Lavender Languages | Sessions under Devlopment

Please use the links below or scroll down the page for current sessions under development:

 

(Anti)Homophobic Text & Discourses

Papers in this session will examine homophobic and antihomophobic text-making and meaning-making practices. This will be the sixth year that we have had sessions on this topic at the Lavender Language conference. Prospective panelists are asked to review previous panel abstracts (2007-2011—please see the conference archives) in order to get a sense of the range of previous work.
 
Possible topics might include:

  • (anti)homophobic media representations & discourses
  • (anti)homophobic legal or political discourses ("protection of marriage" laws, same-sex marriage debates; Perry v. Schwarzenegger)
  • religious (anti)homophobic discourses
  • global queers/global (anti)homophobias
  • economic discourses & (anti)homophobia
  • race & (anti)homophobic discourses
  • gender & (anti)homophobic discourses
  • theories of (anti)homophobic discourses
  • educational discourses & (anti)homophobia
  • history & structure of (anti)homophobic discourses

Contact: David Peterson, Department of English, University of Nebraska-Omaha
davidpeterso1@unomaha.edu

 

Gay Pornography: Visualizing the Social in the Homoerotic Message  

In 1997, John Champagne urged scholars to "stop reading films!" and to recognize the social as well as libidinal dimensions of pornographic reception. Papers in this session endorse Champagne's plea as it applies to homoerotic cinema. But papers in this session are also invited to break some new ground, For example, papers may trace the social implications of homoerotic imagery beyond the immediacy of the "site of reception" and into the domain of national and international regulation. Papers may problematize the meaning of "site of reception" now that the work of reception unfolds via office computer r, laptop or mobile communication device and is no longer restricted to the movie house, bookstore backroom or the bedroom . Papers may explore "gay pornography" in the global circuit, noting the range of sources that determine a "desire-able " on-screen erotic image. Papers may demonstrate new ways to engage audience reception and to keep the viewers' sense of the reception process in the foreground of the analysis.

Contact: William Leap, Department of Anthropology, American University
wlm@american.edu 

 

Identity and Voice: Locating the Lavender in Composition and Rhetoric Studies

This session celebrates its third year at LL and will include presentations that examine aspects of the writing, re-writing, teaching writing, storytelling, and even performance processes through a lens that considers the significance of queer identities and voices. For example, in her essay "Who Am I?: Finding Identity & Voice in Composition", author Beverly Faryna explores her struggle as a student writer in search of her authentic voice: Considering the session topic, what is an authentic expression of queer voice? In what ways do queer voices emerge from, are substantiated by, or are perhaps absent from composition and rhetoric as disciplines or from the writing itself? How is queer sexuality read? What has been the significance of composition when considering the evolution of queer identity and vice versa? In short, this session asks "What's queer about composition and rhetoric?" Past presentations have included a rhetorical analysis of Finnish university students' attitudes toward gay and lesbian parenting rights, using autoethnographic writing in participatory action research examining the crossroads of language and sexuality in Japan, and examples of "queering" the American composition classroom.

Contact: Marlen Elliot Harrison, University of Jyväskylä, Language Centre
marlen.harrison@yahoo.com

 

Language and Internet Cruising

Technology has created a private queer space as compared to the more public bars and coffee shops. The internet is filled with websites where queer individuals can post personal ads seeking sex, friendships, or relationships. Not only do these websites offer a way to more discreetly seek same sex encounters, they are also very simple to use as such sites can be accessed at home or on the go with a mobile phone. They also offer a much greater selection of people than the nearest gay bar and with the search engine people can find exactly what they are looking for with ease. The photographs and written language employed in the ads are crucial in attracting others; however, because such sites are usually created for men, women’s access to such resources are limited. Papers in this session will consider the language used in these websites and personal ads as well as in written exchanges and conversations that result when people reply to them:  How are people using such technology to make social and sexual contacts? How is use of such technology gendered as well as sexualized? Who is doing this? And why?

Contact: Brad Rega
br4869a@student.american.edu

 

Pentecostalism, Language, and Homosexuality

Pentecostals practice a faith of constant discursive self-formation that begins with the recitation of the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and continues through daily speech and bodily practices to form and maintain a ‘saved’ self.  Gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning, and ‘sexually struggling’ Pentecostals engage in complicated identity work to align their spiritual and sexual selves in a context in which homosexuality is seen as a sin that causes distance in one’s relationship with God and closes off the potential for salvation. This session uses testimonials, Christian self-help literature, and other texts to elucidate the lives of non-heterosexual Pentecostals and their searches to align their non-normative sexual desires, behaviors, and identities with Pentecostal theology and worldviews. Abstracts are welcome from researchers who study LGBT, questioning, and ex-gay Pentecostals throughout the world.

Contact: Melissa Hackman, Department of Anthropology, American University
hackman@american.edu

 

The Power of Discourse: Keeping LGBT Immigrants Marginalized

Papers in this session consider how state mechanisms of control materialize in contradictory discourses appearing to welcome all immigrants, but in reality making allowance only for those immigrants who fit specific forms of sexual representations. Specifically, language becomes a medium used to police sexuality by labeling LGBT immigrants who do not fit the state desired bodily mold as bad and/or undesired citizens. Through language, subjectivity of LGBT immigrants is upheld and reinforced outside and within LGBT communities. This forces LGBT immigrants to regulate bodies, desires, and sexualities in their new host countries in order to access the necessities for living. Papers in this session will explore discursive challenges posed to LGBT immigrants in different locations, or discuss how LGBT immigrants mobilize their own discursive resources as a means for "talking back to" marginalization in diaspora.

Contact: Rafael Lainez, Department of Anthropology American University
RafaelAlberto@msn.com

 

Queer Women's Discourse and Representation

The panel explores current developments in an understanding of "non-normative" women's experiences. Whilst a specific focus of the panel will be the significance of ideologies and cultural expectations surrounding womanhood and femininity, papers will engage with the myriad identities and practices falling under the umbrella term of "queer" and, therefore, take a constructionist perspective. Papers may focus on such identities/categories as lesbian and bisexual women, transgendered women, women who are polyamorous or engage in non-heteronormative sexual practices, as well as research into genderqueer identities and representation, for example. Abstracts are welcomed from researchers engaged in any aspect of queer womanhood which have a linguistic focus.

Contact: Lucy Jones, Edgehill University    
lucy.jones@edgehill.ac.uk

 

Species-What?: Language and the Que(e)ry of Speciesism

This session will use discussions of language, broadly defined, as an entry point for addressing intersections between queer theory, speciesism, and critical animal studies. These two intersectional discourses provide inclusive tools to deconstruct dichotomous thinking. Much anti-speciesist thought is informed by the destabilization that queer theory provides, and queer theory itself contests the privileged binary construction of human/animal. Yet, there is little ongoing engagement between these two growing theoretical and liberatory movements. This session provides space for scholars and activists from a variety of disciplines and liberation movements to engage in a dialogue between critical animal studies and queer theory. Papers will interrogate the species binary and its affiliated social scripts using a queer theory approach, paying attention to the linguistic practices through which this binary and these scripts are regularly expressed and reproduced and validated. As queer query often proclaims, liberation is only liberatory if it means total liberation!

Contact: Jenny Grubbs, Department of Anthropology, American University
jennygrubbs@gmail.com
 

Back to top

Newly Updated AUPedia

RSS
More AUpedia Entries