D.C. Queer Studies 2013: Debilitating Queerness
Queer theory in the twenty-first century has focused on a wide range of bodies and minds in a variety of states: failing, wounded, scarred, damaged, infected or infectious, diseased, mad, depressed, or traumatized.
Conference Poster
Event Information
April 5th, 2013
9 a.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
University of Maryland
Only recently, however, has this focus engaged thickly with disability theory, making a crip turn to what has been described as “questions of bodily capacity, debility, disability, precarity, and populations” by Jasbir Puar, the 2013 symposium keynote speaker. Debilitating Queerness aimed to both highlight and extend this turn.
The daylong series of events included paper sessions with presentations by faculty, as well as both graduate and undergraduate students. In addition, a plenary of faculty featuring Karen Nakamura, Margaret Price, and Abby Wilkerson presented their work in the afternoon. The day culminated with Jasbir Puar‘s lecture, “Bodies With New Organs: Becoming Trans, Becoming Disabled.”
An unprecedented number of proposals received for this year’s symposium spurred an expanded number of paper sessions, with an even greater variety of institutions represented than in past years.
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
Crip Turns
3132 Tawes Hall
- A. Anthony: Revanchist Literature: LGBTQA Communities Dis/abling Gentrification, University of Maryland, American Studies
- Liat Ben-Moshe: Queer-Cripping Anarchism, University of Illinois at Chicago, Disability and Human Development
- Angela Carter: Cripping Trauma: Reconceptualizing the Discourse of Debilitation, University of Minnesota, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
- Katie King: University of Maryland, Women’s Studies
Reading Bodily Differences
3134 Tawes Hall
- Michael Loadenthal Ideological Reproduction of Queers & Mutants: Passing, Preformed Deviance, and Ableist Endeavors, George Mason University, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
- Natalie Prizel: A “wery queer” Beauty is Born: Aesthetics, Labor, and the Making of the Dickensian Queer, Yale University, English
- Jessica Ann Vooris: Trapped In the Wrong Body and Growing Sideways: Narratives of Disability and Disorder Within Media Representations of Transgender Children, University of Maryland, Women’s Studies
- Martha Nell Smith: University of Maryland, English 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Diagnostics and Queer Difference(s)
Tawes 3132
- Abram J. Lewis: We Are Certain of Our Own Insanity: Antipsychiatry and the Gay Liberation Movement, 1969–1973, University of Minnesota, American Studies
- Merrick Daniel Pilling: Making Sense of Mental Distress: A Critique of the Biomedical Model of Mental Illness and its Effects on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, and Trans People, York University, Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies Isaac West Resisting Gender Dysphoria, University of Iowa, Communication Studies
- James Goodwin: University of Maryland, English and LGBT Studies Sex and Disability Tawes 3134
- Lydia Brown: Deconstructing Rhetoric on Disabled (A)Sexuality, Georgetown University, Arabic and Islamic Studies
- Timothy Lyle: “Charge (+) me, Dude”: The Narrative Pleasures of Eroticizing Deliberate HIV Infection, Howard University, English
- Louise Tam: Desexualizing Madness: Intimacy, Precarity, and the Pathologization of Asian Labor in Contemporary Discourses of Neurasthenia, Rutgers University, Women’s and Gender Studies
- Christopher Pérez: University of Maryland, American Studies and LGBT Studies
Troubling Normalization
Tawes 3136
- D. Gilson: Hipster Boys Wear American Apparel Briefs: Complex Universality in Weekend, The George Washington University, English
- Joseph Russo: The Utility of Faggotry: Queer “Expertise” and Caricature, Goldsmiths, University of London, Cultural Studies
- Sean Wang: Encountering Metronormativity: Politics of Queer Visibility in Central New York, Syracuse University, Geography
- Craig Willse George Mason University, Cultural Studies
12:15–1:30 p.m. CATERED LUNCH
2115 Tawes Hall
1:30–2:45 p.m. CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Bodily Variation and Verification
Tawes 3132
- Nicholas L. Clarkson Advice to “Special Populations”: Airport Security, Ability, and Gender Normativity, Indiana University, Gender Studies
- Shaun Edmonds: No Fats, No Femmes: The Bear Community as a Site of SocioCultural Resistance and Re-Articulation of the Body, University of Maryland, Kinesiology-Physical Cultural Studies
- Joymala Hajra: Contesting Biologism: The Body, Gender Verification Policy, and Universal Rights in Queer India, Columbia University, South Asian Studies
- Ricardo Ortíz: Georgetown University, English
Contesting the Management Paradigm
Tawes 3134
- Jeffrey Bennett: Resisting the Rhetoric of “Management”: Diabetes, HIV, and the Trappings of Medical Imaginaries, University of Iowa, Communication Studies
- Jarah Moesch: Chronically Queer: An Autoethnographic Approach to the Oddities of Rare Disease (Non) Diagnosis, University of Maryland, American Studies
- James Sheldon: Erasing Queer Subjects, Constructing Disabled Subjects: Toward a Queering of Mathematics Disabilities, San Francisco State University, Special Education and Mathematics Education
- Melissa Rogers: University of Maryland, Women’s Studies
Queer Depathologizations
Tawes 3136
- Theodora Danylevich: [Sic] Chic/k Poetics as Agency-to-Knowledge by Way of Masochism: The Dermal Lesbian Closet of Inquiry in Monique Wittig’s Le Corps Lesbien, Merri Lisa Johnson’s Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality, and Malù de Martino’s Como Esquecer/So Hard to Forget, The George Washington University, English
- Leon Hilton: “The Smallest Gesture”: Neuro-atypicality, Queerness, and the Politics of Gesture, New York University, Performance Studies Alyssa Zisk Erasure of Queer Autistic People, University of Rhode Island
- Caetlin Benson-Allott: Georgetown University, English
3–4:30 p.m. PLENARY SESSION
Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
- Karen Nakamura: Trans/Japan, Trans/Disability: The Intersections of Disability, Sexuality, and Eugenics in Contemporary Japan, Yale University, Anthropology Margaret Price Desiring Pain, Desiring Distress: Meditations on Disabled Bodymind, Spelman College, English
- Abby Wilkerson: Not Your Father’s Farm: Rehabilitative Consumption, Heteronormativity, and Family Farm Rhetoric, The George Washington University, University Writing Program
- Robert McRuer:The George Washington University, English
5–6:30 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
- Jasbir Puar: Bodies With New Organs: Becoming Trans, Becoming Disabled, Rutgers University, Women’s and Gender Studies
- Respondent: Keguro Macharia: University of Maryland, English
- Christina Hanhardt: University of Maryland, American Studies and LGBT Studies
6:30–7:30 p.m. RECEPTION
Second-floor lobby, Tawes Hall
Sponsors
University of Maryland Center for Literary and Comparative Studies, Department of English, Graduate School, LGBT Equity Center, LGBT Studies Program, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Undergraduate Studies
American University Department of Literature, College of Arts and Sciences
George Mason University Cultural Studies Program
Georgetown University Department of English
The George Washington University Department of English, University Writing Program
Organizers and Planning Committee
Event Coordinators
Marilee Lindemann and JV Sapinoso, with the assistance of Casey Hall, LGBT Studies Program, University of Maryland. Special thanks to Robert McRuer for advice and assistance
Planning Committee
Christina Hanhardt, University of Maryland; Marilee Lindemann, University of Maryland; Robert McRuer, The George Washington University; JV Sapinoso, University of Maryland; Craig Willse, George Mason University
Conference Visitor Information
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