Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities and Other Queer Crossings, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Introduction (original) (raw)

Queer and Feminist Strategies in Performance\Art

Queer and feminist strategies in Performance\Art are still excluded from the writing of Performance History in Europe today. This article argues why those strategies have been in the center of Performance Art from its beginnings. And it theorizes strategies of inclusion from a feminist point of view.

Queer(y)ing the Exhibition: A Critical Analysis

According to Michael Birchall (2014), the role of visual activist artists has become integral to contemporary curatorial strategies because curators are increasingly using exhibitions, and the practice of curating, as mechanisms and platforms for knowledge diffusion. Brenson (1998:16-17) concurs that the role of the curator, within the contemporary art world, has undergone transformation; moving from a “behind-the-scenes aesthetic arbiter to [a] central player in the broader stage of global cultural politics”. As such, the new curator recognises the capacity of art to communicate, to facilitate, to mobilise, and to encourage conversations surrounding issues that inform the contemporary milieu. Curators, like visual activist artists, can similarly give voice to social issues by focusing their exhibitions, their use of space and the selection of artworks and art objects to rethink “[ideologies], methodologies and iconographies both for what they do say, and for what do not say” (Reilly, 2011:22). Co-curators Dr Laura De Becker and Leigh Blackenberg, partnering with Haley McEwen from the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, staged an exhibition, titled "queer and trans Art-iculations: Collaborative Art for Social Change" (2014), featuring artworks by South African social and art activists, Zanele Muholi and Gabrielle Le Roux. The exhibition, as an intervention sought to address the ongoing violence and hate crimes faced by black members of the South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community. Showcasing artworks from Muholi’s ongoing "Mo(u)rning" project, which aims to memorialise the lives of deceased queer womxn of colour, and Le Roux’s "Proudly African & Transgender" (2008-2010) and "Proudly Trans in Turkey" (2010-present) series, two bodies of work “combin[ing] art and activism to… promote social justice” for transgender persons globally. The exhibition highlighted “the importance of art activism as a means to [address] the need for locally situated knowledge and action around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity” (Haysom, 2014:1; Le Roux, 2013:54). Quoted in Blackenberg and McEwen (2014:62), the curators stated that the discursive or theoretical framework, which informed queer and trans Art-iculations’ (2014) curatorial strategy, was based on Steyn’s (2010:50-81) theory of conscientisation. Conceptualised as a method for mobilising critical consciousness, the theory is concerned with a person’s acknowledgement and questioning of how power – in relation to privilege and oppression – operates within social and political discourses, whilst recognising the implications of emotional and affective responses on such discourses; “conscientisation… is both cognitive and affective, and, above all, relational [in its process” (Steyn, 2010:74). Following this framework, the exhibition established a space for viewers to learn and critically engage with issues of discrimination faced by South African queer communities through representations of lived experience. Additionally, the Wits Art Museum (WAM) gallery became a safe environment in which sexuality, sexual diversity and gender could be expressed, discussed and celebrated (McEwen & Milani, 2014:4-5). While the exhibition served as a ‘creative rupture’ to address the injustice and intolerance faced by queer people in South Africa, it could be said that the exhibition addressed the decolonisation of gender within South African discourse. The artistic representations exhibited critique, interrogate and re-negotiate ‘traditional’ heteronormative understandings of gender binaries and sexual identities (Haysom, 2014:2; McEwen & Milani, 2014:5; Wits Art Museum, n.d.). The intention of this essay is to critically examine and unpack how queer and trans Art-iculations (2014) established a framework for the decolonisation of gender and sexuality. Initially, the essay briefly contextualises an approach towards the decolonisation of gender and sexuality. Secondly, the text explores how the inclusion of specific bodies of work, by Muholi and Le Roux, “can be seen as the beginning of a decolonising [gender and sexuality] project that emerges from Africa” (Milani, 2014:75). Finally, it investigates how the engagement and use of a Comments Wall, by the exhibition’s visitors to express their responses, promoted discussions and dialogues surrounding the social and political complexities of gender and sexual diversities.

Graduate Seminar: Transgender Methods for the History of Art and Performance (Spring 2023)

This seminar will introduce methods from transgender studies, asking how histories of art and performance can be reviewed through gender's multiplicity and mutability. Topics include the recovery of histories of transgender subjects, the capacity of nonbinary or transformational genders to change how we view all archives, and the methods and impact of historians (both trans and non-trans) who center gender's transformability and variability. This seminar is coordinated with the lecture series "Global Histories and Transgender Studies in the Humanities," organized by David Getsy and Cole Rizki for the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures at the University of Virginia, Spring 2023.

The Thin Line Between Modernity and Tradition in Queer Performance

BlackFlash Magazine issue 38.3, 2022

Referencing social media works by African, Muslim, non-binary trans artist Maroodi, Abdi Osman discusses the ways in which the legacies of colonialism and imperialism shape debates on sexual minority cultures in the African, Black, and Muslim worlds.

Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble [Sept 2018–Jan 2019]

The Archive [of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art], 2017

Preview article for the retrospective exhibition of the same name, to be held at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (New York), 29 September 2018 – 27 January 2019. ABSTRACT: Performance artist, playwright, and fashion designer Stephen Varble (1946-1984) was a fixture on the streets of SoHo in the 1970s, but his ephemeral practice has largely gone unrecognized in histories of art. Varble's guerrilla practice aimed at disruption -- of commerce, of gender roles, and of the institutions of art and celebrity. In elaborate sculptural garments made of street trash, Varble held unauthorized gallery tours through SoHo and protest performances in banks, Fifth Avenue stores, and in the street. A favorite of photographers such as Peter Hujar, Fred McDarrah, Greg Day, and Jimmy DeSana, Varble's art performed gender transformation and hybridity for both popular and art audiences in the 1970s. A book based on the exhibition is under contract, with an expected release of 2020. https://www.leslielohman.org/project/rubish-and-dreams-the-genderqueer-performance-of-stephen-varble/

Performing Spaces: Staging Resistance, Gendered Cartographies and Self

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture

The paper aims to explore the self in different performative spaces, which includes theatre, dance, music, and posters. In doing so it tends to analyze how the “spaces” are being refilled by defining the “hidden narratives” of the self through performances. The performances are not just for entertainment rather the aim is to expose the hidden spaces of the society where bodies with pride are produced. The spaces are liberating and empowering in nature through which multiple narratives are perceived, conceived and lived. Considering performative space as a space where gender binaries can be unsettled, the work reveals how certain performances bolster one to rethink about the social conventions of gender. The performative body becomes a medium through which the idea of self, sexuality, space, gender, and culture can be looked upon. The body experiencing the sense of ‘homelessness’ within its own being goes into the quest for the discovery of the self, which is underlined with an expr...

Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities (12-13 April 2018, University of Oxford) - CFP

Call for Papers ‘Reed / slashed and torn / but doubly rich’ – H.D. After the resounding success of the first Queer Modernism(s) conference in 2017, we are excited to announce the CfP for Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities, set to be held on 12-13 April 2018 at the University of Oxford. Queer Modernism(s) II is an interdisciplinary, international conference exploring the place of queer identity in modernist art, literature, and culture, with an emphasis on intersecting identities. Panellists are invited to question, discuss, and interrogate the social, sexual, romantic, artistic, affective, legal and textual relationship between queer identity and modernity. The CfP closes 18 December 2017. Decisions will be made in early January. We are delighted to announce that our Keynotes will be Dr. Sandeep Parmar (University of Liverpool) and Dr. Jana Funke (University of Exeter). Dr. Parmar is a BBC New Generation thinker, and has published widely on women’s literature in the 20th century, especially lesser known and non-canonical women. Dr. Funke is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities in the English Department at the University of Exeter and a Wellcome Trust Investigator. Her research cuts across modernist studies, the history of sexuality and the history of science. She has published on modernist women’s writing, the history of sexual science and queer literature and history. We are further thrilled to announce that Queer Modernism(s) II will include a workshop on ‘Queer Historiography and Heritage’ run by Heather Green. Heather is a librarian, curator, and archivist who has worked extensively on figures such as E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and Lord Byron. ________________________________________ The early twentieth century saw sweeping changes in legislature, politics, and lifestyle for queer people. More than ever, LGBTQ+ citizens faced penal repercussions for their behaviour, as well as public scrutiny. In 1895, art collided with the judicial system as the trial of Oscar Wilde scandalised the press, succeeded by censorship against the likes of Radclyffe Hall and Federico García Lorca. At the same time, queerness became a political issue. Throughout the 1900s, governments codified and legislated sex work, same-sex relations, queer bodies, and women’s reproductive rights. After the outbreak of war in 1914, there were global concerns that homosexuality was a disease, spreading through the dug-outs like tuberculosis. The New Woman sparked a wave of lesbian panic, as feminine ideals were cast aside in favour of driving, smoking and dancing. Political upheaval throughout the world saw queer rights used as a bargaining tool as new governments came to power. In the same period however, LGBTQ+ citizens were establishing sites of resistance against social norms and state intervention. The Hirschfeld Institute was set up as a means of studying non-normative sexual behaviour and gender identity, pushing for the German government to legalise same-sex acts between men as they had in South America. Around the corner boy-bars flourished in Berlin, notoriously outrageous and cherished by figures of the silver screen. In Paris, Gertrude Stein and Natalie Clifford Barney set up influential salons, whilst The Rocky Twins made their debut performance as The Dolly Sisters. Across the pond, Gladys Bentley crooned about women, while the infamous ball scene began to lay its roots. Early queer theory rippled through both the arts and science. Myriad new terminology appeared, ‘cures’ for inversion came to light, Havelock Ellis published his theories of sexuality, sex reassignment was pioneered in Russia and Freud played analyst to many modernists. Writers and artists from Larsen to Forster to McKay to Bryher to Thurman to Tatsumi to Isherwood to Baker explored queer themes implicitly and explicitly within their work, many of which remain radical today. Nevertheless, sexuality and modernity are not neatly packaged. Queerness is explored, troubled, empowered, frustrated, and intrumentalised by illness, class, nationality, race, work, disability, citzenship, gender, technology, language, age, religion and countless other forms of identity. One need only look to Bloomsbury, Cairo, Harlem, the Left Bank or Tokyo to be confronted by innumerable examples of these. Queer Modernism(s) II seeks to unpackage such identities through panel discussion, roundtables, and seminars. The conference invites discussion of the ways in which modernists negotiate the concept of queerness within their work, with particular attention to intersectional identities. Topics may include, but are not limited to: • Friendships, Romances, Patronage • Camp • Life-writing and Biography • The Intersection of Sexuality and Race, Class, Gender and/or Disability • Psychology and Sexology • Early / Late / New Modernism(s) • Sapphisms • Pride • Queer Spaces / Sites of Resistance • Sex Work • Queer Culture • Religions and Spirituality • Femininities / Masculinities • Drag • Formal and Aesthetic Responses to Queerness • Kink • Civil Rights and Legal Standing • Ball Culture • The Death Drive and Pleasure Principle • Shame • Trans and Non-Binary Identities • Queer Historiographies / Queer Geographies / Queer Linguistics • Sexual Deviance and Inversion • Femme and Butch Presentation • Pornography • (B)identities • Rumours, Gossip and Slander • Ecologies ________________________________________ Papers Individual papers should be fifteen minutes in length. To apply, please send an abstract of no more than 500 words to queermodernism@gmail.com as well as a brief biography of no more than 200 words. Panels Panel presentations should be forty-five minutes in length. To apply, please send an abstract of no more than 800 words to queermodernism@gmail.com as well as a brief biography of no more than 200 words per person. Submissions are open to all MA and PhD students, as well as ECRs and academics.

Queering Gender, Art & Culture in an Age of Media Convergence

Sage Handbook of Cultural Sociology , 2016

Cultural examinations focusing on the spheres of the Fine Arts and popular media forms – within sociology, gender studies and cultural studies – have primarily focused on how gender roles affect the ability to fully participate in all aspects of culture, or how media representations have promoted essentialist and heteronormative narratives and visual imagery. Much of the scholarship thus far has looked at culture and gender from a traditional binary perspective (high/low, male/female, production/reception). However, the recent emergence of the interdisciplinary field of queer studies (within the last decade) and the study of post-internet participatory media culture(s) offer new conceptual and empirical terrain to explore gender and sexuality. Radical feminist and queer media forms challenge us to reconsider the creation, distribution and reception of culture, and present opportunities to resist, and in some cases pervert, dominant narratives, policies and ways of seeing.