QUEER BONDS: A Symposium on Sexuality and Sociability
Thursday, Friday, Saturday
February 19-21, 2009
Berkeley Art Museum
U.C. Berkeley
Jacqueline Asher, U.C. Berkeley, LGBT Studies
Leo Bersani, U. C. Berkeley, French, Emeritus
Daniel Boyarin, U.C. Berkeley, Rhetoric and Near Eastern Studies
Judith Butler, U.C. Berkeley, Rhetoric and Comparative Literature
Terry Castle, Stanford University, English
Melinda Chen, U.C. Berkeley, Gender and Women’s Studies
Whitney Davis, U.C. Berkeley, History of Art
Tim Dean, SUNY Buffalo, English
Didier Eribon, Philosopher, Paris
Elizabeth Freeman, U.C. Davis, English
Teresa de Lauretis, U. C. Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness, Emeritus
Carla Freccero, U.C. Santa Cruz, Literature, Feminist Studies, and History of Consciousness
Jonathan M. Hall, U. C. Irvine, Comparative Literature/ Film & Media Studies
David M. Halperin, University of Michigan, History and Theory of Sexuality
Heather K. Love, University of Pennsylvania, English
Michael Lucey, U.C. Berkeley, French
Dana Luciano, Georgetown University, English
David Marriott, U.C. Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness
Robert McRuer, George Washington University, English
Stefania Pandolfo, U.C. Berkeley, Anthropology
Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst, London
Elizabeth Povinelli, Columbia University, Anthropology
Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, Women’s Studies
Juana Rodriguez, U. C. Berkeley, Gender and Women’s Studies
Darieck Scott, U.C. Berkeley, African American Studies
Kaja Silverman, U.C. Berkeley, Rhetoric and Film Studies
Linda Williams, U.C. Berkeley, Rhetoric and Film Studies
and special affiliated event with filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell.
Queer Bonds is a three-day symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, dedicated to exploring the intersections between sexuality and sociability. While its genealogies are multiple, the field of queer studies has been shaped by two powerful trajectories: on the one hand, an attempt to account for the creative forms of social and sexual bonding that have existed around, outside of, or in the interstices of “normal” sociality; on the other, an insistence on queerness as a force of subversion, refusal, and antipathy towards the social. How do conditions in our world today make it imperative that queer theory comprehend both the adhesive and corrosive dimensions of our queer bonds?
The work we are canvassing asks in different ways how we can theorize sociability and relationality without either unilaterally embracing the positive existence of a queer social bond or insisting on its categorical refusal. Queer bonds must engage connections that span both moments of radical impersonality and of the all-too-personal. We invoke “bonds” in their multiple senses as deliberately redolent of the identity movements of the 1970s that provided much of the energy that served to define our field both academically and politically - alongside the denomination “queer” which suggests the enduring impact of the theories of subversion, resignification, and appropriation we associate with the art and theory of the 1980s and 1990s. We thus invite our speakers to pay heed to the rich traditions of queer culture, politics, and thought which have preceded our own, even as they reinvent them for the conditions of our world today.
For a full conference description and schedule details, go to www.queerbonds.com.
All events are free of charge and open to the public. PRE-REGISTRATION IS AVAILABLE by sending an email to queerbonds@gmail.com, stating name and affiliation.
We encourage you to bring your class to this event! If you would like to do so, or have any other questions, please contact conference organizers Damon Young (damonyoung@berkeley.edu) and Josh Weiner (joshuajweiner@gmail.com) for more information.
Presented by the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at U.C. Berkeley, with generous support from: the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, John F. Hotchkis Chair, Division of Arts & Humanities, Graduate Division, Arts Research Center, Student Opportunity Fund, Maxine Elliot Chair, Film Studies, Disability Studies, Graduate Assembly, Graduate Film Working Group, Beatrice Bain Research Group, and the Departments of English, Comparative Literature, French, Rhetoric, Theater Dance & Performance Studies, Italian Studies, and Gender & Women’s Studies.
