Spring 2012


 

Anti-trafficking and Rehabilitation Discourses: A Case Study in HIV/AIDS Intervention Strategies in India

a lunch talk with Satarupa Dasgupta

January 27, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Satarupa Dasgupta, Postdoctoral and Transition Program for Academic Diversity Fellow, New York University

Articulation of sex work entails the commonly observed connection between sex work and trafficking, proposed delegitimization of sex work, and rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers. I analyze the policy documents of global aid organizations and legislations, and examine the case of Sonagachi Project, a HIV/AIDS intervention program that targets sex workers in one of the largest red light districts of South Asia. The project is spearheaded by the sex workers themselves, who act as peer outreach workers, and there are no external organizations involved. By conducting interviews with commercial female sex workers from Sonagachi area I examine the sex workers’ perspectives on the articulation of trafficking and sex work, anti-trafficking legislations in India, the delegitimization and criminalization of sex work, rescue and rehabilitation propositions for sex workers, compulsion and abuse in sex work, and the reasons for pursuing sex work as a profession. I also assess the strategies adopted by the Sonagachi Project to restrict trafficking and the entry of unwilling and minor individuals in sex work.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor Gallery

between University Place and Broadway

wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!


Cabaret of Confusion: Political Performance and the Work of Variety

 

 

a lunch talk with T.L. Cowan

 

 

February 8, Wednesday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

T.L. Cowan, Women’s and Gender Studies and English, University of Saskatchewan; Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University

The cabaret—or, more broadly, the variety show—is arguably the most open and resilient form of live expressive culture in radical feminist and queer scenes in North America. It is, at once, an eclectic, genre-troubling performance space; a vital, if incoherent, form of entertainment and social commentary; a community-building and sustaining set of activities; a dynamic, responsive and transformative site of political activism and aesthetic innovation; and, ultimately, a mode of existence and way of knowing that is both produced by, and produces, radical feminist and queer lives. Central to my work on the contemporary variety show is the concept of “cabaret consciousness”: a mobile ontology and episteme that privileges unpredictability, pleasure, risk, excess, failure, challenge and confusion, characteristics of the cabaret that are mutually constitutive with their translocal radical feminist and queer scenes. This paper will consider the ways in which the variety format of cabaret reminds us of the importance of confusion. I suggest that a feminist and queer “cabaret consciousness” is a mode of living, being and knowing in confusion; to apprehend the mutually constitutive relationship between political cabaret and feminist and queer scenes across North America, for example, is to apprehend confusion as a political/erotic/social affective register shared across demographic and geographic borders.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor Gallery

between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

image: 2boys.tv perform “Hot Voodoo” in Chiapas, Mexico, 2010. Photo by Marlene Ramirez Cancio. Photo Courtesy of the Artists.


Sex, Empire, and Literature in the Anglo-American World, 1700-2020: Henry Abelove and “The Gay Science”

a two-day conference with Henry Abelove, Rebecca Connor, Jasper Cragwall, Douglas Crimp, Lisa Duggan, Phil Harper, Neville Hoad, Allan Isaac, Janet Jakobsen, Michael Lucey, Steven Maynard, Tavia Nyong’o, Claire Potter, Daniel Rosenberg, Michael Roth, Todd Shepard, Marc Stein, Michael Trask, and Dorothy Wang

February 16 & 17, Thursday & Friday

For more information: abelove.wordpress.com

Thursday, February 16
5 to 8 pm

Fales Library and Special Collections
70 Washington Square South, 3rd Floor

5 to 5:15 pm Welcome

5:15 to 6:45 pm Panel 1: Pedagogy

Chair: Claire Potter (Wesleyan University)

Panelists:

Steven Maynard (Queen’s University)

Tavia Nyong’o (New York University)

Michael Roth (Wesleyan University)

Todd Shepard (Johns Hopkins University)

7 to 8 pm Reception

8:30 Participant dinner reservation

*******

Friday, February 17
10 am to 6 pm

The Humanities Initiative
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor

10 to 11:30 am Panel 2: Eighteenth Century

Chair: Marc Stein (York University)

Panelists:

Rebecca Connor (Hunter College)

Jasper Cragwall (Loyola University)

Daniel Rosenberg (University of Oregon)

11:30 to 1 pm lunch

1 to 2:30 Panel 3: Poetry and Literature

Chair: Allan Isaac (Rutgers University)

Panelists:

Phil Harper (New York University)

Michael Trask (University of Kentucky)

Dorothy Wang (Williams College)

2:30 to 2:45 pm Break

2:45 to 4:15 pm Panel 4: Queer Studies

Chair: Lisa Duggan (New York University)

Panelists:

Janet Jakobsen (Barnard College)

Michael Lucey (University of California, Berkeley)

Neville Hoad (University of Texas, Austin)

4:15 to 4:30 pm Break

4:30 to 5:30 pm Keynote: Douglas Crimp (University of Rochester)

5:30 to 6 pm Closing Remarks from Henry Abelove (Wesleyan University, visiting New York University, Spring 2012)

Co-sponsored by the Departments of Performance Studies, English, and Social & Cultural Analysis; the Programs in American Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies; the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; Fales Library and the Humanities Initiative at NYU.


Czech Mates: When Shakespeare Met Kafka

a lecture by Marjorie Garber

February 21, Tuesday

6 to 7:30 pm

Marjorie Garber, English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

Hemmerdinger Hall
31 Washington Place

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Department of English


Dr. Ghislaine Pussait’s Homobonobo Project

a performance by Shelly Mars

March 1, Thursday
6 to 7:30 pm

Shelly Mars, solo performance artist

followed by a discussion led by:

Una Chaudhuri, English, New York University

Carolyn Dinshaw, English and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

A multi-media presentation in the style of a keynote lecture by the self-important Dr. Pussait, a Belgian ethologist and Bonobo expert.

The piece playfully questions the limits of scientific approaches to understanding animal (and human) behavior.

Queer studies meets Animal Studies meets Posthumanism to take on the imperial history of scientific racialization.

19 University Place
Room 102

For more information about the Homobonobo Project, click here.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies Initiative; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Joe A Callaway Series in Dramatic Literature of the Department of English; and Department of Performance Studies


The Multiple Futures of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: The Sequel

a panel discussion with Kandice Chuh, Lisa Duggan, Ann Pellegrini, Sarita Echavez See, & Alexandra Vazquez

March 7, Wednesday
6 to 8 pm

Kandice Chuh, English, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Lisa Duggan, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Ann Pellegrini, Performance Studies and Religious Studies, New York University

Sarita Echavez See, Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis

Alexandra Vazquez, African American Studies and English, Princeton

Back by popular demand, this evening forum addresses the dilemmas and possibilities of women’s and gender studies in the contemporary corporate university, with an eye to intellectual and institutional alliances with other disciplines devoted to the study of intersectionality, such as queer studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. What are the challenges currently facing the fields of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies?

You can see a video of the conversation held last fall at Barnard Center for Research on Women here.

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

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Department of Social and Cultural Analysis; and by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and the Revolutionizing American Studies Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center


Show & Prove: The Tensions, Contradictions, & Possibilities of Hip Hop Studies in Practice

a two-day conference

 

 

March 30, Friday
5 to 7 pm

March 31, Saturday
8:30 am to 8 pm

For more information, please email cmep(at)nyu.edu.

Registration for the conference must be completed by filling out this FORM.

Show and Prove 2012 (S&P 2012) provides an opportunity for a community of scholars, practitioners, and Hip Hop lovers to come together and address the challenges and possibilities of the field of Hip Hop Studies. We consider what is at stake as the academy’s increasing adoption of Hip Hop into its curriculum leads to a mutual adaptation. The conference takes seriously Hip Hop’s own creative, theoretical, and political imperatives, while bringing critical perspectives to the very cultures we seek to understand. This year’s focus is on intersectionality and methodology.

Several papers, panels, and performances are of particular interest to CSGS, including papers on domestic violence and community accountability, the sexual politics of Hip Hop Studies, gender and sexuality in dance, masculinity, intersections of gender and nationality in Tongan Hip Hop, black female youth in Hip Hop, Latinas in the Cuban rap scene, and a women in Hip Hop festival at LaMama Experimental Theater. The conference will also include a one-woman show by Dr. Nicole Hodges-Persley and two films by women directors: Hip Hop Gurlz directed by Tamika Guishard, and Cuban Hip Hop: Desde El Principio (From the Beginning) by Vanessa Diaz.

various locations — see full schedule for details.

 

 

Co-Sponsored by the NYU Center for Multicultural Education and Programs; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Department of Performance Studies; Hip-Hop Education Center; LGBTQ Student Center; Program in Africana Studies; Program in American Studies; Program in Asian/Pacific/American Studies; and Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies


Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love

a performance piece

April 3, Tuesday
6 to 8 pm

Coming Out Muslim is a poignant performance piece that captures stories and experiences of being at the intersections of Islam and queerness and its relationship to family, lovers, one’s sense of self and relationship with our faith.

The stories range from tales about other people’s theories about where queerness comes from, the gifts of being queer and Muslim, the tension between one’s culture and religion, and love—romantic and spiritual.

Kimmel Center for University Life
60 Washington Square South
Shorin Performance Studio, Room 802

Bring an NYU or an official ID to get into the building.

Facebook event page here.

Co-sponsored by the NYU LGBTQ Student Services Office; Center for Spiritual Life; the Center for Multicultural Education and Program’s Multiple Identity Series; and Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.


Cleaving to the Scene of Shame: Stigmatized Childhoods in The End of Alice and Two Girls, Fat and Thin

a lecture by Kaye Mitchell

April 4, Wednesday
6 to 7:30 pm

Kaye Mitchell, American Studies and English, University of Manchester

respondent: Heather Love, English, University of Pennsylvania

moderator: Ann Pellegrini, Performance Studies and Religious Studies, New York University

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

Co-sponsored by the NYU Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.


The Fetishism of Colonial Commodities and the Intimacies of Four Continents

a lecture by Lisa Lowe

April 5, Thursday (rescheduled from March 22)
4 to 6 pm

Lisa Lowe, Comparative Literature, UC San Diego

This lecture revisits Marx’s fetishism of commodities and nineteenth-century liberal policies of “free trade” in relation to products (like tea, sugar, cottons, and opium) that expressed the colonial and imperial relations between Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

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

Co-sponsored by the NYU Program in Asian/Pacific/American Studies and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.


The Gender and Sexual Politics of End-of-Life Care

a panel discussion with Susan Gerbino, Amber Hollibaugh, Ann Neumann, and Ai-Jen Poo

April 10, Tuesday
6 to 8 pm

Women – whether wives, mothers, daughters, or female (under)paid home or hospital healthcare workers – are disproportionately responsible for caring for the infirm and elderly in US society. This burden of care involves both extraordinary physical and emotional labor; sometimes it is paid (usually poorly); sometimes it is not. So many other issues to do with race, class, and national origin are implicated in this gendered burden. Our four panelists are uniquely positioned to address these issues and to help us collectively to ask, how the organization, provision, and imagination of healthcare across a lifespan would have to shift — for patients and for healthcare workers who do the hard labor of care — if we as a society sought to provide improved conditions under which the process of dying unfolds.

Susan Gerbino, Social Work, New York University

Amber Hollibaugh, Co-Executive Director, Queers for Economic Justice

Ann Neumann, Editor, The Revealer and journalist

Ai-Jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

moderator: Robert Campbell, Associate Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality

Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Room 612

Susan Gerbino is Clinical Associate Professor at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. She is currently the Coordinator of Silver’s Westchester Campus and is the Director of the Post-Masters Certificate Program in Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Dr. Gerbino has a private practice specializing in work with people with chronic or life-threatening illnesses and complicated bereavement.

Amber Hollibaugh is the co-executive director of Queers for Economic Justice and has a long and distinguished history of organizing around health care as a social justice issue. Among other things she is the past director of National Initiatives at SAGE — Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders.

Ann Neumann is a journalist, a hospice volunteer, and editor of The Revealer, a publication of NYU’s Center for Religion and Media. She has written about health care and end of life care for The Nation, AlterNet and other publications and is currently writing a book about how Americans die.

Ai-Jen Poo is the director and visionary leader of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which has recently introduced a campaign, Caring Across Generations, which connects the pressing need for quality care for the elderly to labor issues affecting healthcare workers and the gender and racial politics of just who (that is, whose bodies) does the labor of home health care.

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


No Look Pass

a film screening

April 13, Friday
8 to 11 pm

No Look Pass is the coming-of-age American Dream story of Emily ‘Etay’ Tay, a first generation Burmese immigrant from Chinatown, Los Angeles, who breaks all of the rules of tradition. After living a double life at Harvard University, she strives to play professional basketball in Germany while coming out as a lesbian. Emily’s dreams are no slam-dunk — family, race, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell conspire against her, firing her passions on and off the court.

Kimmel Center for University Life
60 Washington Square South
Shorin Performance Studio, Room 802

Bring an NYU or an official ID to get into the building.

Facebook event page here.

Co-sponsored by the NYU LGBTQ Student Services Office; Center for Multicultural Education; Office of International Students and Scholars; and Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.


Religion, Sexuality and AIDS: All the News That’s Fit to Print?

The Lerner Workshop in Religion and Society at NYU, Inaugural Lecture by Diane Winston

Thursday, April 26
6 to 7:30 pm

Diane Winston, Knight Chair, Media and Religion, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California

Winston examines three newspapers, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Morning News, to consider the impact of AIDS coverage especially on reporting about religion and sexuality. What began in 1981 as a brief about an unusual cancer occurring among homosexual men, soon became more than a medical story as AIDS exposed social and cultural fault lines in the nation. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual community also made it a story about sexuality and religion since, in 1981, the majority of American Christians believed that the Bible forbade homosexuality. By 1983, an emergent medical/moral frame for the disease made religion an integral part of the story in three dominant tropes: AIDS as a punishment for immorality, as a pastoral challenge for denominations, and as a spiritual trial for the afflicted.

Jurow Hall
31 Washington Place, 1st Floor

For further information contact religious.studies(at)nyu.edu.

Sponsored by Religious Studies, co-sponsored by Center for Religion and Media; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality Studies; and the Dean of the College of Arts and Science.


The Production of Military Sexuality: Sexual Risk Behavior and HIV in Foreign Military Personnel

a lunch talk by Michael Anastario

April 27, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Michael Anastario, CSGS Visiting Scholar

Military personnel worldwide are becoming increasingly regarded as a population that is at risk for HIV infection and other Sexually Transmitted Infections. Despite current public health programs, there is little understanding of how the military occupation is itself implicated in the sexual risk behaviors of soldiers. A grounded theoretical framework can be used to better elucidate how the military occupation is linked with the sexual risk behavior of soldiers employed in it. It also reveals conflicting discourse(s) and the multiple stakes evident in the production of military sexuality. Conducting sexual risk research using a grounded theoretical framework has applied and theoretical value – it directly informs HIV prevention efforts, and it illustrates some of the social mechanisms by which individuals in a population make sense of their sexual behavior.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor, Room 741

between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th & 12th Streets

Bring your lunch — we’ll provide beverages and dessert!