Background:

The SWOP National Board currently serves as the umbrella organization for about a dozen chapters from different major cities around the [...]]]> The Sex Workers Outreach Project (http://www.swop-usa.org) is seeking a few thoughtful individuals who are passionate about sex worker rights to join our Board of Directors and help us grow our organization!

Background:

The SWOP National Board currently serves as the umbrella organization for about a dozen chapters from different major cities around the country (including Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, NYC, and others).  Our primary goal is to help each of our chapters create safe, empowering spaces for sex workers and allies to instigate change that reduces the violence, intolerance and stigma associated with sex work. Our vast network of members and supporters around the country enable us to engage in a variety of strategies to create change including community organizing, education campaigns, social media networking, advocacy, and legal strategies.

Recently, we’ve seen a surge of interest and momentum around sex worker rights activism, including:

• The federal government’s first public acknowledgment of the rights of sex workers
• Expansion of cities celebrating Dec. 17th – International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
• Explosion of the media frenzy (spurred by the Village Voice vs. Ashton Kutcher battle) that underscored the need to think differently about how we support people who have been trafficked/co-erced into sex work, and people who choose to engage in sex work (whether out of economic need or genuine love for the profession)

It is clear that support for sex worker rights is growing… and now we are looking for a few smart, committed individuals to help us take advantage of this unique window of opportunity to grow our organization in support of even greater levels of change.

We invite anyone who shares our goal of defending the rights of sex workers and who would like to help build one of the most important national groups working for human rights to apply to join the board of directors by November 15, 2011.

Expectations of Board Members

As a board member, you would participate in a conference call once per month to discuss policy issues, campaigns and how to support SWOP chapters all across the country as well as additional tasks as needed. All participation is on a volunteer basis.

How to Apply:

Please send a brief statement of interest, and include a description of who you are, your work, and the communities and organizations you have worked with to board(at)lists.swopusa.org. You may also submit a resume, but it is not required.

Qualifications for a Board member:

To be selected as a board member, you must show the following qualities:

1) A commitment to social justice and moving SWOP toward becoming an Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive organization.  This is demonstrated by a willingness to support and self-educate around anti-oppression and related issues such as immigration, economic justice, and LGBTQI rights.

2) A commitment to supporting the human rights of sex workers.

3) A working relationship and knowledge of the Sex Industry and the culture of Sex Exchange

We will be accepting applications until November 15, 2011.

Thank you,
SWOP USA Board ]]> http://www.csgsnyu.org/2011/10/sex-workers-outreach-project-board-of-directors-search/feed/ 0 http://www.csgsnyu.org/2011/09/masculinity-complex-two-day-symposium/ http://www.csgsnyu.org/2011/09/masculinity-complex-two-day-symposium/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:14:56 +0000 Robert http://www.csgsnyu.org/?p=3125 a two-day symposium with Jessica Benjamin, Justin Vivian Bond, Judith Butler, Anne Cheng, Nancy Chodorow, Ken Corbett, Muriel Dimen, Jan Gaboury, Katie Gentile, Virginia Goldner, Francisco Gonzalez, Adrienne Harris, Ben Kafka, Tony Kushner, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Joe Rollins, Eyal Rozmarin, Avgi Saketopoulou, Gayle Salamon, Dean Spade, Warren Spielberg, Brett Stoudt

October 21 and [...]]]> MASCULINITY, COMPLEX

a two-day symposium with Jessica Benjamin, Justin Vivian Bond, Judith Butler, Anne Cheng, Nancy Chodorow, Ken Corbett, Muriel Dimen, Jan Gaboury, Katie Gentile, Virginia Goldner, Francisco Gonzalez, Adrienne Harris, Ben Kafka, Tony Kushner, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Joe Rollins, Eyal Rozmarin, Avgi Saketopoulou, Gayle Salamon, Dean Spade, Warren Spielberg, Brett Stoudt

October 21 and 22, Friday and Saturday
2 to 8 pm and 10 am to 4 pm, respectively

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED FOR THIS CONFERENCE. ONLY THOSE REGISTERED WILL GAIN ENTRANCE.

more info: masculinitycomplex.com

Masculinity has finally become a site of inquiry: a problem the way femininity has been regarded for nearly a century. Masculinity, Complex sets out to reflect on the history of masculinity as it became perplexed via psychoanalytic and cultural discourses. We have brought together a renowned group of scholars, clinicians and artists, and are looking forward to what promises to be a memorable conference.

CUNY Graduate Center
Elebash Recital Hall
365 Fifth Avenue
between 34th and 35th Streets

Co-sponsored by Studies in Gender and Sexuality; Gender Studies Program, John Jay College of Justice; Center for the Study of Women and Society, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University.

Please join us for the first biennial of Issues in Critical Investigation(ICI): The African Diaspora at Vanderbilt University, 29 September-1 October 2011.

For the past decade, [...]]]> ICI: African Diaspora 2011 Fall Symposium. Go to: www.vanderbilt.edu/ICI. Read & Register for symposium on “Symposium” page. Hotel: Embassy Suites Hotel (which is listed on the registration page).

Please join us for the first biennial of Issues in Critical Investigation(ICI): The African Diaspora at Vanderbilt University, 29 September-1 October 2011.

For the past decade, the “African Diaspora” appears to have displaced Pan-Africanism, the time-honored evocation, as a way to name the enormous geopolitical collective, globally dispersed, that is Africa-related. While Pan-Africanism sought to accord these disparate world populations, cultures, and events a commonality of political aims, “Diaspora” promises to juxtapose them in their discrete historical instance. “Diaspora,” then, not only refers to a welter of facts and historical subjects “on the ground,” so to speak, but has also been transposed into a critical and theoretical paradigm that bears both a short hand and an elaborative possibility. At Issues in Critical Investigation: The African Diaspora at Vanderbilt, “Diaspora” takes on an institutional function that lends a collective name to a number of curricula objects that converge on the study of Africana, or Africanity in its near-endless configurations of meanings and habitations.

The ICI biennial symposium is designed to study the problem of the African Diaspora as a critical, social, historical, political, conceptual, and discursive thematic and to celebrate those participants in the ICI biennial book competition, as well as those colleagues and friends who have encouraged the ICI project by serving as members of its board of readers and the executive/advisory board of the project. 2011 marks the inaugural year of the ICI Biennial and serves as the official introduction of the project to public audiences.

The topic that we have adopted for the 2011 symposium is “Defining the African Diaspora.” Specifically related to it is “The Problem of Representation” by way of the seven arts, with particular attention to the art of the film. We hope to incorporate film showings into the two-day event, as well as film critique from a few film makers.

Speakers include:

Rich Blint, Ph.D. candidate, Program in American Studies, New York University

Nahum Chandler, Visiting Scholar, Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley

Cyraina Johnson-Rouillier, Associate Professor of Modern Literature and Literature of the Americas, University of Notre Dame

Ronald Judy, Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Fred Moten, Helen L. Bevington Professor of Modern Poetry, Duke University

Ifeoma Nwankwo, Associate Professor, English Department, Vanderbilt University

Lou Outlaw, Professor of Philosophy and of African American and Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University

Tiffany Patterson, Associate Professor, African American Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University

Alice Randall, Writer-in-Residence, Department of English, Vanderbilt University

Winfried Siemerling, Professor, Department of English, University of Waterloo

Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Professor of English, Vanderbilt University

Nicole Waligora-Davis, Assistant Professor of English, Rice University

Robyn Wiegman, Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies, Duke University

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.

April 29, Friday

Co-sponsored by the Ph.D Program in English, the Concentration in 20th Century Studies, the Women’s Studies Certificate Program, The Graduate Center, CUNY and the Humanities Institute and Women’s Studies at Stony Brook University, SUNY.

Susan Sontag’s provocative career resulted in a body [...]]]> The Scandals of Susan Sontag
March 4, Friday, 10:30am–6pm, Elebash Recital Hall

Co-sponsored by the Ph.D Program in English, the Concentration in 20th Century Studies, the Women’s Studies Certificate Program, The Graduate Center, CUNY and the Humanities Institute and Women’s Studies at Stony Brook University, SUNY.

Susan Sontag’s provocative career resulted in a body of artistic and intellectual work that is scorned as often as it is admired. How can we begin to take account of her achievements and legacy in the 21th century? Beginning with an exploration of her recently published journals, and featuring a documentary film-in-progress about her life and career, this one-day conference brings together a variety of scholars and critics to consider the impact of her work. Participants include, among many others, E. Ann Kaplan (English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Stony Brook University); Nancy Kates, filmmaker; Laura Kipnis (Communication, Northwestern University); Susie Linfield (Journalism, New York University); Heather Love (English, University of Pennsylvania); Nancy K. Miller (English and Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY); José Muñoz (Performance Studies, New York University); Deborah Nelson (English, University of Chicago); Sigrid Nunez, writer; Jay Prosser (English, University of Leeds); Elaine Showalter (English, Princeton University); Catharine Stimpson, (English, NYU).

SCHEDULE:

10:30: Welcome & Introduction
Aoibheann Sweeney, Executive Director, The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY
E. Ann Kaplan, Director, The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook

10:45-12:15pm: Sontag’s Journals: The Privilege of the Personal
Barbara Ching, The Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities, University of Memphis
Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University
E. Ann Kaplan, English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Stony Brook
Moderated by Catharine Stimpson, English, NYU

1:15pm: Sontag’s Criticism: Against Interpretation
Heather Love, English, University of Pennsylvania
Deborah Nelson, English Language and Literature, University of Chicago
Jay Prosser, English, University of Leeds
Ann Kaplan, Art History, University of Texas, Austin
Moderated by Lisa Diedrich, Women and Gender Studies, Stony Brook University, SUNY

2:30-4:00 Regarding Susan Sontag: excerpts from a film-in-progress
Discussion with filmmaker Nancy Kates and Nancy K. Miller, English and Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center

4:15pm: Sontag and the Female Intellectual
Laura Kipnis, Communication, Northwestern University
Susie Linfield, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, NYU
Jose Munoz, Performance Studies, NYU
Sigrid Nunez, Writer
Moderated by Elaine Showalter, English, Princeton University

http://centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/calendar/details/211-the-scandals-of-susan-sontag

5th Annual TRANSforming Gender Symposium University of Colorado at Boulder April 1st – April 3rd, 2011 Free and open to the public!

ON-LINE REGISTRATION OPENS JANUARY 26TH.

Visit www.colorado.edu/glbtrc to register

About the TRANSforming Gender Symposium

The University of Colorado Boulder TRANSforming Gender Symposium is celebrating it is fifth year. Each [...]]]> SAVE THE DATE!

5th Annual TRANSforming Gender Symposium
University of Colorado at Boulder
April 1st – April 3rd, 2011
Free and open to the public!

ON-LINE REGISTRATION OPENS JANUARY 26TH.

Visit www.colorado.edu/glbtrc to register

About the TRANSforming Gender Symposium

The University of Colorado Boulder TRANSforming Gender Symposium is celebrating it is fifth year. Each year we bring national and local transgender and genderqueer activist to the Symposium to address issues surrounding transgender, genderqueer and related identities The symposium includes academics, community organizers, performance and visual artist, students, faculty, staff, youth, family members, community members and other interested folks. The Symposium is free and open to the public (We will be asking for a cost-free registration opening January 26th). This year, along with our nationally known speakers, we are excited to be including workshops throughout the day. Past symposiums have covered some of the following topics as they relate to trans identities: spirituality, health care, transmysogyny, sexuality, poetry, media, racism, classism, mental health, sports and athletics, and much more. Please see below for more information.

Steph Wilenchek
Director, GLBT Resource Center
105 UCB, Center for Community N450
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80310
Phone: 303-492-2966
Fax: 303-735-3572
Web: www.colorado.edu/glbtrc
E-mail: wilenche(at)colorado.edu

For more information, contact: Darren Rosenblum Professor of Law Pace Law School 78 North Broadway White Plains, NY 10603 rosenblum(at)law.pace.edu View my webpage and SSRN links at: http://www.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=23191

For more information: http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/announcements/728-nov-4-5-states-of-devotion

For a PDF of the full program, click here.

This conference aims to promote and strengthen interdisciplinary dialogue about the changing role and place [...]]]> STATES OF DEVOTION:
RELIGION, NEOLIBERALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF THE BODY IN THE AMERICAS

November 4 & 5, Thursday & Friday
10 am to 7 pm

For more information: http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/announcements/728-nov-4-5-states-of-devotion

For a PDF of the full program, click here.

This conference aims to promote and strengthen interdisciplinary dialogue about the changing role and place of religious discourses and practices in the wake of the transformations wrought by neoliberal globalization upon communities, societies and polities across the Hemisphere. This event is part of a multi-year project on ‘Religion and Politics in the Americas’ funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Starting from the understanding that conceptions and models of “pluralism” or “secularism” vary across national contexts and regional geographies, we want to focus our attention on the ways in which the retraction of the state and the unrestrained acceleration of economic forces and market logics—neoliberal globalization—have transformed the experience of religiosity as well as the role and influence of religion across the Americas. As religious life has become increasingly channeled through the complex mechanisms of a neoliberal marketplace, the market has increasingly taken on roles and functions previously occupied by the state across broad social arenas. These transformations have not only affected discrete areas of social and economic policy, such as health care, education and security, but have also given rise to new private-public interfaces such as faith-based initiatives and discourses of volunteerism that have supplanted the discourses of rights. This shift has also required the production of new kinds of subjects, emblematized by the shift from citizen to consumer. We are particularly interested in the ways in which religious diversity has been variously enabled, foreclosed, harnessed and even commodified by the neoliberal state. In this context, we also wish to explore how public debates over gender and sexuality serve as flashpoints illuminating the wider workings of the state’s ongoing negotiation with religion and religious difference. Sexuality and sexual life more broadly connect individuals to the state as citizens, to the market as consumer-laborers, and to the supposedly traditional values represented by religion. But how this happens, and with what policy implications on a range of issues, will not be the same in every national context.

Confirmed participants include:

Ana Amuchástegui (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana)
Roberto J. Blancarte (Colegio de México)
Susana Cook (Independent artist)
Rafael de la Dehesa (City University of New York)
Emerson Giumbelli (Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro)
Marcial Godoy-Anativia (New York University)
Macarena Gómez-Barris (University of Southern California)
Janet Jakobsen (Barnard College)
Leda Martins (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan University)
Bethany Moreton (University of Georgia)
Kemy Oyarzún (Universidad de Chile)
Ann Pellegrini (New York University)
Anthony Petro (New York University)
Reverend Billy (The Church of Life After Shopping)
Jesusa Rodríguez (Resistencia Creativa)
Pablo Semán (IDES/Colegio de México)
Peggy Shaw (Split Britches)
Winnifred Sullivan (University of Buffalo)
Diana Taylor (New York University)
Moysés Zúñiga Santiago (Independent photojournalist)

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
Bowery @ East 5th Street

Co-sponsored by the NYU Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and CSGS and underwritten by generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.

*Picture by: Adam Peleg*