Chapter List and Contributor Biogs; Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities and Other Queer Crossings (original) (raw)

“Drag Kinging” emerged in the United States in ‘80s as a practice enacted by people – generally, but not necessarily, assigned “female” at birth – who intentionally performed masculinit(ies) on the stage, in workshops such as the “legendary” Man for a Day by Diane Torr, or in different contexts and settings. At the end of the ‘90s Drag King workshops and performances spread in various European countries. Drawing on our research and personal experience with Drag Kinging in Italy, this contribution aims to develop some reflections on the relationship between “drag” and trans politics. Drag kings are “canonically” inserted in the “breathless list” (Connell 2012) of subjectivities forming the “transgender umbrella”. Nonetheless a number of trans* activists and scholars have discussed the possible limits embedded in the idea of conflating different experiences and subject positions as well as the possible side effects of the political use of Drag as an embodied practice that immediately highlights the “performativity of gender”, as in Butler (1990). Taking these critiques as a starting point, this article will try to explore the possibilities for anti-transphobic politics from the location of drag practices.

Introduction by Jude Woods and Nina Kane. The book includes contributions from speakers who participated in the Agender: Female and Transgendered Masculinities Conference (Leeds Art Gallery, June 2014) and performers, artists and theorists interested in the queer and gender politics opened up by the theme. It focuses primarily on the development of queer cultures of art, dance, theatre and performance arts in Europe in the C20th, and current issues of concern in the C21st, and will contextualise this in a wider history of gender. Most of the submissions focus explicitly on the gender binary and explore constructions of masculinity, femininity and issues relating to Transgender or Transsexual experience as mediated through the arts. It also contains a number of chapters pertaining to the work of artists Marlowe Moss and Claude Cahun - exhibited in the 'Parallel Lives' exhibition held at Leeds Art Gallery (April - Sept 2014), and the impetus for the original conference. There is a focus on galleries and the presence (or absence) of queer work in gallery practice and programming, and in the wider cultural canons of art history and performance. The book has been commissioned by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and is co-authored / co-edited by Dr Nina Kane,and Jude Woods as part of the conclusion to the PoMoGaze project and Queer Eye Partnership (Leeds Art Gallery and Cast-Off Drama, 2013-2015). Published 1st June 2017.

This chapter is from a collection of essays, 'Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities' edited by Dr Nina Kane and Jude Woods for Cambridge Scholars Publishing (June 2017). In this, Dr Kane explores the potential of Tennyson’s literary figure The Lady of Shalott and J.W. Waterhouse’s 1894 painting of the subject to act as a creative catalyst for exploration of the gender binary and gender crossings. Drawing specifically on her own life-model theatre practice (essentially dramaturgical and performative), on the gallery education and community projects of Cast-Off Drama and referencing the visual arts work of Phil Sayers, Margaret Harrison and Tony Bevan, Kane charts a progression of the life-model performer from one side of the binary (female) to the other (male). This Trans*tastic passing is enabled through shifting identification with both the Lady of the poem and Lancelot, the Knight, and is presented to the reader here in a rhizomatic and hairy weaving of textual and visual threads. If citing this chapter, please do so as follows: N. Kane, 'Trans*tastic Morphologies: Life-Modelling Theatre and The Lady of Shalott.' In N. Kane and J. Woods (eds.), Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.

This is the catalogue to an exhibition of the same name, which took place at the Worshipful Company of Mercers and Leeds University Art Gallery. It presents fifty outstanding artworks by fifty British Women artists working between 1900 - 1950. There is an introductory essay by curator, Sacha Llewellyn, and fifty commentaries about each picture by fifty different writers. The exhibition marks the centenary of the Representation of the People's Act, and aims to readdress the dominant 'master' narrative of British art history.

The article offers a meditation on the symbol of the 'wolf in sheep's clothing', and notes how this has re-emerged as a cultural archetype recently in 'desire-led intimacy' cases between young ciswoman and their non-cis partners. It focuses on the recent cases of Gemma Barker and Gayle Newland. It asks how theatre and community arts can engage with this emergence and with the issues raised by these cases, and proposes a blueprint for a project combining theatre, mask and social networking engagement as a model through which young LGBT* people might explore queer issues and identity. This article reworks an earlier paper on the Gemma Barker case given at York University (see below Bera Conference, 9 Dec 2014).

This paper examines two novels (Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas) as monstrous Neo-Victorian texts. Both mimic the patchwork nature of many Victorian novels, but are fragmented and self-consciously deformed in a wholly postmodern way. These monstrous texts (which contain examples of monstrosity and trauma on many levels) argue against the assumption that the Victorian era formed a haven of coherence and self-assuredness. In both their form and contents, Poor Things and Cloud Atlas also question the academic process of historical reconstruction and revision. Rather than building on the foundations of the Victorian establishment, I argue that these texts are actively engaged in tearing it down—or more accurately, deconstructing it. Ultimately, this paper shows how historiographic metafiction (specifically Neo-Victorian fiction) uses trauma to rewrite the past (and sometimes to pre-write the future) in order to validate both the individual and broader cultural present of the reader. Rather than seeking comfort in the completeness of a Victorian past, Neo-Victorian texts like Poor Things and Cloud Atlas find comfort in its illusory nature.

This intervention addresses the importance of the performative body in queer activist movements in Italy and explores the role of space in its articulation. More specifically, it tackles the issue of how queer bodies are produced in academic spaces as opposed to activist spaces and what makes the queer body of the researcher out of place in academia, notwithstanding the fact that the US tradition describes queer theory development as arising from queer activism and performance. This question takes inspiration from the case of Zarra Bonheur, an Italian collective creation initiated by academic/performer Rachele Borghi, whose agenda is to turn scientific research into performances. Rachele’s performative talk at the University of Bordeaux, in which she undresses, making her naked body visible as integral part of the content of her class on queer body and space, stirred a bulk of attacks and troubled academia. In order to understand why, this paper reflect on the still strong boundaries existing between academia and activism, that is between what should be personal and private (sexuality, nudity) as opposed to what should be public; between high culture and low culture and between what can be done or not done in research and in its transmission. Such a reflection exposes the contradictions intrinsic in the making of queer in academia and suggests ways to reconsider reflexivity and the place of body, emotions and networks of relationships in this space. Eventually, as queer academics we should be contesting not only the outside but the within, and not only by means of our ideas but also by means of our enmeshed bodies.

Saturday June 17th, panel 15F "Dante's reders: a material approach", S. Argurio - V. Rovere, Il Dante del Grifo: l’incunabolo della Commedia fra miniature e glosse