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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black;text-transform:uppercase">Cultural Diversity and Communication Research GROup: September Colloquium<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black;text-transform:uppercase"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences | University of Technology Sydney<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Room: CB08.03.004 (UTS Broadway campus, Room 004, Level 3, Building 8 Chau Chak Wing Building, Ultimo Road) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Date: Friday, 07/09/2018<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Time: 15:00-17:00<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Convened by: Dr. Bhuva Narayan and Dr. Tim Laurie</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">BELONGING IN DIFFERENCE: ANTAGONISM WITHIN QUEER ACTIVIST COMMUNITIES</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Samantha Sperring, Research Assistant and Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UTS</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Abstract: This paper draws on research conducted in Sydney and Canberra to explore the relationship between contemporary queer politics (as they manifest in queer activist communities and alongside
US based queer theory) and current activist practice. Tracing some of the key sources of antagonism within local activist communities, it questions the extent to which their strategies align with the anti-identitarian, open and ethical origins posed by queer
studies. It is one attempt to radically situate and contextualise queer theoretical concerns within the communities they purport to represent, despite much of queer theoretical work taking literature, psychoanalysis and film as its points of reference. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">CULTURE WARS AND SEXUALITY POLITICS IN SINGAPORE</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Dr. Shawna Tang, Lecturer, Dept. of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Abstract: In Singapore, a city-state with unapologetic aspirations towards global city status, political leaders have since the 1990s deployed sexual difference to signal the country’s progress
and modernity in a bid to stay competitive in the global economy. Conservatives despair over the state’s sacrifice of morality at the altar of economic development, and have increasingly taken in their own hands an active anti-gay stance, while LGBTs, politically
emboldened and economically empowered by progressive global city projects, have increasingly marshalled their resources to fight back. This clash has led pundits to conclude that Singapore is witnessing a full-blown ‘culture war ‘between the anti-LGBT and
LGBT-friendly camp. In this presentation, I examine three of these so-called ‘culture wars’ fought over the repeal of the sodomy law in Singapore, over the issue of lesbianism in Singapore’s most established women’s group, and over Pink Dot, the annual gay
pride rally. Central to these ‘culture wars’ is a common sense understanding of homophobia as a ‘cultural’ disposition of a conservative Christian group that can be eradicated over time as Singapore progresses and as LGBTs gain acceptance globally. In this
construction of LGBT contentions as a ‘culture war’ hinged on a teleological narrative of progress, I show how the state is able to step outside as an objective adjudicator of cultural contests between progressives and conservatives, placating the anti-gay
camp on the one hand, and promising hope for LGBTs on the other. Constructing these clashes as ‘merely cultural’, I argue, enables the state to obscure the material conditions under which it has sought to ally itself with social conservatives on the one hand,
and softened its stance against LGBTs on the other, exacerbating tensions between the two camps.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">LIVING A QUEER FEMINIST LIFE IN KOLKATA, INDIA</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Dr. Srila Roy, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">Abstract: This talk provides a glimpse into queerness as a way of life in contemporary Kolkata, India. It looks at the manner in which young metropolitan self-identified queer individuals are transforming
their selves and modes of living. No longer hidden or erased, their narratives bespeak the development of a ‘homosexual way of life’ (Foucault) and the expansion – via the resources of India’s liberalisation and transnational discourses of human and sexual
rights– of community formation and subcultural development, especially for urban queer women. The ethico-political implications of such a homosexual ascesis are, however, ambiguous insofar as technologies of the queer self can be invested in the production
of respectability. This should come as no surprise once we consider the extent to which the maintenance if not reinforcement of class-based hierarchies invariably constitutes the conditions for queer recognition in India today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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