RETHINKING SEX

GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES STATE OF THE FIELD CONFERENCE 4-6 MARCH 2009

SPONSORED BY
Dr. William J. Zachs, C 83 and the Zachs-Adam Family Fund The Office of the Provost

ADDITIONAL SPONSORS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Cross-Cultural Mellon Conference and Publication Fund The Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender, & Sexuality The Womens Studies Program The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center The University Research Foundation Conference Support Fund Department of English The Gender and Sexuality Studies Reading Group The South Asia Center The Cinema Studies Program The Poetics Working Group Department of History Asian American Studies Program The Center for Africana Studies Department of the History of Art Department of Music Department of Romance Languages Department of South Asia Studies Graduate School of Education The Latin American & Latino Studies Program Penn Womens Center Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Annenberg Scholars Program Department of Anthropology

Conference logo design by Curtis Rogers, College of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2010 Printed by University Copy Service

CONTENTS
Welcome...1 Schedule: Wednesday.2 Schedule: Thursday.3 Schedule: Friday.6 Out in the Library Exhibit.9 Campus Map...10 Biographies of Contributors.12

NOTES

WELCOME
Welcome to the University of Pennsylvania and to Rethinking Sex. During this state of the field conference, scholars will reflect on the history of the field of gender and sexuality studies and will consider its contemporary strengths and potential. What are the intellectual and political gains of movements for sexual freedom over the past decades? And where are we now? The conference celebrates the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gayle Rubins essay, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. The essay was originally published in the collection Pleasure and Danger (1984), edited by Carole Vance, which came out of the controversial Barnard Conference on Sexuality of 1982. Not only is Thinking Sex one of the key documents in the feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s, it may also be said to have inaugurated the contemporary field of sexuality studies. Describing the historical regulation of sexuality through moral panics, anti-sex ideologies, and the targeting of sexual minorities, Rubin called for an analytic separation of sexuality from gender and for intellectual and political projects that would address the importance of sex as a vector of power. Rethinking Sex begins with a keynote address by Gayle Rubin entitled Blood Under the Bridge in which she reflects on the original context of Thinking Sex and on developments in the past few decades. Over the course of the next two days, we will hear from thirty scholars working within a range of disciplines about the most significant and pressing questions in gender and sexuality studies. The topics to be addressed include intersections of sexuality with gender, race, class, and disability; neoliberalism and sexual politics; transgender lives; queer diasporas; health and the management of bodies and populations; pedagogy and the institutionalization of gender and sexuality studies; sexual practice, pleasure, and community; new imaginaries of kinship and sociality; globalization and its effects; histories of HIV; the politics of emotion; and the queer afterlife of conflicts in feminism. In Thinking Sex Rubin called for an autonomous theory and politics specific to sexuality. In Rethinking Sex, the conference participants will address both the history of sexual theory and politics since the 1980s and the forms that it might take in the 21st century. We hope through these reflections to honor the contributions of Rubin and others to the making of our field, and to imagine new solutions to the challenges of the global present.

WEDNESDAY
March 4, 2009

NOTES

7:30 9:30 p.m. HALL OF FLAGS, HOUSTON HALL

Welcome from Bob Schoenberg Greetings from Dean Ann Matter Opening Remarks by Heather Love

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: The R. Jean Brownlee Lecture in Sexuality Studies

GAYLE RUBIN
Blood Under the Bridge: Reflections on Thinking Sex
Introductions to Gayle Rubin:

Steven Epstein, Sharon Holland, Susan Stryker

Jennifer Terry is the author of An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (1999), and co-editor of Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture (1995), and Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life (1997). She is presently at work on a book project entitled Killer Entertainments: Militarism, Governmentality, and Consuming Desires in Transnational America, which examines the history of morale management in the U.S. military. She is also collaborating on a three-year National Science Foundation funded project on privacy, identity, and technology. Jennifer Terry is Associate Professor of Womens Studies and Coordinator of the Queer Studies program at the University of California, Irvine. Valerie Traub works at the intersection of literature and the history of sexuality in the early modern period. Her books are The Renaissance of Lesbianism (2002), and Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992), and two co-edited works, Gay Shame (2008), and Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects (1996). She is currently at work on a book entitled Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern West: The Prehistory of Normality. Valerie Traub is Professor of English and Womens Studies at the University of Michigan. Carole Vances work integrates sexuality with human rights frameworks and rights-based health interventions. She has written widely on sexuality, science, gender, and policy; on policy controversies about sexual expression; and sexuality theory and research methods. She is currently involved in research on trafficking into forced prostitution, focusing on the ways in which ethnographic research can inform policy, as well as health and rights interventions. She is the editor of Ethnography and Policy: What Do We Know About Trafficking? (forthcoming), and Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (1984). Carole Vance is Associate Clinical Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Patricia White is the author of Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (1999). Her teaching covers topics including critical and cultural theory, women and popular culture, queer media, feminist film and film studies, and film theory and culture. She is also co-author of the textbook The Film Experience (2004). Patricia White is Associate Professor of English Literature and Film Studies at Swarthmore University.

THURSDAY
March 5, 2009

8:30 a.m.
BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL Coffee

9:00 10:00 a.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL INTIMACIES

Leo Bersani, Father Knows Best Respondents: Nancy Bentley and David Kurnick
Moderator: Homay King

10:15 a.m. 12:00 p.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL BODIES, MEDIA, AND POLITICS
Jennifer Terry, Objectum-Sexuality Steven Epstein, The Great Undiscussable: HPV Vaccination and the Politics of Queer Biocitizenship Carole Vance, Zombies of Globalization: Women Trafficked into Reactionary Sexual Campaigns Comment: Larry Gross
Moderators: Virginia Chang and Katherine Sender

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THURSDAY
March 5, 2009
(CONTINUED)

12:00-1:30 p.m. BISHOP WHITE ROOM, HOUSTON HALL GRADUATE SEMINAR ON THINKING SEX
Moderator: Judith Halberstam Invited Participants Only

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick* is the author of Touching Feeling: Affect, Performativity, Pedagogy (2003), Tendencies (1993), Epistemology of the Closet (1990), and Between Men: English Literature and Homosocial Desire (1985), as well as the memoir Dialogue on Love (1999), and the poetry collection Fat Art, Thin Art (1994). Her work explores the effects of homosocial, homosexual, and homophobic currents in Western culture, and she was elected to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the U.S., as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for her pioneering work in gay and lesbian studies and queer theory. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. * Unfortunately, due to illness, Professor Sedgwick is unable to attend the Rethinking Sex Conference. Katherine Sender is the author of numerous articles on GLBT media and marketing. Her research considers consumer and popular culture, reality television and makeover shows, audience research, cultural production, documentary film and video, and video production. In addition to her academic work, she is also the producer, editor and director of a number of documentaries, including Off the Straight and Narrow: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Television (1998), and Further Off the Straight and Narrow: New Gay Visibility and Television (2006). Katherine Sender teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dean Spade is founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an innovative law collective that provides free legal help to low income people and people of color facing gender identity and/or expression discrimination. His research focuses on the impact of the War on Terror on transgender rights, the bureaucratization of trans identities, and models of non-profit governance and social movements. Dean Spades articles are widely published, and he is Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Susan Strykers publications include The Transgender Studies Reader (2006), Queer Pulp: Perverse Passion in the Golden Age of the Paperback (2001), and Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (1996). She also wrote, directed and produced Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (2005). She edited the 1998 transgender studies special issue of GLQ and co-edited the 2008 transgender studies issue of Women's Studies Quarterly. She is currently at work on two projects, a book called Sex Change City: Theorizing Urban Trans/Formation in San Francisco and an experimental film, Christine in the Cutting Room. Susan Stryker is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

1:30-3:00 p.m.
BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL

RETHINKING INTERSECTIONALITY
Lisa Henderson, The Charmed Outer Limits of Queerness and Class Michele Mitchell, A Unique Compoundedness? Sexuality and Intersectionality Robert McRuer, Disabling Sex: Notes for a Crip Theory of Sexuality
Moderator: Barbara Savage

3:15 4:15 p.m.

BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL

HOPE AND HOPELESSNESS

Jos Esteban Muoz Lisa Duggan
Moderator: Lzaro Lima

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Lisa Rofels research interests include urban political economy and culture, popular culture, gender and science, and transnational capitalism, and her teaching specialties include critical theory, feminist anthropology, political economy, contemporary China, and gender and sexuality. Her books include Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture (2007), and Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism (1999). Lisa Rofel is currently at work on several projects, including a collaborative project on the twenty-first century Silk Road between China and Italy, and a coedited volume titled Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics. Lisa Rofel is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Gayle Rubin is an anthropologist whose work focuses on gender and sexuality, sexual populations, cities, sexological theory, gay and lesbian ethnography, racial taxonomies, and urban North America. She has produced multiple groundbreaking works, particularly the essays The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex (1975), and Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality (1984). Gayle Rubin teaches Anthropology and Womens Studies at the University of Michigan. Barbara Savage studies twentieth-century African American history, American religious and social reform movements, and the history of the relationship between media and politics. She is the author of The Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (2008), an historical examination of debates about the public responsibility of black churches and the role of religion in racial leadership, as well as Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race 1938-1948 (1999). Additionally, she is co-editor of Women and Religion in the African Diaspora (2006). Barbara Savage teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, and Professor of History. Bob Schoenberg is the Director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the coauthor of Our Place on Campus: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Services and Programs in Higher Education (2002), and the co-editor of Homosexuality and Social Work (1984). He was the founder and first President of ActionAIDS, which is now Pennsylvanias largest HIV/ AIDS service organization. Bob Schoenberg has received numerous awards, including, most recently, the Community Service Award from Dignity Philadelphia.

THURSDAY
March 5, 2009
(CONTINUED)

4:30-6:00 p.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL RETHINKING SEX, RETHINKING GENDER
Opening Remarks: Susan Stryker Sharon Holland, Murder S/He Wrote Judith Halberstam, Sex, Failure and the Anti-Heroic Queer Comment: Joanne Meyerowitz
Moderator: Kathy Peiss

SPECIAL MUSICAL PERFORMANCE:

MATMOS
8:30 p.m.
INTERNATIONAL HOUSE
3701 CHESTNUT STREET Doors Open at 8 p.m. Tickets Required

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FRIDAY
March 6, 2009

mance art, film and video. Jos Esteban Muoz is Associate Professor and Chair of Performance Studies at Tisch School for the Arts, New York University. Hoang Nguyen is an experimental filmmaker and a scholar of queer cinema, experimental film, Asian American visual culture, video production, race, and new media. His current book project is titled A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation, and considers a range of texts drawn from Hollywood cinema, European art film, gay pornography, and experimental documentary. Hoang Nguyens essays have been widely published, and his films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Pompidou Center, the Getty Center, and at numerous film and media festivals. Tavia Nyongo is a cultural historian whose scholarship focuses on racial formation in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. His forthcoming book, The Amalgamation Waltz: Antebellum Genealogies of the Hybrid Future considers how cultural performances of gender and sexuality in the first half of the nineteenth century staged fears and anticipations of the racially hybrid nation to come. His teaching covers such topics as black performance, cultural hybridity, the history of the body, and subcultural performance. His articles have been widely published. Tavia Nyongo is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School for the Arts, New York University. Kathy Peiss writes about the history of working women, leisure and popular culture, the beauty industry, and working-class and interracial sexuality. She is interested in the ways in which commerce and culture have shaped the everyday lives and popular beliefs of Americans across time. Her books include Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality (2001), Hope in a Jar: The Making of Americas Beauty Culture (1998), and Cheap Amusements: Women and Leisure in Turn-of-theCentury New York (1986), as well as several co-authored and co-edited works. Her current research projects concern the history of American librarians, books, intelligence-gathering, and cultural reconstruction in the World War II era; a study of the zoot suit and the politics of style; and a cultural history of the mass middle class in the twentieth century. Kathy Peiss is Chair of the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Jasbir Puar is the author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), in which she argues that configurations of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of secularization, counterterrorism, and nationalism. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, and globalization; postcolonial and diaspora theories; queer theory; South Asian cultural studies; and tourism studies. Her essays on these topics have been widely published. Jasbir Puar is a core faculty member in Womens & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, as well as a graduate faculty member in the department of Geography.

9:00 9:50 a.m. ROOM 135, FISHER-BENNETT HALL OPEN DISCUSSION WITH GRADUATE STUDENTS
Moderator: Valerie Traub

9:30 a.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL Coffee

10:00 11:45 a.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL LIVING WITH NEOLIBERALISM
Janet Jakobsen, The Neo-New Deal and Why Obama Doesnt Want to Think About Sex Jasbir Puar, Prognosis Time Dean Spade, Beyond Recognition Comment: Nan D. Hunter
Moderator: Yolanda Martnez San-Miguel

12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL

LUNCH WITH MATMOS

Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt Tavia Nyongo
Moderator: Mark Butler

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E. Ann Matter studies the history of Christian culture, emphasizing the interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages, mysticism, gender and sexuality, manuscript and textual studies, and sacred music. Her published works include The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (1992), and critical editions of numerous medieval texts. She has also written extensive studies of the seventeenth-century Italian nun and mystic Sister Maria Domitillia Galluzi. Ann Matter is Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Dean for Arts and Letters in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Joanne Meyerowitz teaches twentieth-century U.S. history, women, gender, and sexuality. She is the author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (2002), and Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880- 1930 (1988). She also edited History and September 11th (2003), and Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (1994). Her current work focuses on mid-twentieth-century social constructionist theories of human difference, and considers culture and personality theorists and their popularizers, and how they shaped law, policy, education, and social movements. Joanne Meyerowitz is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Michele Mitchells areas of interest include gender and sexuality, U.S. history, African American history and African diasporas, nationalism, and feminist theory. She is the author of Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction (2004), and the co-editor of Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas (2004). Her current projects include a study of race, gender, sexuality, and idleness during the Great Depression, as well as an article tentatively titled The Body as Archive: African Americans and Taxonomies of Miscegenation. Michele Mitchell is Associate Professor of History at New York University. Robert McRuers scholarship focuses on queer and crip cultural studies, and critical theory. His current project considers Marxism and disability, and examines locations of disability within contemporary political economies, and the roles of disabled movements in countering neoliberalism and hegemonic forms of globalization. He has authored two books, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (2006), and The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities (1997), in addition to numerous book chapters and essays. He teaches in the Department of English at George Washington University. Jos Esteban Muoz is the author of the forthcoming book Feeling Brown: Ethnicity, Affect, and Performance, and Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), as well as numerous book chapters and articles. His major interests include Latino studies, queer theory, critical race theory, global mass cultures, perfor-

FRIDAY
March 6 2009
(CONTINUED)

1:15 3:15 p.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL GLOBALIZING SEX

Gayatri Gopinath, Archive, Affect and the Everyday: Queer Diasporic Re-Visions Lisa Rofel, The Traffic in Money Boys Martin Manalansan, Servicing the World: Flexible Filipinos and the Unsecured Life Neville Hoad, Critical Native Informants: Thinking Sex from South Africa: Then and Now
Moderator: David Eng

3:30 4:30 p.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL SEX WITHOUT OPTIMISM
Lauren Berlant Lee Edelman
Moderator: Patricia White

4:45 6:00 p.m. BODEK LOUNGE, HOUSTON HALL PEDAGOGY

Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Women Spirals in Captivity: Vision and Voice in the Construction of Meaning, Memory, and Narration in the Imaginary Classroom Deborah Britzman, Examination Dreams Comment: Heather Love
Moderator: Andrew Lamas

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FRIDAY
March 6 2009
(CONTINUED)

titled Boricua Insurgencies: Puerto Rico, Colonial Nationalism, and Counter-Hegemony. Lzaro Lima heads the program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bryn Mawr College. Heather Love is the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2007). Her work touches upon the fields of gender studies, queer theory, modernist literature and culture, affect studies, film and visual culture, psychoanalysis, race and ethnicity, and critical theory. Her current scholarly project examines the source materials for Erving Goffmans Stigma: On the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). Heather Love is the M. Mark and Esther K. Watkins Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Martin Manalansan is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in framing issues of gender and sexuality within processes of globalization and transnationalism. Additionally, he is interested in food, modernity, and urban life. His book, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (2003), is a critical ethnography of Filipino gay men living in New York. He is currently at work on two Philippine-based projects, one on return migration of Filipinos from various parts of the world, and the other on Manila and contemporary productions of urban modernity. Martin Manalansan is the editor of Cultural Compass: Ethnographic Explorations of Asian America (2000), and co-editor of Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism (2002). He is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yolanda Martnez-San Miguel studies colonial Latin American discourses and contemporary Caribbean and Latino narratives; colonial and postcolonial theory; migration; and cultural studies. She is the author of Caribe Two Ways: cultura de la migracon en el Caribe insular hispnico (2003), and Saberes americanos: subalternidad y epistemologa en los escritos de Sor Juana (1999), and co-editor of Nictimene sacrlega: homenaje a Georgina Sabat de Rivers (2003). Her current book project is titled From Lack to Excess: Minor Readings of Latin American Colonial Discourse, and she is also working on a comparative study of internal Caribbean migrations, using Puerto Rico and Martinique as case studies. Yolanda Martnez-San Miguel is Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. Matmos is an experimental electronica duo comprised of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. Widely recognized for their originality, Matmos uses sounds from the mundane drip of water, human hair, or kiss, to the possibly macabre surgical sounds of scalpels and laser eye surgery, to the militaristic sounds of flutes, bagpipes and military percussion, creating surprisingly accessible music that nevertheless raises profound questions about what music is and where it comes from. Matmos collaborates extensively with many other artists, most notably with Bjork on her Medlla (2004) and Vespertine (2001) albums, and on the single Alarm Call. In addition to his work in Matmos, Drew Daniel is Assistant Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University.

6:15 7:30 p.m.

LGBT CENTER 3907 SPRUCE STREET, CARRIAGE HOUSE

CLOSING RECEPTION

SPECIAL FILM SCREENING:

ON THE DOWNLOW
AND MAYHEM

Q&A WITH DIRECTOR, ABIGAIL CHILD

Moderator: Hoang Nguyen

7:30 - 9:30 p.m.

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE
3701 CHESTNUT STREET

10:00 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.

SISTERS 1320 CHANCELLOR STREET

FINAL PARTY
Admission free from 10-11 p.m. with proof of conference registration. After 11 p.m. there will be a $5 cover charge.

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Janet Jakobsens research interests include feminist and queer ethics; religion, gender, and sexuality in American public life; social movements and feminist alliance politics; and global issues of economics and violence. She is currently at work on a book project, The Value of Ethics: Sex, Secularism, and and Social Movements in the Global Economy, and recently published a co-edited collection, Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence (2004). She has also published Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics (1998), and the co-written Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (2003). She is Professor of Womens Studies and Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women at Barnard College. Homay King studies film theory, American cinema, psychoanalytic theory, and feminist film theory and criticism, and she has published articles on Andy Warhol, John Cassavetes, VALIE EXPORT, and on the photography of Jeff Wall in relation to film theory. Her book, Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Projection, and the Enigmatic Signifier, is forthcoming. Homay King is Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Art, and Director of the Program in Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. David Kurnicks interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, the history of the novel, narrative theory, queer theory, and aesthetics. His essays have been widely published. His book project, Empty Houses: Frustrated Dramatists and the Invention of Novelistic Interiority, explores the theatrical ambitions of major novelists, and argues that the novel contains a record of public ways of imagining supposedly private entities such as the psyche, intimacy, and sexuality. David Kurnick is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University. Andrew Lamass scholarship focuses on the theoretical and practical dimensions, as well as the philosophical and religious bases, of social justice and economic democracy in the context of urbanization. He was a founding member of the Center for Community Self-Help, which provides financing for for small businesses, nonprofits and homebuyers in North Carolina, especially to low-wealth minorities and women; and the Reinvestment Fund, which provides financing for affordable housing and community development in the Greater Philadelphia area. He is also currently involved in the Bread & Roses Community Fund, and several other organizations. Andrew Lamas teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Urban Studies Program. Lzaro Limas book, The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (2007) examines key moments of historical crisis in the United States that have given rise to what we now consider Latino and Latina forms of personhood. His work explores how intersections of nationalism, race, language, gender, and sexuality give rise to majority conceptions of minority subjectivities, and how subaltern affronts to entrenched notions of American cultural identity have transformed the nation. His current book project is tentatively

Photo of boots worn by Dr. Mary Walker

OUT AT THE LIBRARY

March 4 - 27, 2009 FOX GALLERY, CLAUDIA COHEN HALL
Out at the Library celebrates the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Librarys James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center by highlighting its collection and offering a rare look into what an archives is and how it ensures the legacy of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. From boots worn by cross -dressing Civil War surgeon Dr. Mary Walker to classic LGBT pulp paperbacks to the 1978 appointment book of assassinated City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the objects and stories in Out at the Library offer compelling views of remarkable and ordinary lives. This exhibit is on loan to the University of Pennsylvania by the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library.

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theorizes queer reconfigurations of time and space in relation to subcultural scenes and the emergence of transgender visibility. She has also published Female Masculinity (1998), and Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995), in addition to co-authoring The Drag King Book (1999), and co-editing the anthology Posthuman Bodies (1995). Judith Halberstam is Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Lisa Hendersons research and teaching consider social, cultural and communication theory; media studies; the politics of sexual representation; cultural production; ethnographic research; and class cultures. She is currently at work on a book project, Love or Money: Queers, Class, Cultural Production, as well as essays on the queerness of televised sport, and the sexual mediation of class difference and hierarchy. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the Department of Communication. Neville Hoad studies nineteenth-century British literature, Victorian anthropology and sexology, Darwin and social Darwinism, feminism in imperialism, anglophone postcolonial literature and theory, South African literature, critical race studies, queer theory, and international human rights law, among other subjects. He is the author of African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization (2007), and the coeditor of Sex and Politics in South Africa: Equality / the Gay and Lesbian Movement / the Struggle (2005). Neville Hoad is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Sharon Hollands works include Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity (2000), which won the Laura Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association, and the co-edited volume Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (2006). Her recent project, The Erotic Life of Racism, is forthcoming. Sharon Holland is Professor of English, African and African-American Studies, and Womens Studies at Duke University. Nan D. Hunters work considers issues related to health law, state regulation of sexuality and gender, and procedure. Most recently, she has focused on consumer remedies in managed care, analyses of current trends in public health law, and a critique of widely-held beliefs about the impact of abortion law on Justice Blackmun's experiences as general counsel for the Mayo Clinic. She is the author of The Power of Procedure: The Litigation of Jones v. Clinton (2002), and co-author of Sexuality, Gender, and the Law (2004), The Rights of Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Transgender People (2004), and Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (1996). Nan D. Hunter is Professor of Law at Georgetown Law.

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David Eng studies American literature, Asian American studies, Asian diasporas, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, queer studies, and visual culture. He is the author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (forthcoming), and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (2001). He is also the co-editor of Loss: The Politics of Mourning (2003), and Q & A: Queer in Asian America (1998). His current projects are a study of neoliberalism and desire in Chinese cinema, and an analysis of political and psychic reparation. David Eng is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and a core faculty member of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Steven Epsteins most recent book is Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (2007), which charts the rise and considers the consequences of new ways of managing difference, particularly differences of gender and race, in American medical research. His interests include the sociology of biomedicine, health, and illness; gender, sexuality, race and biomedicine; health and inequality; science and health policy; social movements; the sociology of sexuality; LGBT studies; and sociological theory. Steve Epstein is currently at work on studies of sexual migration, the introduction of new vaccines against the human papillomavirus, and the history of the International AIDS Conference. Steven Epstein is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Gayatri Gopinath is the author of Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (2005), which argues that the notion of diaspora offers a potent critique of dominant nationalisms and their narratives of purity, patrilineality, and organic heterosexuality; as well as numerous articles. Her work concerns Asian diaspora literatures and cultures, Anglophone and postcolonial literatures, queer studies, postcolonial studies, popular culture, and feminist theory. Gayatri Gopinath is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Larry Gross studies media and culture, art and communication, visual communication, and media portrayals of minorities. He has written and edited books covering a wide array of issues in visual and cultural communication, including Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (2001), and Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (1993). From 1971-1991 he also co-directed the Cultural Indicators Project, which focused on television content and its influence on viewer attitudes and behavior. Larry Gross is the director of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Judith Halberstam works on popular, visual, and queer culture, with an emphasis on subcultures. Her most recent book, In A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), describes and

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BIOGRAPHIES
OF CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTORS
Marisa Belausteguigoitias work focuses on the generation of social movements near Mexicos borders, and uses a transdisciplinary approach to questions of race, gender, identity, and cultural relations. She is co-editor of the books Fronteras y cruces: cartografas de escenarios culturales latinoamericanos (2005), and Gneros prfugos: feminismo y educacin (1999). She is also the author of numerous book chapters and articles on cultural studies, feminism, border studies, subjectivity and information technologies. Marisa Belausteguigiotia is the director of the Program in Gender Studies at Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico. Nancy Bentley teaches and publishes in the areas of American law and literature, African-American literature, and modern social theory. Her books, High Literary Forms and Mass Culture (2005), and The Ethnography of Manners (1995), attend to the role of the imagination in the social. Her current project, Kinship and Wayward Affiliation in the American Novel, 1850-1913, explores writers imaginings of an Americanization of kinship, where the New World represented a radical remaking of bloodlines, sex, and family feeling. Nancy Bentley teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, in the English Department. Lauren Berlants books,The Female Complaint: the Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (2008), The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997), and The Anatomy of National Fantasy (1991), concern the production of personhoood in the United States through the category of citizenship. Her work considers collective attachments and affects, and pedagogies of normativity; and she teaches topics ranging from the intimate public sphere, trauma theory, American liberalism, to the U.S. historical novel. Lauren Berlant teaches at the University of Chicago, where she is the George M. Pullman Professor of English, and founded and chaired the Center for Gender Studies. Leo Bersani counts among his many influential publications Intimacies (2008, with Adam Philips), Caravaggios Secrets (1998, with Ulysse Dutoit), Homos (1995), The Culture of Redemption (1990), and Forms of Violence (1985, with Ulysse Dutoit). He is also the author of the essay Is the Rectum a Grave? (1987). His work considers nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, psychoanalysis, film and the visual arts. Leo Bersani is Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California, Berkeley. Deborah Britzman's books include Lost Subjects / Contested Objects: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into Learning (1998), Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach (1991), Novel Education: Psychoanalytic Studies of Learning and Not Learning (2006) and The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions (2009). She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator's Award from the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education (2007). Her work applies Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalytic theory to critical pedagogy, considering difficult knowledge, traumatic histories, interiority, self-other relations, and the production of subjectivity in educational contexts. Deborah Britzman is Distinguished Research Professor at the Faculty of Education, York University Toronto.

Mark J. Butler is a music theorist with interests in popular music, rhythm and meter, music and sexuality, aesthetics, and ancient and medieval music theory. His book, Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter and Metrical Design in Electronic Dance Music (2006), in which he explores the rhythmic and metrical organization of electronic music, exemplifies his use of ethnographic methodology to address music-theoretical questions. He is currently at work on a project concerning the relationships between technology, improvisation and composition in electronic music performance. Mark J. Butler is the recipient of the Wiley Housewright Award from the Society for American Music, and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Virginia Changs research integrates perspectives from medicine, sociology, and epidemiology to study the relationships between various aspects of health and sociocultural life. Much of her research has focused on obesity, considering historical shifts in medical conceptualizations of obesity, the role of health in class stratification, and the relationship between weight status and key features of the residential environment. Virginia Changs research has been widely published, including journals such as JAMA, Health Affairs, Social Forces, and Demography. She is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Abigail Child is a film and video artist whose mixed-genre works explore strategies for rewriting narrative, and for investigating public space through memory and history. She began her career as a documentary filmmaker, and produced seven documentary films between 1970 and 1976, including the award-winning Game (1972) and Between Times (1975). In the mid-1970s, she began to produce experimental works, and in the 1990s, she turned to an examination of public spaces. She recently produced ON THE DOWNLOW (2007), an intimate look at the little-viewed underground scene. In addition to her films, Abigail Childs installations have appeared in galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad, and she is also the author of several books, both critical works and collections of poetry.

Lisa Duggan studies modern U.S. social, cultural, and political history; the history of gender and sexuality; and lesbian and gay studies. She is the author of The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (2003), The Incredible Shrinking Public: Sexual Politics and the Decline of Democracy (2002), and Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity (2000). She is also the coauthor of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (1995), as well as the co-editor of Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest (2001). Lisa Duggan is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

Lee Edelmans current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics and film. He is the author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (1993), and Transmemberment of Song: Hart Cranes Anatomies of Rhetoric and Desire (1987), as well as many essays. Lee Edelman is Chair of the English Department at Tufts University.

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