[csaa-forum] CFP: Performance in Inter-Asian and Inter-African Perspectives

[Amanda Wise]

Call for Paper for American Society For Theater Research (ASTR) 2004
National Conference at Las Vegas
(http://www.astr.umd.edu/conference2004/ASTRConference_call_seminar.html
#05)
Global Queer Tastes:
Performance in Inter-Asian and Inter-African Perspectives 
Eng-Beng Lim, University of California at Los Angeles
Tavia Nyong'o, New York University 

In recent years, a body of scholarship under the rubric of "global
queering" is pointing to an emergent "lesbian and gay world" or signs of
what we think of as "modern" homosexuality. According to this
scholarship, this "global subculture'" is dominated primarily by the
lesbian and gay cultural models of the USA and secondarily Europe. For
better or worse, "universal" and "modern" are considered to be Western
properties in this global cultural imaginary of "queer," "lesbian,"
"gay," and/or "transgender." Such an unquestioned presumption in
comparative queer studies reiterates the dualities that fix the
non-Western world as "local" and the West as "global." Notably, much of
this scholarship is inflected by a white gay male optic that uses a
style of enlightened postcolonial ethnography, acknowledging the
privilege of its gaze while nonetheless replicating some dimensions of
Western economic and cultural hegemony. Queer "Asia" and queer "Africa"
emerge in this literature as sites of inquiry situated within a
suspiciously neoliberal topography. 

In this seminar we will propose ways of exploring queer "Asia" and queer
"Africa" that not only subvert the dominance of white queer culture, but
which also examine the inter-Asian and inter-African dimensions of queer
globalizations that have been neglected by scholars. Using theatre and
performance as our guiding scenarios, we discourage the reduction of
"global queering" to a unidirectional process of Westernization or
Americanization, and seek an active engagement in the queer cultural
resources circulating within Asia, Africa, and their diasporas. We are
reintroducing a discussion of neoliberalism and US/European cultural
hegemony in a literature that presupposes and ignores it. But we also
seek to expand the critical parameters of such binaries as "East/West"
and "North/South" to include circuits of mobility within the "East"
and/or "South," and forces other than neoliberalism, that effect the
inter-Asian and inter-African circulation of queer cultures.  We seek
proposals that explore the following:
*	How are queer tastes performed in specific national contexts and
amidst particular national liberation movements? 
*	How are they inflected by consumer culture and tourism? 
*	How do Asian and African theatre companies code them in their
productions? 
*	How are they displayed in the performances of everyday life? 
While all disciplinary and epistemic approaches are welcome, we are
particularly interested in those that deal critically with the
intersection of globalization, queer, feminist, diaspora, and area
studies. Suggestions of related topics are welcome, and we encourage
scholars from Africa and Asia to submit proposals. Essays should be of
conference paper length, 10-12 pages 

Please submit a 250 to 500 word abstract (attached or pasted in an
email) by May 31 to:
Eng-Beng Lim,  eb at ucla.edu
AND Tavia Nyong'o tavia.nyongo at nyu.edu 

If email is not available, hard-copy submissions, also due by May 31,
2004, may be made to: 
Eng-Beng Lim
UCLA Theatre, Critical Studies & International Institute
11343 Bunche Hall, Box 951487, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487. 

and 

Tavia Nyong'o
New York University Performance Studies
721 Broadway, Room 628, New York, NY 10003
*PLEASE NOTE that presenters need to become ASTR members. 

Eng-Beng Lim
PhD Dissertation Fellow, UCLA Theater
Associate Global Fellow, UCLA International Institute
 
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