[csaa-forum] Queer Singapore and Queer Bangkon BOOK LAUNCHES 2nd May 2013 at unimelb

[Rosemary Therese Overell]

The Research Unit in Public Cultures, School of Culture and Communication and Faculty of Arts are pleased to invite you to the

Queer Singapore and Queer Bangkok
Book Launches
Thursday 2 May 2013, 5.30pm for 6pm start
Arts Hall, Old Arts, The University of Melbourne
Introduction of Queer Asia series by Professor Peter Jackson and launch by Professor Vera Mackie
          [X]  [X]
RSVP: Lucy Rash (lucy.rash at unimelb.edu.au<https://owa.unimelb.edu.au/OWA/UrlBlockedError.aspx>)  on or before Monday 29 April.

About the Books

Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (eds. Audrey Yue & Jun Zubillaga-Pow) (Hong Kong University Press, 2012).
Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalize homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for the rise of mediated queer cultures in Singapore's current milieu of illiberal citizenship. It analyses how contemporary queer Singapore has emerged against a contradictory backdrop of sexual repression and cultural liberalisation. Using the innovative framework of illiberal pragmatism, established and emergent local scholars and activists provide expansive coverage of the impact of homosexuality on Singapore's media cultures and political economy, including law, religion, the military, literature, theatre, photography, cinema, social media and queer commerce. It shows how new LGBT subjectivities have been fashioned through the governance of illiberal pragmatism, how pragmatism is appropriated as a form of social and critical democratic action, and how cultural citizenship is forged through a logic of queer complicity that complicates the flows of oppositional resistance and grassroots appropriation. Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights (ed Peter Jackson) (Hong Kong University Press, 2011). Winner of the 2011 Ruth Benedict Book Prize. The Thai capital Bangkok is the unrivalled centre of the country's gay, lesbian, and transgender communities. These communities are among the largest in Southeast Asia, and indeed in the world, and have a diversity, social presence, and historical depth that set them apart from the queer cultures of many neighbouring societies. The first years of the twenty-first century have marked a significant transition moment for all of Thailand's LGBT cultures, with a multidimensional expansion in the geographical extent, media presence, economic importance, political impact, social standing, and cultural relevance of Thai queer communities. This book analyses the roles of the market and media — especially cinema and the Internet — in these transformations, and considers the ambiguous consequences that the growing commodification and mediatization of queer lives have had for LGBT rights in Thailand. A key finding is that in the early twenty-first century processes of global queering are leading to a growing Asianization of Bangkok's queer cultures.  This book traces Bangkok's emergence as a central focus of an expanding regional network linking gay, lesbian, and transgender communities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other rapidly developing East and Southeast Asian societies.

About the Editors

Audrey Yue is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research covers the fields of Asian media and cultural policy, diasporic cultures and sexuality studies. Her recent publications include Transnational Australian Cinema: Ethics in the Asian Diasporas (Lexington 2013, with Olivia Khoo and Belinda Smaill), Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (Hong Kong University Press 2012, with Jun Zubillaga-Pow) and Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (Hong Kong University Press 2010). She is currently completing a monograph on queer Asian migration and Chief Investigator in two ARC projects on transnational large screens and multicultural arts governance. Jun Zubillaga-Pow is a PhD candidate at King’s College, London. Peter A. Jackson is currently Professor of Thai history and cultural studies in the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. He has conducted research on Thailand for over thirty years and has written extensively on modern Thai cultural history, with special interests in religion and sexuality. He was editor-in-chief of the Asian Studies Review, flagship journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, from 2009 to 2012 and he founded the Thai Rainbow Archives Project, which has collected and digitised Thai gay, lesbian, and transgender magazines and community organisation newsletters (see http://thairainbowarchive.anu.edu.au/index.html <http://thairainbowarchive.anu.edu.au/index.html> ). His most recent books are “The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand” (Hong Kong University Press 2010, with Rachel Harrison), “Queer Bangkok: Twenty-First-Century Markets, Media and Rights” (Hong Kong University Press 2011) and “Thai Sex Talk: The Language of Sex and Sexuality in Thailand” (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2012, with Pimpawun Boonmongkon).
Professor Vera Mackie is an ARC Future Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong. She is currently working on a research project on Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region. Vera has varied teaching, research, administrative and supervisory experience in the fields of Japanese language and linguistics, Japanese history, gender studies and cultural studies. In addition to previous positions at Swinburne, the University of Adelaide, the University of Melbourne and Curtin University of Technology, she has been a Visiting Professor at Victoria University, Ochanomizu University and Hitotsubashi University. She is a member of the ARC Cultural Research Network and the ARC Asia-Pacific Futures Research Network, and was a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts, 2003-2005.


Dr. Rosemary Overell

Co-ordinator Rock to Rave

School of Culture and Communication

The University of Melbourne

Parkville     VIC    3010

overellr at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:overellr at unimelb.edu.au>

http://unimelb.academia.edu/RosemaryOverell

http://www.asiainstitute.unimelb.edu.au/about/students/profiles/rosemary_overell
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