CSGS Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University » homosexuality

Freedom Writers: An LGBTQ Youth Open Mic

djm489 — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:26:26 +0000

Presented by Streetwise and Safe

Tuesday November 22
6 to 8 pm

Audre Lorde Project
147 W. 24th St., 3rd Floor
NYC

Youth: FREE – adults: $5 – $50

Featuring poetry and spoken word by SAS members speaking out against injustice, criminalization and oppression. With guest performance by Arianne Benford (www.ariannebenford.com) and more! Followed by an LGBTQ youth Open mic!!

Streetwise and Safe is a project by and for youth of color in NYC that shares the in’s and out’s, do’s and don’ts and street politics of police encounters between LGBTQ youth of color and the police. Visit us at www.streetwiseandsafe.org

CFP: Queering Religion, Religious Queers

djm489 — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:44:12 +0000

Intersecting Contradiction? Queering Religion, Religious Queers
Yvette Taylor and Ria Snowdon (eds)

CALL FOR CHAPTERS
Deadline for Abstracts: 06 January, 2012

This collection will consider how religious identity interplays with other forms and contexts of identity, specifically those related to sexual identity (Stein, 2001; Yip, 2005; Taylor, 2009). It asks how these intersections are formed, negotiated and resisted across time and places: ‘contradictions’ are both privately and publically inhabited in the context of legislative change and increasing, but often competing, socio-legal recognition. Considerations of ‘sexual citizenship’ are still positioned as separate from and indeed negated by, religious rights. Questions around ‘queer’ engagements in civil partnerships and other practices (e.g. adoption) have created a number of provoking stances and policy provisions – but what remains unanswered is how people experience and situate themselves within sometimes competing, or ‘contradictory’, moments (Weeks, 2001, 2007) as ‘religious queers’ who may be tasked with ‘queering religion’.

Additionally, the presumed paradoxes of ‘marriage’, queer sexuality, religion and youth combine to generate a noteworthy generational absence. In looking at interconnectedness, this collection seeks international contributions which bridge the ‘contradictions’ in queering religion and in making visible ‘religious queers’. It hopes to offer insight into older and younger people’s understandings of religiosity (where Anglican-based LGBTQ organisations are also demonstrably those of ‘older’ adults), queer cultures, and religious groups. A small but active religious minority in the US has received much attention for its anti-gay political activity; much less attention has been paid to the more positive, supportive role that religious-based groups play in e.g. providing housing, education and political advocacy for queer youth (see Browne, Munt, Yip, 2010).

Queer methodologies (Browne and Nash, 2010) and intersectional approaches (Taylor et al., 2010), potentially offer a lens both theoretically and methodologically, to uncover the salience of related social divisions and identities: the collection hopes to be innovative and sensitive to ‘blended’ identities and their various enactments.

Abstracts are invited to consider the intersections (and contradictions) between religious and sexual identities, and their possible interplay with other forms of identity, groups, and contexts. This can include, but is not limited to:

Intersecting inequalities: class, race, gender, sexuality
Competing equalities, different diversities
Generational (dis)continuity: past, present, and futures
Mapping methods
Queering youth: LGBTQ and heterosexual identities

If you would like to contribute to the collection, please send your abstract (Word document) along with a brief biography to Ria Snowdon (snowdonr(at)lsbu.ac.uk) and Yvette Taylor (taylory(at)lsbu.ac.uk) by 06 January 2012. First draft chapters (8,000 words) due January 2013.
http://queerreligiousyouth.wordpress.com/call-for-chapters/

Institutionalized Homophobia and Heterosexism Teach-In at Columbia University

djm489 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:40:55 +0000

Please register at http://tinyurl.com/3tpqrsh. Please know that individuals with disabilities are invited to request reasonable accommodations including, but not limited to sign, language interpretation, Braille or large print materials, and a campus map of accessible features. Address these requests to the Office of Access and Services for Individuals with Disabilities at (212) 678-3689, keller@tc.edu, or Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services at (212) 678-3853 V/TTY, jaech(at)tc.edu.

Response and Resistance: Multiple Strategies Addressing State Violence against LGBTQ Youth

djm489 — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:39:31 +0000

Response and Resistance: Multiple Strategies Addressing State Violence against LGBTQ Youth

Panelists:

Andrea Ritchie from The Urban Justice Center
Jared Ringer from The Anti-Violence Project
Karina Claudio from Make the Road’s Globe Program
Chelsea Johnson-Long from The Audre Lorde Project’s Safe Outside the System Program

Moderator:

Professor Joanne Rees, Adjunct Professor of Social Work, NYU Silver School of Social Work and Smith College

Discussion Questions:
* What are the forces of systemic violence, structural racism, and unique inequities that impact LGBTQ youth?
* What are the modes of resistance that the LGBTQ community and their allies utilize to combat these injustices?
* How can policy makers and service providers support these modes of resistance?

Friday, November 5, 2010
5:30 – 7:30
The Puck Building, Rudin Forum
295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor

RSVP & Info: http://wagner.nyu.edu/events

Event Sponsored by NYU Wagner’s Stonewall Policy Alliance, Students for Criminal Justice Reform, Alliance of Latino and Latin American Students, and Wagner Intersectionality Studies

Come Hear a Ugandan LGBT Activist Speak: Frank Mugisha, March 22 & 23

Robert — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:36:41 +0000

PRA (Political Research Associates) is thrilled to host a three-city speaking tour for Frank Mugisha, a leader of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) from March 20-March 31. He’s coming to New York!

Frank will be joined by our own Kapya Kaoma, author of the groundbreaking PRA report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia. The anti-homosexuality bill now before the Ugandan legislature is just the latest in a series of attacks on LGBTI people and their allies. Join us to hear firsthand from Africans who have witnessed the realities facing LGBTI people in Uganda. Learn how U.S. religious fundamentalists have contributed to “collateral damage” for Ugandan sexual minorities while pursuing their own agendas.

This event is co-sponsored by Astraea Foundation and SMUG.

Please join us at one of these events:

Monday, 3/22 6 to 7:30 pm
Astraea Foundation
116 East 16th St.
New York, New York 10003
(212) 529-8021

Tuesday, 3/23 7 to 9 pm
The Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive
New York, New York 10027
(212) 870-6700

If you cannot make it in person, you can call in on Monday 3/22 at 6:30 to Astraea and listen to their presentations and watch on the web! To register for this easy way to meet the activists, please register at: www.astraeafoundation.org

Decriminalization of Homosexuality in India: The Repeal of Section 377 and the political, legal and public health implications for the LGBT community

Robert — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:47:50 +0000

Thursday, November 5, 2009

A roundtable presented by the South Asia Association

Co-sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian International and Public Affairs Association; and the South Asia Institute.

A panel disussion with Myna Mukherjee, Vivek Divan, Dr. Viraj Patel and Prashant Iyengar on the recent ruling on Indian Penal Code 377 that decriminalized homosexuality.

Moderated by Aseem Chhabra. Supported by a grant from the Kraft Family Foundation.

Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Location: Knox Hall, Room 207, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont Avenue

Myna Mukherjee is the Founder/Artistic Director of Engendered, a New York non-profit, trans-national arts and human rights organization focused on presenting issues of gender and sexuality in the South Asian Diaspora through performance, music, visual art, and film. Mukherjee serves as the Director/Choreographer for the critically-acclaimed Nayikas, New York’s first resident, feminist, classical Odissi dance theater company. Before Nayikas, Mukherjee was the Artistic Director for Mosaic, the South Asian festival of dance at the Lincoln Center, in association with the World Music Institute. In addition, Mukherjee has produced and curated several South Asian events and festivals in New York, including Diasporadics 2000, the South Asian arts and activism festival. Mukherjee has also choreographed for the Western stage in Paul Knox’s Kalighat and Centered Margins, a theater festival produced by Chashama and Circle East. Before her involvement in arts and human rights issues, Mukherjee spent a decade on Wall Street as a Senior Management Consultant. She earned a Masters degree in Information Systems and Finance from Carnegie Melon University.

Vivek Divan, a lawyer from Bombay, is currently a consultant with the UNDP cluster on Gender & Sexual Diversities within its HIV/AIDS Practice in New York. As Coordinator of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India from 2000 to 2007 he oversaw and was involved in the legal aid, advocacy, research and legal literacy work of the Unit. In that time he was part of the team that drafted legislation on HIV/AIDS for India and strategized campaigns and lobbying on law and human rights issues related to sex work and treatment access. He was also closely involved in the public interest litigation related to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This included legal research and strategizing and most significantly community mobilization around the case. He has been an outspoken activist on queer rights in India, having written in the press and participated on television talk shows on the issue. Since 2000 he has been on the International Advisory Board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Prashant Iyengar is a member of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore – a group of lawyers, researchers and activists who work on various aspects of law, legality and power. ALF has been actively involved in the LGBT movement for several years including an ongoing close affiliation with Voices Against 377, a consortium of non-governmental organisations (NGO) that has worked for the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Prashant’s main interests are in the areas of human rights, environmental law, technology and culture and he has been an enthusiastic supporter of the rights of sexuality minorities in India.

Dr. Viraj Patel received his B.A. in Asian Studies from Emory University in Atlanta and his M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina. He is currently in his last year of residency in Primary Care & Social Medicine in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. In addition to completing the standard training in Internal Medicine, he’s also focusing his training on social justice, community medicine, and global health. After finishing medical school and prior to starting residency, Viraj Patel moved to India and volunteered with The Humsafar Trust in Mumbai, one of India’s first NGOs to specifically address the health needs of MSM and Transgenders and conduct community based outreach in India. He now facilitates Humsafar Trust’s student internship program and collaborates on various research and service projects with HST. He co-founded Humsafar International in NYC, which focuses on capacity building for sexual identity and health programs addressing marginalized populations. He serves on the board of directors for the Westchester Square Partnership in The Bronx, an academic and community collaboration founded to address service needs and conduct participatory research aimed at health needs, empowerment, and building social capital among the South Asian communities in the Bronx.

Before Sex: One Day Conference at Rutgers University

Robert — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:14:01 +0000

October 23, 2009
8:30 AM to 6 PM

Teleconference Room
4th floor of Alexander Library
169 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Until recently we’ve thought of the modern sex/gender system and homosexual identity as socio-intellectual developments of the later nineteenth century. But over the past three decades, evidence and arguments have accumulated to suggest that the categories of oppositional gender difference and male same-sex identity coalesced much earlier than that–during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Specialized historical research has pursued different aspects of the topic in disparate directions. The time has come to consolidate this research in a conference that brings together four of the most important scholars in the field and an informed audience (there will be ample time for discussion) to conceive, debate, and test a hypothesis of the first importance for early modern historians and the history of sexuality.

Thomas W. Laqueur (University of California-Berkeley):
“Sex, Gender, and the Enlightenment Project”

Laura Gowing (King’s College, London):
“Women, Bodies, and Sex in the Seventeenth-Century World.”

Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire):
“Sexual Knowledge and Sexual Behavior in the Eighteenth Century.”

Randolph Trumbach (Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of NY):
“The Emergence of the Modern Homosexual Minority in Enlightenment Europe and the Production of a Heterosexual Majority, 1700-1750.”

For more information contact Michael McKeon, michael.mckeon@rutgers.edu or click here.

Homosexuality and Fascism

Robert — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:51:52 +0000

Judith Jack Halberstam

October 19
6 –8 pm

NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor

In Sasha Baron Cohen’s most recent camp spoof, Brüno, the very gay and very swish Austrian fashionista compares himself several times to Hitler and jokes that he is “the second most misunderstood Austrian in history.” The intersection of Nazi and homosexual that Cohen invokes has a long and vexed history that stretches from the well-known homosexuality of Nazi storm troopers to eroticized images of Nazi soldiers by Tom of Finland. Leo Bersani notes the glorification of Nazism in the work of Jean Genet, and Dagmar Herzog notes in Sex After Fascism that “popular assumptions of Nazism as a homosexual movement have remained remarkably durable.” In this talk, I will return to a very important essay by Stuart Marshall from 1991 titled: “The Contemporary Political Use of Gay History: The Third Reich ” from How Do I Look, and try to account for both gay Nazis and the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. At stake is a complex understanding of queer history that neither whitewashes the past nor colludes in homophobic renderings of it.

Judith Jack Halberstam is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Feminist Research at USC. Halberstam teaches courses in queer studies, gender theory, art, literature and film.

Halberstam is the author of Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters and a new book from NYU Press titled In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives.

For more information, visit the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.