[csaa-forum] CFP: (Un)Making Queer Worlds: Transformations in Asia-Pacific Queer Cultures

[Aren Z. Aizura]

(Un)Making Queer Worlds: Transformations in Asia-Pacific Queer Cultures
Roundtable Workshop for Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers

June 22-23, 2007
Graduate Centre, University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, Australia


Call for Papers
Proposal deadline: April 27 2007

Since 2000, intellectual interest in Asia-Pacific queer cultures has 
surged. This surge responds partly to the new visibility of 
non-normative sexual and gendered subjectivities in the Asia-Pacific and 
its multiple diasporas. Along with the new thinking around Asian/Pacific 
sexualities and genders come various contestations: in particular, the 
fine distinction between understanding A/P sexual cultures as part of an 
emerging ‘queer globality’, and the tendency to subsume them under a 
developmental model that places the ‘West’ as the vanguard of, or bad 
example for, the ‘rest’. Collaborations between queer studies, 
post-colonial studies, and post-structuralist critiques have shed light 
on the contemporaneity and historicity of each local queer culture in 
the Asia-Pacific. But although such effort to carefully describe 
geographical or local queer particularities is invaluable, locality does 
not subsist in an insular manner, but is always relational. ‘Glocal’ 
queer theory marries the specificity of locality with the context of 
globality. Additionally, the economic processes of globalisation have 
been accompanied by—indeed, in some cases actively promoted—mass 
migration, warm body exports and brain drains, particularly from the 
Asia-Pacific regions, that have temporarily and permanently dislocated 
individuals and families from their homelands. In such instances the 
ability to locate ‘local sexualities’ is brought to the fore just as it 
proposes new difficulties for the analysis of sexuality along national, 
regional lines, particularly in Australia. And if sexualities and 
genders are ‘glocal’, then so is capital. Understanding the nexus 
between glocal capital and sexual subjectivities through their localised 
and diasporic trajectories is, at bottom, about the political stakes of 
queer survival in a neoliberal world.

(Un)Making Queer Worlds tackles these important questions directly by 
bringing together scholars for a two-day roundtable workshop at the 
University of Melbourne, Australia. The workshop is particularly 
interested in proposals from postgraduates and Early Career Researchers 
(ECRs).

Confirmed speakers: Associate Professor Peter A. Jackson will deliver a 
keynote address on Friday June 22. Dr Jackson is the Deputy Convenor and 
Senior Fellow, Division of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian 
National University in Canberra. He is the author and editor of numerous 
publications on genders and sexualities in Thailand and elsewhere, 
including Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female 
Homosexualities in Contemporary Thailand (Haworth Press, New York, 1999) 
and Multicultural Queer: Australian Narratives (Haworth Press, New York, 
1999).
______________________________________________
Submission of abstracts

What we’re looking for:
We seek participants investigating how various Asia-Pacific constituents 
are (un)making trajectories of queer world and globality. We encourage 
papers that employ interdisciplinary approaches. We hope that (Un)making 
Queer Worlds will contribute to the ongoing elucidation of constantly 
evolving Asia-Pacific queer cultures and their global articulations.

Workshop format:
Featured participants will be asked to circulate their papers a week in 
advance of the workshop.  Participants will be allocated a one-hour 
session to present a paper (20-30 minutes) and engage in discussion. As 
this is a postgraduate and ECR event, registration is free of charge.

Please submit abstracts of 450-500 words to 
unmaking-worlds at unimelb.edu.au by April 27 2007. Keep in mind that 
papers presented will be circulated before the workshop. Circulated 
papers should be no more than 6000 words in length.

Important dates:
Proposals due: 27 April 2007
Speakers confirmed: Monday May 7                    	
Deadline for papers to be submitted: Monday June 4           		
Papers circulated: Monday June 11            		
Workshop: Fri/Sat June 22-23       		

For more information, to register or to submit a paper proposal, please 
email
unmaking-worlds at unimelb.edu.au or go to
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/postgraduate/unmaking_worlds.html

___________________________________________________________________________________________
(Un)Making Queer Worlds is a project jointly initiated by the Cultural 
Studies Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of 
Melbourne, and the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University 
of Sydney. We acknowledge the support of the Cultural Research Network 
of the ARC and the School of Graduate Studies, University of Melbourne.