS Director and now a Professor of Comparative Human Development at University of Chicago, focused on two events in the Center’s history: CSGS’s shift from a Center linked to an academic program to its current “all university” status, and the permanent appointment of Robert Campbell as Associate Director. The former, Kulick, explained, meant that as a “provostial” center, CSGS represents the entire university and not just the Arts and Sciences. It was thus better positioned to forge connections across the university with faculty and programs doing work in gender and sexuality studies. Campbell’s appointment, preceded by a series of temporary terms, gave the Center a permanent foundation and continuity. Because of these transitions, CSGS didn’t have to legitimate itself as a scholarly institution and was able to popularize its evening programming to include speakers like Heather Boyle and Kate Bornstein, broadening its audience beyond academia.

Drawing from her multiple roles at NYU since 1998, e. Frances White, Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and SCA and former Vice Provost for Faculty Development, spoke to both the evolution of NYU’s Woman’s Studies Program into the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, now housed in SCA, and her role in increasing faculty diversity, which involved getting to know junior faculty of color in particular, and putting people together with similar concerns who were isolated in their respective disciplines.

The panel’s moderator Gayatri Gopinath, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Director of NYU’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, brought the conversation full circle by addressing the historical discussion of CSGS and SCA regarding the nuances of the notion of “value” in terms of NYU’s increased corporatization. Attending to this problematic project of NYU’s globalization, Gopinath reminded us of the New Majorities agenda by addressing how we can “create insurgencies within the structure” by theorizing how the interdisciplinarity itself interrupts the ways institutions are formed.

A lively discussion followed between the panelists and with the audience. There was a lot of attention, and concern, focused on the possible imperial dimensions of NYU’s global initiatives at Abu Dhabi and beyond. As was pointed out, NYU is not the only major U.S. university building global satellite campuses, and participants together asked about the political and economic implications of this expansion at this particular historical moment.

The second panel, New Paradigms, New Possibilities broadened the scope of discussion from an NYU focus to the fragile state of interdisciplinary programs nationally. The panel’s speakers came from a variety of institutions: public and private, both colleges and universities. They continued and deepened the project begun in the morning, namely how to articulate why what women’s studies, LGBTQ studies, and ethnic studies do matters at a time when the marketplace of ideas has been reduced to market value. Given the very real crises affecting particular programs, the panelists also sought to develop concrete and local strategies to combat the marginalization of “diversity” programs. There was a recognition that there is no one size fits all approach to the current situation.

Lisa Duggan introduced the panel by discussing New Majorities’ history, which began with a questionnaire asking about the states of various interdisciplinary programs as a way to use local case studies to talk about national situations. This served as an empirical anchor for the subsequent early March conference at UCLA whose aim was to create new knowledges to talk across programs and institutions.

The panel’s first speaker was Kathleen McHugh, Professor of English and the FTVD Critical Studies program at UCLA. McHugh presented how faculty demographics would be affected without the programs under attack by sharing the statistical research she compiled from hypothetical campus UCLX: without such programs, the number of white-male faculty would be unaffected; white-female employment would drop by almost 10%; and faculty of color would be reduced by about 50%. Riffing off David Letterman’s daily top ten list, McHugh also shared the top ten insights of New Majorities. These insights included: New Majorities is proactive rather than reactive; rethinks the marginal; moves being entrenched modes of thinking; and produces alternative structures of university governance.

Providing a perspective from Duke University, Jennifer D. Brody, the embodiment of interdisciplinarity (and over-extended academic labor) herself, is a Professor of African and African American Studies who also teaches Performance Studies, Gender/Sexuality Studies, and Visuality and Black Performance. Among other things, Brody addressed the issues of downsizing, noting in particular how funding for the arts has been slashed at various institutions. This affects diversity at our institutions in at least two ways: the creative arts offer an important site for university-community contact and have also traditionally provided a receptive space for women and people of color. But Brody also pointed to her own position at Duke, where she has a triple appointment, to ask what happens when one body is asked to perform diversity in multiple institutional sites? No body can do it, she said, but particular bodies are commonly asked to. Connecting back to McHugh’s presentation, Brody underscored the unequal division of labor that results when white women and women and men of color are asked to be the institutional face of diversity. Additionally, she pointed out that women and people of color are disproportionately hired in diversity programs, which allows public land grant universities (and she used to teach at one) to claim they are meeting various diversity targets or goals even as they are in fact continuing to segregate the university by knowledge division and department.

Next was Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at Temple University, who is “in belly of beast” of the academic budget crunch. At Temple, five programs—including Woman’s Studies, American Studies, Jewish studies—will be absorbed in the departments of Sociology, English, History, etc. The rationale for this administrative decision, Levitt explains, was fiscal; in other words, these programs are failing and not valuable. After the five programs hand over their autonomy to departments, the continued life of the programs would depend on the voluntary labor of an already over-extended staff, most of whom were highly vulnerable, non-tenured faculty. Levitt reminded us of an important oversight: this restructuring leaves little time for actual teaching and researching.

Following Levit was Janet R. Jakobsen, Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. As a professor at a women’s college where Women’s Studies and feminist research are not currently under attack, Jakobsen spoke to the particular dangers of being on the receiving end of this capital flow. In the new neoliberal order, she argued, women and feminism were both now seen as good investments through which money might circulate along with imperialism. How would feminist work at U.S. colleges and universities be redefined in the light of this monetized “woman question”? Which kinds of research projects would be funded and supported and which, not? The way in which capital flows are set up to run through academic institutions, she maintained, can have serious dangers for other progressive institutions, like poorly funded activist organizations. Jakobsen’s talk was a warning call against such complicity that marginalizes other projects of resistance.

Licia Fiol-Matta, Professor of Latin American & Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College, CUNY, concluded the panel with an example of the way diversity studies play out in specific institutional sites and in relation to local demographics. At Lehman, Fiol-Matta explains, there is a radical disconnect between the faculty, which consists of mostly of white, relatively wealthy males, and the student body, primarily composed of women of color. Fiol-Matta revealed another paradox: while one would think this population would be receptive to interdisciplinary, diversity-oriented thinking, they succumb to the extreme conservativism expressed through the business model of education, where the student is the consumer and goods are recognizable. As a result, this population is entrenched in an aspirational model toward insertion into the capitalist structure that equates “making it” with “making money.” But Fiol-Matta stressed the complexity of Lehman’s particular students’ identification with this aspirational model, suggesting that it could be seen as a vehicle of Americanization and racialized assimilation. In other words: the consumer-citizen economic circuit works differently, and demands different things, of different student bodies. As scholars of diversity, how do we reckon with this concrete situation?

In (im)proper interdisciplinary fashion, the conference closed with a performance party to celebrate the 11th anniversary of the Center. The performance party – entitled Gender and Sexuality: A Musical Revue – was produced by musician Viva DeConcini and held at a local music venue, the Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge. The cabaret-style event was emceed by Jennifer Miller Circus Amok founder and Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. About 200 people packed the downstairs gallery space for the musical celebrations. The audience was “schooled” in gender and sexuality by: Karen Finley, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Geo Wyeth, Glenn Marla, Neal Medlyn,burlesque performers Darlinda Just Darlinda and Coco Lectric, and Jomama Jones. There was even a surprise musical performance by CSGS director Ann Pellegrini.

If Gender and Sexuality: A Musical Revue showcased the serious play of gender and sexuality studies, it also offered a welcome respite from – and reenergizing bounce to confront – the crises discussed during the day.

–Krista Miranda

Krista Miranda is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York University and the Book Reviews Editor for Woman and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Her prior graduate work includes an MA in Humanities and Social Thought with a concentration in Gender Politics and an MA in Writing and Publishing.

Saba Mahmood Associate Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology, the University of California, Berkeley Joan Scott Harold F. Linder Professor, Institute for Advanced Study Linda Gordon Professor of History, New York University

Part of the The Demands of Tolerance lecture series of [...]]]> Wednesday, October 6
6:30 to 8 pm
19 Washington Square North, Events Space

Saba Mahmood Associate Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology, the University of California, Berkeley
Joan Scott Harold F. Linder Professor, Institute for Advanced Study
Linda Gordon Professor of History, New York University

Part of the The Demands of Tolerance lecture series of NYU Abu Dhabi

Tolerance is a demanding social project, as the strident, often violent claims of intolerance make clear. This year-long lecture series probes the complexities and modalities of tolerance, not solely as a matter of individual virtue but as a social and political challenge. The lectures explore the limits and demands of tolerance when under pressure by fervently held religious, sexual, social, and political beliefs. Following the 2009-10 series on the Cosmopolitan Idea, this program continues our investigation of core values of NYUAD, which is forging an unusually diverse community based on intercultural understanding and respect.

To attend, please RVSP to 19wsn.rsvp(at)nyu.edu

For more information: http://nyuad.nyu.edu/news.events/nyc.Tolerance.Conflict.2010-11.html

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=323299477808&ref=nf

The New School for Social Research

Saturday May 1, 2010 10 am – 6 pm

Wollman Hall – 65 West 11th St. 5th floor

free and open to all

Featured speakers:

Lisa Duggan Jasbir Puar Jonathan Ned Katz Jose E. Munoz

Contact info:

Web: www.politicallyqueer.tumblr.com

Email: [...]]]> 2010 Department of Politics Graduate Student Conference

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=323299477808&ref=nf

The New School for Social Research

Saturday May 1, 2010
10 am – 6 pm

Wollman Hall – 65 West 11th St. 5th floor

free and open to all

Featured speakers:

Lisa Duggan
Jasbir Puar
Jonathan Ned Katz
Jose E. Munoz

Contact info:

Web: www.politicallyqueer.tumblr.com

Email: queerconfnssr@gmail.com

October 14, Wednesday 7 to 9 PM

LGBTQ Studies Pedagogy Workshop presented by CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and co-sponsored by CSGS.

Matthew Brim, English, College of Staten Island, CUNY

This workshop will explore the responsibilities of the queer studies teacher in hyperassimilationist gay and straight culture. How might queer [...]]]>

October 14, Wednesday
7 to 9 PM

LGBTQ Studies Pedagogy Workshop presented by CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and co-sponsored by CSGS.

Matthew Brim, English, College of Staten Island, CUNY

This workshop will explore the responsibilities of the queer studies teacher in hyperassimilationist gay and straight culture. How might queer classrooms be intentionally framed as separatist in this context, and what does separatist queer pedagogy look like? The workshop will be discussion based, so please come ready to participate.

Matthew Brim is Assistant Professor of Queer Studies in the English department at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. His research focuses mostly on 20th- and 21st-century queer American literature and culture. His current book project, titled “James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination,” argues that Baldwin plays a central and complicated role in the “queer imagination,” a term used to characterize the overlapping creative energies and critical approaches that have given rise to the universalizing project of queer literary and theoretical inquiry.

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room C201
between 34th & 35th Streets

For more information, please call CLAGS at (212) 817-1955.

Arguably, it was Ronald Reagan shaking his head in the middle of a presidential debate with Jimmy Carter as he chuckled ruefully, “There you go again,” that created an emotional turning point in the 1980 campaign. It’s what we remember, anyway, that and the explosive, derisive response from [...]]]> Thursday, February 19, 2009
Claire Potter

Arguably, it was Ronald Reagan shaking his head in the middle of a presidential debate with Jimmy Carter as he chuckled ruefully, “There you go again,” that created an emotional turning point in the 1980 campaign. It’s what we remember, anyway, that and the explosive, derisive response from the audience as Carter stood there unable to respond. This moment became symbolic of what many voters, not just right-wing voters, had come to think of Democratic governance: that the same old strategies, strategies that had not yet resolved a single social problem, were being presented as if they were new and innovative.

Well, it looks like no one is immune from regurgitating old, tired solutions to economic malaise. Having, for almost three decades, tried to deflect attention from the damage their economic policies have had on the vast majority of Americans, Republicans are once again turning to the vilification of gay sex, and knowledge about gay sex, to divert us from their past and present incompetence. I predict that future historians will find documented proof that such attacks are cynically intended to deflect the public view from the real consequences that cuts in public spending will have on education more generally. And just to give you some perspective, dear reader: for the price of incarcerating twenty undocumented immigrants for a year, you could probably fund four women’s studies programs granting the BA.

Attacks on women’s studies, sexuality studies and queer studies in the Georgia public university system are but one example of an urgent issue that few journalists, politicians or academics, for that matter, seem to care about yet. In the face of declining state revenues, right wingers are once again “Mapplethorping” the public. They are shilling their ideologically rigid view that even more school privatization, and deep cuts in higher education, are an appropriate fix for a plunging economy that has been jointly devastated by pirate capitalists, corporate lobbyists, and decades of neoliberal fiscal policies. How can the dismantling of higher education be turned into a happy thing, you might ask? Because you can get rid of fields of knowledge that students don’t need to know, and that might even harm them, like queer and feminist studies, while preserving the teaching of “universal values.” And by doing this, you can divert attention from the real consequences to real people of policies that are turning our public universities into a simulacrum of the wretched, privatized Postal Service .

Read the full story at Tenured Radical.

ATLANTA – Upset House Republicans are mounting a campaign to purge Georgia’s higher education system of professors with an expertise in racy sexuality topics as the state grapples with a $2.2 billion shortfall.

State Rep. Charlice [...]]]> Effort to oust profs
By Greg Bluestein | Associated Press | Story updated at 11:38 pm on 2/6/2009

ATLANTA – Upset House Republicans are mounting a campaign to purge Georgia’s higher education system of professors with an expertise in racy sexuality topics as the state grapples with a $2.2 billion shortfall.

State Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, took the House well on Friday to announce a “grassroots” effort to oust professors with expertise in subjects like male prostitution, oral sex and “queer theory.”

“This is not considered higher education,” Byrd said. “If legislators are going to dole out the dollars, we should have a say-so in where they go.”

Byrd and her supporters, including state Rep. Calvin Hill, R-Canton, said they will team with the Christian Coalition and other religious groups to pressure fellow lawmakers and the University System Board of Regents to eliminate the jobs.

“Our job is to educate our people in sciences, business, math,” said Hill, a vice chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. He said professors aren’t going to meet those needs “by teaching a class in queer theory.”

The regents, who oversee the state’s colleges and universities, has bristled at attempts by legislators to dictate who they should hire. A regents spokesman said the university system’s mission – teaching, research and service – is a broad field.

He said the state’s schools hire faculty with expertise in a range of subjects as part of “a tradition of investigating the human experience.” And he noted that they aren’t teaching “how-to” courses, but rather they are experts on the sociological trends and risks.

“Certainly the mission of higher education is to broaden the field of knowledge and research,” said spokesman John Millsaps. “That covers a lot of topics. Some may be considered to some as controversial, but to others it could be considered needed.”

Hill and Byrd were incensed to learn a University of Georgia professor teaches a graduate course on “queer theory.” They also took aim at Georgia State University, where an annual guide to its faculty experts lists a sociology lecturer as an expert in oral sex and faculty member Kirk Elifson as an expert in male prostitution.

Georgia State spokeswoman Andrea Jones called the critics’ argument “flawed.”

“Teaching courses in criminal justice, for example, does not mean that our students are being prepared to become criminals. Quite the opposite,” said Jones. “Legitimate research and teaching are central to the development of relevant and effective policy.”

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, February 07, 2009