Spring 2017

Real Women Real Voices: Where the People Meet the Policy

a dialogue around incarceration with a focus on women

January 25, Wednesday
5 to 8 pm

Please register here.

This symposium will focus on the issues, concerns and needed changes affecting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. The panels will feature currently and formerly incarcerated women discussing the effects of incarceration and the carceral state on themselves, their families and their communities. The Council is the first-ever national organization created and led by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls.

NYU Law School, Greenberg Lounge
40 Washington Square South

Presented by the NYU Wagner Students for Criminal Justice Reform.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Asian-Pacific American Law Students Association; Black American Law Students Association; Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; Law Women; Prisoners’ Rights and Education Project; South Asian Law Students Association; & Women of Color Collective; and by Aloft Harlem; Can-Do Clemency; Families for Justice As Healing; The Ladies of Hope Ministries; The Operation Restoration; Project Liberation; The Real Cost of Prisons Project.



New World Orders: Coloniality, Racial Intimacies, & Disability

a symposium featuring artists Candice Lin & Xandra Ibarra, with Aimee Bahng, Mel Chen, Jasbir Puar, Ivan Ramos, Mark Rifkin, & C. Riley Snorton

January 27, Friday
1 to 6 pm

Seating is limited, please register here.

This symposium pairs recent work in critical indigenous and race studies with disability and queer theories. We will work through important provocations by recent humanists and artists who have turned to the formation of the New World in order to better understand our contemporary moment. These turns force us to account for a deeper sense of history, along with the aftermath of racial logics, colonization, enslavement, resource extraction, the policing of intimacy, and the disablement of bodies/communities. We will explore how to imagine new world orders and futures. What is the responsibility of the humanities and the arts to move forward with the reverberations of the New World? What new world orders can emerge by contending with the “old” New World?

For more information, please visit the NYU Department of Art & Public Policy here.

Lipton Hall
108 West 3rd Street

Presented by the NYU Department of Art & Public Policy.

Sponsored by the NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute; Council for the Study of Disability; Center for the Humanities; Vice Provost’s Office for Faculty, Arts, Humanities, & Diversity; and the Dean’s Office at Tisch.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; Center for Media, Culture & History; Department of Performance Studies; Department of Social & Cultural Analysis; Department of Spanish & Portuguese Languages & Literatures; Center for Multicultural Education & Programs; Media, Culture, & Communication; and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics.



Abortion in the Trump Era

a lunch panel with Madeline Gomez & Carol Mason

February 8, Wednesday
12:30 to 2 pm

Madeline Gomez, Legal Fellow, Center for Reproductive Rights

Carol Mason, Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Kentucky

This panel will focus on the state of abortion access both in the years leading up to the election of Trump and what his Presidency will mean for the state of reproductive healthcare in the US. Panelists will discuss the historical legacies of both the pro-life and pro-choice movements and the contemporary terrain on which activists are fighting for abortion access.

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

Lunch will be provided.

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



Experiments in Sex

a panel discussion with Barbara Browning, Pablo Assumpção B Costa, & André Lepecki

February 15, Wednesday
7 to 8:30 pm

Barbara Browning, Performance Studies, New York University

Pablo Assumpção B Costa, Global Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, New York University

André Lepecki, Performance Studies, New York University

This panel puts three leading scholars of performance into conversation to explore sexual expressivity, its modes, meanings, and mutations. Drawing from multiple analytic frames (the ethnological, the choreographic, and the literary) and drawing on multiple aesthetic genres (field notes, pornography, the novel) the panelists explore the dis/organization and performance of desire, sex, embodiment.

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

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



The Sexual Politics of Meat

a lecture by Carol J. Adams

February 21, Tuesday
6 to 8:30 pm

Carol J. Adams, writer & activist

In this multi-media lecture and discussion, author and activist Carol J. Adams discusses the animalizing of women in contemporary cultural images and the sexualizing of animals used for food.  Adams is the author of the pioneering volumes The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Pornography of Meat, and her work has been formative to both ecofeminism and to new directions in critical animal studies.  Her lecture will offer an ecofeminist analysis of the interconnected oppressions of sexism, racism, and speciesism by exploring the way popular culture draws on dominant Western philosophical viewpoints regarding race, gender, and species.  One of her ambitions is to show how Western epistemologies actually further the objectification of multiple Others, human and non-.  In this lecture, she identifies how meat has been a valued masculine-identified protein source and indicates how assumptions about meat eating and its promotion via advertisements, for example, privilege some beings to the violent exclusion of many others.

Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South, Room 802

Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Welfare Collective; Animal Studies Initiative; Asian American Women’s Alliance; Center for the Humanities; Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality; The Feminist Society.



CSGS Website Launch Party for Otherwise: Queer Scholarship Into Song

with music videos & live performance by Kay Turner & The Pages (Viva DeConcini & Mary Feaster)

March 9, Thursday
7 to 9 pm

Join CSGS and performers Kay Turner, Viva DeConcini, and Mary Feaster as we celebrate this homecoming–or homo-coming–of the Otherwise project.  Otherwise transforms “academic” studies of queer life, history, and world-making into hummable song. This musical cabaret of queer theory was staged to sell-out crowds at Dixon Place (in 2013) and at Joe’s Pub (in 2016). The latter event was produced by CSGS. CSGS is proud to be hosting the video documentation of this project on its website. This “virtual” Otherwise features videos of the all the songs performed at the 2013 and 2016 stagings. Get a sneak preview of the videos before they go world-wide-web, hear from impressaria Kay Turner about  the conception of the project, and enjoy the company of some of the other artists and authors behind Otherwise.

Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality
285 Mercer Street, 4th Floor

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



Darwin, Queerly: Evolution, Natural Law, & the Diversity of Desire

a lecture by Donovan Schaefer

March 23, Thursday
6:30 to 8 pm

Donovan Schaefer, Lecturer in Religion & Science, Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Darwinian biology is often held up as a heteronormative framework. Natural law theologians who are pro-Darwin see it as a way to glorify straightness, cisness, and heteropatriarchal norms. But a closer examination of Darwinian thought–both within Darwin’s research and subsequent developments in evolutionary theory–shows that Darwin can be coupled with contemporary queer and trans* theory. Darwin is a passionate partisan of difference, becoming, vital materiality, and the diversity of desire.

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

Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies Initiative, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Performance Studies, and by the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality.



Non-human Encounters: Animals, Objects, Affects, & the Place of Practice
Conversations between cultural theory, psychoanalysis, & the arts

a forum with Nuar Alsadir, Emanuela Bianchi, Pablo Assumpção B Costa, Eleonora Fabião, Carla Freccero, Katie Gentile, Francisco Gonzalez, Ann Pellegrini, Donovan Schaefer, Julietta Singh, Nathan Snaza, & Michelle Stephens

March 24, Friday
2 to 6:30 pm

Nuar Alsadir, Poet & Psychoanalyst, NYC

Emanuela Bianchi, Comparative Literature, New York University

Pablo Assumpção B Costa, Global Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, New York University

Eleonora Fabião, performance artist & theorist, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Carla Freccero, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Katie Gentile, Interdisciplinary Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Francisco Gonzalez, Personal & Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and Staff Psychiatrist, Instituto Familiar de la Raza

Ann Pellegrini, Performance Studies and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Donovan Schaefer, Lecturer in Religion & Science, Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Julietta Singh, English, University of Richmond

Nathan Snaza, English, University of Richmond

Michelle Stephens, English & Latino and Caribbean Studies, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey

This half-day symposium is the 9th annual collaboration between NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality. The question of the non-human is a vital one for psychoanalysis, but in the main remains a path not taken. There is, meanwhile, a growing scholarly literature, and across multiple fields, that explores the post- and non-human: e.g., critical animal studies, new materialisms, object-oriented ontology, post-colonial studies, affect studies, and queer of color critique. The broad goal of this year’s forum is to see what happens when clinicians, cultural theorists, and arts practitioners talk together about and beyond the limits of the human, through such keywords as animals, objects, and affects. Through an explicit foregrounding of the “place of practice,” panelists will also attend to questions of institutional location (e.g., classroom, cubicle, consulting room, museum or gallery, street corner) as well as histories of power. How does where we think, write, work, and with whom (or what) shape critical practices, conceptual possibilities, horizons of the sayable and sensible.

2 pm
Welcome and introduction
Katie Gentile (SGS) and Ann Pellegrini (CSGS)

2:15 pm
Panel 1: Placing Animals
Carla Freccero
Katie Gentile
Nathan Snaza
Moderator: Ann Pellegrini

3:45 pm
Panel 2: Placing Objects
Nuar Alsadir
Francisco Gonzalez
Julietta Singh
Moderator: Emanuela Bianchi

5:15 pm
Panel 3: Placing Affects
Eleonora Fabião
Donovan Schaefer
Michelle Stephens
Moderator: Pablo Assumpção B Costa

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

Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies Initiative, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Performance Studies, and by the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality.



Recording Angels: Witnessing Trauma at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Class, & Empire

a conversation among journalists, writers, & scholars with Jade E. Davis, Eric Fair, & Liat Katz, and moderated by Patrick Blanchfield

March 31, Friday
6 to 8 pm

“Recording Angels” is an interdisciplinary conversation about the ethics and challenges of working with trauma and representing trauma for broader audiences. Bringing together academic, therapeutic, and journalistic perspectives, this panel conversation will probe difficult questions about testimony, authority, victimhood, complicity, and vulnerability in the contemporary media landscape. What authorizes, credentializes, or otherwise justifies telling the story of another individual’s suffering? Who can speak for whom – particularly across categories of gender, race, and nationality? What responsibilities, risks, and rewards come with such work?

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

Patrick Blanchfield is the 2016-2017 Henry R. Luce Initiative in Religion in International Affairs Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Religion and Media at NYU. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University and is a graduate of the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute. He writes about gun violence, trauma, religion, and masculinity. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New York Daily News, n+1, The New Inquiry, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere.

Jade E. Davis, PhD is Associate Director for Digital Learning Projects at LaGuardia Community College. Her research and public writing is in applied theory and media ecology, with a particular emphasis on digital culture, surveillance studies, and representations of and trauma in relation to questions of race and gender. Some links: her keynote from Theorizing the Web 2016, “The Virality of Evil (and Fuck, Marry, Kill)”; “The Catholic schoolgirl & the wet nurse: On the ecology of oppression, trauma and crisis” in Indigeneity, Education, and Society; “Black Men Being Killed Is The New Girls Gone Wild” at Medium; “What I Learned About ‘Trigger Warnings’ From Teaching College Students” in Talking Points Memo.

Eric Fair is an Army veteran who worked in Iraq as a contract translator and interrogator in 2004. He won a Pushcart prize for his 2012 essay “Consequence,” which was published first in Ploughshares and then in Harper’s. His op-eds denouncing the US “enhanced interrogation program” and its place in American political discourse have been published in The Washington Post and the New York Times; his memoir is published by Henry Holt. Some links: “Orders, Truth and Torture at Abu Ghraib” in Utne; “Owning Up to Torture” in The New York Times; “An Interrogator’s Nightmare,” from the Washington Post; this interview with Democracy Now.

Liat Katz, LCSW-C is a clinical social worker at Montgomery County Adult Protective Services in Maryland. A graduate of New Directions, a three-year postgraduate writing program run by the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis, she currently edits its literary magazine. She writes about treating people with marginalized communities who suffer from complex trauma, her own experiences with depression and psychiatric care, queer identity, and more. Some examples of her work: “How I went from social worker to psychiatric unit patient” in the Washington Post; “My revolving closet door” in the Washingtonian; “Wordless tea” in Lilith.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Religion & Media and Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.



Treasure: From Tragedy to Trans Justice, Mapping a Detroit Story (63 min, 2015)

a film screening & discussion with Emani Love

April 20, Thursday
7 to 9 pm

Registration required here.

Treasure is a feature documentary about nineteen year old trans woman Shelly ‘Treasure’ Hilliard whose murder involved police coercion, Jim Crow drug laws, the criminalization of sex work and transphobia. It is about a young Detroit trans community activated by her death, and her family, who are suing for justice. Shelley’s family also emerge powerfully as complex human beings that defy the stereotyping fiction films typically dole out to African-Americans. Defying the typical story, Shelley was met with love and support from her mother and sisters after coming out as transgender. That they cherished her so makes the loss they feel all the more gut-wrenching.

After the screening, we will have a Q&A with Emani Love.

Palladium
140 East 14th Street, Multi-Purpose Room

Registration required here.

Facebook event page here.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & SexualityLGBTQ Student Center, Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, & Residential Life and Housing Services.



Annual José E. Muñoz Memorial Lecture: Wanton Escapes, a Primer on Flight

a lecture by José Quiroga

April 21, Friday
5 to 6:30 pm

José Quiroga, Spanish & Portuguese, Emory University

On June 28, 1856, residents of Havana were called upon to witness yet another neighbor who had decided to get himself onto a balloon and fly. Balloon flights had become a fad and a frenzy in Havana at that time: Virginia Marotte, from Orleans, was the first woman aeronaut, and it is said that Domingo Blinó ecstatically threw pigeons, flowers, poems–and apparently two goats– overboard before he crashed near the port of Mariel. The same fearless, indomitable spirit possessed Matías Perez to fly twice in his balloon, called “La villa de Paris.” The first flight was a success but it was the second, on June 28, the one that turned Matías Pérez into something more than just simply a man, or a hero, but into the very pixie dust from which legends are made. For his feat was so spectacular, so magnificent, so noteworthy and courageous, that it is no wonder that habaneros are still waiting for Matias Perez to come back in order to congratulate him themselves.

For days, weeks, and years, countless rescue missions on the island as well as on surrounding keys failed to come up with our hero or with any kind of debris from “La villa de París.” To this day, perhaps the sole consolation we can derive from this heroic gesture is just the pleasure of the tale. And then, of course, a popular refrain. When someone has left the party, or hides from public view, when something is lost and cannot be found we say that he, she, or it, “fled like Matias Perez.” Which means: it, or he, or she, is no more. Or does it?

It is from this flight that we begin. Not only to think about Cuba, about the Caribbean, about Latinxs, about Latin Americans, but also about our present moment, about our here and now, about how to vanish and at the same time defy presence and loss, how to dissolve without a clear motive, or how to respond to provocation when the only useful element in our toolbox is that of existence-as-flight. Guest appearances by Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, William Burroughs, Salvador Novo, Ana Mendieta, Alejo Carpentier, Reinaldo Arenas, Lydia Cabrera and many others.

King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center Auditorium
53 Washington Square South

Reception to follow.

Seating is limited and will be first-come, first-serve. The lecture will be live streamed and archived on the Performance Studies Facebook page.

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



Standing Rock & the Seventh Generation: An Economics for Us All

an Albert Gallatin Lecture with Winona LaDuke

April 25, Tuesday
6:30 to 8:30 pm

Please register here!

Winona LaDukerural development economist and author

“The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on.” —Winona LaDuke

On the 96th day of the Trump Era, we welcome Anishinaabekwe activist, writer, and political leader Winona LaDuke to help us understand this moment in history and speak about ongoing efforts toward social, cultural, and environmental justice. LaDuke will address the interrelated issues of energy, food sovereignty, Native Rights, and an economics for the 99%. And she’ll offer ideas about what we can do to come together, address climate justice, and move North America toward a sustainable, post-carbon economy.

Vanderbilt Hall, Tishman Auditorium
40 Washington Square South

This event is free & open to the public but registration is required.

Presenters: The Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University.
Co-hosts: NYU Native American and Indigenous Students’ Group, American Indian Community House, and American Indian Law Alliance.

Cosponsored by the NYU Native Studies Forum; NYU Department of Nutrition and Food Studies; NYU Center of Multicultural Education & Programs; Center for Humanities; Urban Democracy Lab; Institute for Public Knowledge; NYU Department of History; NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis; NYU Department of Environmental Studies; NYU Department of Art and Public Policy; Lenape Center; Eagle & Condor Community Center; Red Earth Studio Consulting/Productions; Na ‘Oiwi NYC; Hālāwai; Climate Working Group; Hemispheric Institute; NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; NYU Department of Anthropology; NYU Sanctuary; Global South Center, Pratt Institute; Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School; Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute; and more to be announced.



I Cannot Tell You How I Feel (41 min, 2016) & The Ties That Bind (55 min, 1985)

film screenings & discussion with Su Friedrich

April 28, Friday
5 to 7 pm

Experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich presents her latest documentary, I Cannot Tell You How I Feel, featuring her mother Lore, who protests being taken to an independent living facility, alongside her 1985 film The Ties That Bind, which recorded her mother’s recollections of growing up in Nazi Germany.

Michelson Theater
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Co-sponsored by the NYU Aging Incubator, Center for Media, Culture & History, and Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.