Fall 2015



Keeping America Pure: The State, the Church, & the Migrant Body

a lecture by Lois Lorentzen

September 24, Thursday
6 to 8 pm

Lois Lorentzen, Theology & Religious Studies and the Center for Latino/a Studies in the Americas, University of San Francisco

The U.S./Mexico border is the most militarized border in the world between two “friendly countries.” This unofficial war zone marks the U.S. government’s desire to keep the undocumented out. Along the same border, religious groups help migrants who have been deported or are in transit. They provide shelter, food, clothing, sturdy boots for desert crossings, phone calls home, counseling, and medical care – to most undocumented migrants, that is. When it comes to transgender sex workers and their undocumented migrant bodies, Church and State seem to be in agreement about the need for purity and good order. Faced with this twinned opposition, many undocumented migrants, and especially LGBTQ migrants, turn to “border” saints to help them on their way: the patron saint of Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe, certainly; but “rogue” saints not approved by the Catholic Church also travel with migrants: Jesus Malverde, San Toribio Romo, Santa Muerte. Based on research with deported migrants at the Nogales, AZ/Nogales, Mexico border and with transgender sex workers in San Francisco, this talk analyses the way multiple borders – of nation, sex/gender, and “deviant” saints – are being contested by church, state, and undocumented migrants.

Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics and the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation.



Margarita With a Straw (2014, 100 min., Dir. Shonali Bose & Nilesh Maniyar)

a film screening & discussion with Shonali Bose

October 2, Friday
6 to 8 pm

Screening of a feature film about a rebellious young woman with cerebral palsy who leaves India to study in New York. On her journey of self-discovery, she unexpectedly falls in love.

Film trailer here.

Cinema Studies, Michelson Theater
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Media, Culture and History; Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; Department of Cinema Studies; South Asia@NYU; Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies; and Council for the Study of Disability.



Suffragette (2015, 106 min., Dir. Sarah Gavron)

a pre-release film screening

October 5, Monday
6 pm

Inspired by true events, Suffragette movingly explores the passion and heartbreak of those who risked all they had for women’s right to vote – their jobs, their homes, their children, and even their lives. Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter, and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, lead the cast of the powerful drama about the fight for equality in early-20th-century Britain. The stirring story centers on Maud, a working wife and mother who becomes an activist for the suffragette cause alongside women from all walks of life. Suffragette is directed by BAFTA Award winner Sarah Gavron and written by Emmy Award winner Abi Morgan.

Film trailer here.

Students! Enter the My Vision, My Voice Essay Contest for a chance to win a $1,000 scholarship.: http://suffragette-myvoice.com/

NYU Cantor Film Center
36 East 8th Street

Free entry. Seating is first-come, first-served. Please bring photo ID.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Law School; Center for Media, Culture and History; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Department of Cinema Studies; College of Arts and Science; Department of History; History of Women and Gender, History Department; Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities and Diversity.



25 Years Out: Celebrating the Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY)

a forum with current & former GAPIMNY co-chairs

October 8, Thursday
7 to 9 pm

RSVP to A/P/A Institute.

Since 1990, the Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY) has worked to empower queer and trans A/P/A people to create positive change through a range of social, educational, peer-support, cultural, and political activities. On the occasion of the organization’s 25th birthday, GAPIMNY’s records, which include video footage, flyers, and more documenting queer A/P/A history in New York, have been donated to the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, where they will be preserved and made accessible to community members, researchers, and students.

Current and former GAPIMNY co-chairs offer reflections on the organization’s 25-year history and visions for the future. Tim Johnson (Head, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives) and Tim Naftali (Co-director, NYU Center for the United States and the Cold War and Associate Professor, NYU Wagner) offer welcome remarks, and an exhibition chronicling the organization’s history, curated by A/P/A Graduate Archives Scholar Paul Tran, will be on display.

NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South, 10th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute; Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; Archives and Public History Program; and LGBTQ Student Center.



‘A Celebration of the Rights of Alchemy’: Fury & Affiliation in Born in Flames

a lecture by Jayna Brown

October 13, Tuesday
6:30 to 8 pm

Jayna Brown, Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside

Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film Born in Flames is set in a post-utopian future. Ten years after a socialist revolution in the US, the voices of queer/poor/women of color are still not heard, their demands not recognized by the state.  Led by radical lesbians, a Women’s Army is formed, despite the protests of socialist feminists, and thwarting the covert surveillance of the state. Hijacking the airwaves through two unlicensed radio stations, djs Honey and Isabelle broadcast the revolution–this time anarchistic, not grounded in a politics of recognition or redress but in forms of affiliation based in collective rage and love. The pirated radio transmission of music and message creates an alternate bandwidth, signaling the porousness between this world and the world that is possible. This talk is dedicated to a feminism that dances, and screams and blows things up.

Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Performance Studies.



Sexy Motherf**ker: Queering Incest & the Mother

a lecture by Amber Jamilla Musser

October 29, Thursday
6:30 to 8 pm

Amber Jamilla Musser, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Washington University

If homosexuality is the love that dare not speak its name, this talk argues that incest, in the form of taboo and metaphor, offers a plethora of possibilities for thinking desires, belonging, and gender. It examines the fantasies and schisms that appear when we queer our love for our parents. Beginning with an inquiry into queers’ attachment to daddy and the state, this talk positions incest at the center of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s and Judith Butler’s queer break from feminism. It then asks what it might mean to love the mother instead, and it begins to approach ways of doing so by using Audre Lorde to rethink Oedipus, lesbian feminism, and touch.

Social & Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Social & Cultural Analysis.



Haze Him! White Heteromasculinity, Anal Resilience, & the Erotic Spectacle of Repulsion

a lecture by Jane Ward

November 10, Tuesday
6:30 to 8 pm

PLEASE NOTE VENUE CHANGE: 19 West 4th Street, room 101

Jane Ward, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California, Riverside

This talk examines the function and effects of homosexual contact in the hazing rituals of the United States military. Juxtaposing documented military hazing rituals with scenes of hazing in the widely popular series of “reality” internet porn, HazeHim.com, Ward considers how male-male anal penetration has been framed as a practice of hetero-masculine resilience, one to be suffered with performative repulsion and endurance. While the spectacle of homophobic repulsion is often offered as evidence of the non-erotic nature of hazing, a reading of gay hazing porn—wherein flaccid penises, expressions of disgust and repulsion, and homophobic outbursts take on erotic currency as signals of the authentic heterosexuality—illuminates a more harmonious relationship between heteromasculine repulsion and homosexual desire. Ward argues that in both examples, the hazing undertaken by the U.S. military and the hazing eroticized in gay porn, the whiteness of male participants is central to the homosocial narrative, wherein utterly normal white boys are offered the opportunity to inoculate themselves against sincere homosexuality and enemy perversion, and to demonstrate their allegiance to a white brotherhood.

19 West 4th Street, Room 101

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Social & Cultural Analysis.



Youth Hostelling with Vaginal Davis

with special guest Susanne Sachsse & moderated by Tavia Nyong’o

November 17, Tuesday
7 to 8:30 pm

Vaginal Davis, performer, artist

Susanne Sachsse, performer, artist

Tavia Nyong’o, Performance Studies, New York University

This performative interview with artists Vaginal Davis and Susanne Sachsse is timed to coincide with Vaginal Davis’s staging of The Magic Flute at NYU. Both artistes will be on hand to discuss their current and past collaborations as part of the Cheap Collective, Berlin: collaborations that include the original evening-length melodrama, Communist Bigamist. Decrypt masonic symbols! Learn more about Dr. Davis’s namesake! Exult in the sheer force of Ms. Sachsse’s presence!

Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & SexualityDepartment of Performance Studies, & 80WSE Galleries.



Transgender & Orthodox: Life Stories at the Intersection of Gender and Religion

a lecture by Oriol Poveda

December 3, Thursday
5 to 6:30 pm

Oriol Poveda, PhD candidate, Theology and Uppsala Religion & Research Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden

B​ased on interviews and observations in Israel and North America among transgender Jews with Orthodox backgrounds, both ​current and former, Poveda will discuss the ambivalence of Orthodox Judaism in the life stories of the participants, and how people view and experience religious change in relation to trans issues in the Orthodox world.

Religious Studies Seminar Room
726 Broadway, Room 542

Organized by the NYU Center for Religion and Media and the Religion and Society Research Centre (CRS) at Uppsala University, in partnership with the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research & Higher Education (STINT). Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Religious Studies Program.



Love in the Middle East: The Contradictions of Romance in the Facebook World

a lecture by Roger O. Friedland

December 10, Thursday
5 to 6:30 pm

Roger O. Friedland, Visiting Professor, Media, Culture, & Communication, New York University

Romantic love is a social fact in the Muslim world. It is also a gender politics impinging on religious and patriarchal understandings of female modesty and agency. This paper analyzes the rise of love as a basis of mate selection in a number of Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Iran, Palestine, Tunisia and Turkey where we have conducted web-based anonymous surveys of Facebook users. Young people increasingly want love in their married lives, but they and the communities in which they live remain uncomfortable with the mating practices through which such love has traditionally been achieved in the Western world. The talk will explore the religious contradictions and the gender politics of this modern heterosexual love.

Roger Friedland will discuss his essay “Love in the Middle East: the Contradictions of Romance in the Facebook World,” co-authored with Janet Afary, Paolo Gardinali and Cambria Naslund.

MCC Commons
239 Greene Street, 8th Floor

Organized by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Media, Culture, & Communication.