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D.C. Queer Studies 2012: Delaney at 70

Born April 1, 1942 and raised in Harlem, Samuel R. “Chip” Delany has enjoyed a long career as a highly regarded writer of science fiction, fantasy, and memoir as well as critical work in literary, African American, urban, and LGBT/queer studies.

Event Information

April 20th, 2012
9 a.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Tawes Hall
University of Maryland

This 2012 symposium was a daylong series of conversations in critical queer, race, and gender studies inspired by Delany’s boldly imaginative, multifaceted oeuvre. Events included paper sessions with presentations by faculty and graduate students. In addition, a plenary of faculty featuring Jayna BrownKevin FloydJordana Rosenberg, and a response by Tavia Nyong’o presented their work in the afternoon. The day culminated in Samuel R. Delany reading from his novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, and engaging in conversation with Robert Reid-Pharr. This year’s symposium continued to follow the trend of not only an increase in the number of registrants, but also in the variety of institutions and organizations represented from across the nation, and even internationally.

Schedule and Session Information

9–9:30 A.M. REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

FIRST-FLOOR FOYER, TAWES HALL 

9:30–10:45 A.M. CONCURRENT SESSIONS 

QUEER COUNTERPUBLICS 

3132 TAWES HALL

  • MICHAEL LOADENTHAL Killer Whales & Violent Queers: Intersectionality Queered Through Appropriated Violence, George Mason University, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
  • JOSEF PARKER “You’re Insane But Not Permanently”: The Cockettes, Tricia’s Wedding, and the Hippie “Freak” Counterpublic, University of Maryland, American Studies 
  • MELISSA ROGERS Do-It-Yrself Utopias: Zine Networks and Radical Queer Visions of Social Change, University of Maryland, Women’s Studies 
  • RAMZI FAWAZ George Washington University, American Studies 

DELANY AND DECONSTRUCTION 

3136 TAWES HALL 

  • NICHOLAS DE VILLIERS Out Takes: More Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, The Polymath, University of North Florida, English 
  • SIMON DICKEL Black Men, Gay Men, Writers: Samuel R. Delany and the Black Gay Culture of the 1980s, Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany, American Studies 
  • PÄIVI VÄÄTÄNEN Deconstructing the Reader: Gender and Sexuality in Samuel Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, University of Helsinki, Finland, Modern Languages 
  • JEFFREY MCCUNE University of Maryland, American Studies and Women’s Studies

11 A.M.–12:15 P.M. CONCURRENT SESSIONS 

DELANY’S THE MAD MAN 

3132 TAWES HALL 

  • LAVELLE PORTER “I Will Not Descend Among Professors and Capitalists”: Academia, the Body, and Political Economy in Samuel R. Delany’s The Mad Man, CUNY Graduate Center, English
  • JAMES SHELDON Teaching the Unteachable: Constructing a Queer Pedagogy by Reading Samuel Delany’s The Mad Man, San Francisco State University, Education 
  • WILL STOCKTON Pornapocalypse Now! Clemson University, English 
  • CAETLIN BENSON-ALLOTT Georgetown University, English 

SCI FI ECOLOGIES 

3136 TAWES HALL 

  • KATIE KING SF Ecologies: speculative, feminist, science as knowledges, University of Maryland, Women’s Studies 
  • MICHELLE MARTIN Dhalgren and the Heterological Body, Temple University, English 
  • GRACE SIKORSKI Tricksters and Spacers: Transgressing Heteronormativity in the Fiction of Samuel Delany, Anne Arundel Community College, English and Gender/ Sexuality
  • KATE DRABINSKI University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Gender and Women’s Studies

12:15–1:30 P.M. CATERED LUNCH 

2115 TAWES HALL 1:30–2:45 P.M. 

CONCURRENT SESSIONS 

CONTACT/AFFECT/QUEER INTIMACIES 

3132 TAWES HALL 

  • MARTY FINK A History of the Smashed & Flattened: Impossible Desires and New Contact Space, Concordia University, Simone de Beauvoir Institute 
  • PEYTON JOYCE Let the Mad Man Play: Virtuosity, Affective Exchange, and the Common, George Washington University, English
  • ANN MATSUUCHI “Happily Ever After”: The Tragic Queer and Delany’s Comic Book Fairy Tale, CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies 
  • RICARDO ORTÍZ Georgetown University, English 

BODIES, PLEASURES, AND INHABITATIONS 

3136 TAWES HALL 

  • JASON BARTLES “Stick-out Dramatic Perfect”: The Entangled Sensorium of John Rechy’s and Felicia Luna Lemus’ Queer Chicana/o Worlds, University of Maryland, Spanish and Portuguese
  • KRISTIN BERGEN Prudent Advice for the Sexually Discreet Gentleman: Glenn Ligon, Richard Pryor, Uneasy Inhabitation, Howard University, English
  • NAVEEN MINAI Indigenous Interstices: A Different Economy of Bodies and Pleasure in the Poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill, University of California, Los Angeles, Women’s Studies 
  • FIONA BRIDEOAKE American University, Literature

3–4:30 P.M. PLENARY SESSION 

ULRICH RECITAL HALL, TAWES HALL 

  • JAYNA BROWN Delany’s Heterotopian Possibilities, University of California, Riverside, Ethnic Studies 
  • KEVIN FLOYD World Reduction in Delany, Kent State University, English 
  • JORDANA ROSENBERG The Delanyian Constellation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, English 
  • RESPONDENT: TAVIA NYONG’O, New York University, Performance Studies 
  • CHRISTINA HANHARDT University of Maryland, American Studies and LGBT Studies

5–6:30 P.M. KEYNOTE ADDRESS: SAMUEL R. DELANY 

ULRICH RECITAL HALL, TAWES HALL 

READING AND CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT REID-PHARR 

ROBERT MCRUER George Washington University, English 

  • Samuel R. Delany is professor of English and creative writing and director of the graduate creative writing program at Temple University. Delany is an award-winning author with more than 20 novels and several books of stories, essays, criticism, and autobiography in a career that spans nearly 40 years. He will be reading from his new novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Robert Reid-Pharr is Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of three books, including, most recently, Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual and of a recent article in American Literature, “Clean: Death and Desire in Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.” 

6:30–7:30 P.M. RECEPTION 

THIRD-FLOOR ATRIUM, TAWES HALL

Sponsors

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND The Office of Undergraduate Studies; the Office of University Diversity; the Graduate School; the departments of African American Studies, American Studies, English, and Women’s Studies; the Asian American Studies Program; the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies; the LGBT Equity Center; and the LGBT Studies Program

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Department of Literature; College of Arts and Sciences

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY African American Studies Program

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Departments of American Studies and English; Columbian College of Arts and Sciences 

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