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QED : A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking
Number of Followers: 2

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ISSN (Print) 2327-1574 - ISSN (Online) 2327-1590
Published by Michigan State University

[2 journals]

Queer Life-Worlds in Postsocialist Armenia: Alternativ Space and the
Possibilities of In/Visibility
- Abstract: In June 2010, I arrived in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia. It was my first time setting foot in what many Armenians back in the United States understand as the hayrenik, the fatherland. For me, "fatherland" was also literal, because Armenia was where my father had been born and raised. I had come to Yerevan to learn to read, write, and speak the language I had not spoken since I was a child. I was also to begin research for an ongoing ethnographic project on sexuality. I was particularly interested in the possibilities and realities of "gay life," traces of which I had found online. I found out, for example, that Public Information and Need for Knowledge (PINK) was a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Out of Sync: Complex Temporality in Transgender Men's YouTube Transition
Channels
- Abstract: Transition is temporal. In a broad sense, a transition is a period in between, a time in flux. In the case of transgender people, transition is commonly understood as the movement from one gender to another. Transgender scholars have troubled normative assumptions about the starting point, ending point, and means of transition, such as Susan Stryker's assertion that the concept of transgender is best characterized as "the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place—rather than any particular destination or mode of transition."1 Yet, what remains latent and unchallenged in discussions of transition is its presumed linearity. Transition marches forward in a particular direction ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
"What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer'": Exploring (il)Legibility
within the Intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Immigration Status
- Abstract: Tired of being welcomed as undocumented in immigrant rights organizations and as queer in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights organizations—but never holistically in either—queer and trans undocumented immigrants coined the term "undocuqueer" as a form of resistance to dominant ideologies that frame gender, sexuality, and immigration issues as singular and unrelated. Undocuqueer, as a political identity, specifically addresses intersectional oppression and serves as a mode through which to question the processes that create and maintain exclusionary norms. "Undocu-" references the nativist policies that criminalize immigrants, whereas "-queer" captures the heterogeneity and plurality of gender ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Review of Exhibitions
- Abstract: British attitudes towards same-sex love and desire have changed enormously over the last fifty years. The UK once had some of the most comprehensive sets of anti-gay laws in Europe and a concomitant history of public hostility, which also affected lesbians even though their sexual lives had never been criminalized. The country has now moved to being one of those in the world with the most positive attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. It is that newly established, if not entirely secure, mood not just of toleration but of celebration that enabled the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act (1967) to be marked by events at a series of major cultural institutions. The Act provided for the decriminalization ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Embodied Risk: Cassils
- Abstract: How does a body feel the sensorial crisis of vulnerability, capture and transform its aggregate physiologies and emotions' The artist Cassils exploits questions of intersubjectivity in Melt/Carve/Forge: Embodied Sculptures, a solo exhibition organized at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts by Curator of Contemporary Art Jodi Throckmorton (November 19, 2016–March 5, 2017). Cassils uses the plural pronouns they, them, and their as "this plurality reflects, through language, the position Cassils occupies as an artist." In the performance Becoming an Image, Cassils attacks a 2,000-pound block of clay as stroboscopic flashes of light made by a roving camera person illuminate the artist's body. Straining in the dark to ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Artist as Alchemist: A Review of Cassils's Monumental
- Abstract: Cassils, Fountain, 2017, performance still from Cassils's closing action of 200-day durational performance Pissed. Photo: Vince Ruvolo.Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York.Cassils, a Canadian-born Los Angeles-based transmasculine performance artist (who uses the singular name and both "he/him" and "they/them" pronouns), creates politically and socially conscious, feminist, body-based artworks that present physical, social violence against—and resilience of—gender-nonconforming and queer people. Cassils performs their body politic primarily through rigorous, physically intense performances that require high-level training and conditioning of the body, which often reverently (and at times ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele (review)
- Abstract: For a text that intends to make queer theory and its applications more accessible than many academic texts on the subject, utilizing the form of a graphic novel seems an appropriate and useful way to fulfill its purported function. Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele's Queer: A Graphic History purports to "invite you to queer theory and to encourage you to try thinking queerly" (5).Each page is given a title to help contextualize the information and imagery held therein, but the text is not separated into sections or chapters as a traditional book might be. However, there seem to be four major arcs that encompass the information: Introduction to Queer Theory, Applications of Queer Theory, Tensions within Queer ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Give It to Me by Ana Castillo (review)
- Abstract: Give It to Me is an instantly entrancing tale of survival. The sole female protagonist, Palma Pierdas, searches for the parents who abandoned her with her grim, cold, God-fearing abuela as an infant. After the death of her nameless abuela, she intends to sell the only thing her abuela left for her, their childhood home. As Palma attempts to evict her remaining family from her home, Palma grows more and more romantically involved with her lil' primo, Pepito. It is through their relationship that family secrets unravel. Although Palma's family drives the narrative, Give It to Me centers on Palma's relationships, desires, and sexual encounters.Palma is a forty-three-year-old bisexual woman, with unfruitful artistic ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism ed. by
Uriel Quesada, Leticia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (review)
- Abstract: Queer Brown Voices offers a collection of fourteen testimonios from Latina/o LGBT activists who participated in organizations from metropolitan cities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. The book includes six personal essays and eight chapters based on oral history interviews, all heavily edited but keeping the activists' voices as complete as possible. The book begins with a preface by Leticia Gomez that informs readers about the need to document the historical narratives of LGBT Latina/o activists during the 1980s, and 1990s because of the lack of documentation of Latina/o activists and erasure of queer brown voices and bodies.Queer Brown Voices is intended for LGBT Latinas/os with knowledge about the ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Queer Aging: The Gayby Boomers and a New Frontier for Gerontology by Jesus
Ramirez-Valles (review)
- Abstract: "Gayby Boomers" mark a unique generation of aging gay men who grew up amid the increased post-Stonewall prevalence of gay identity, and were most immediately affected by the AIDS pandemic. As this cohort moves into "older age" there are a series of assumptions, prescriptions, and normativities within the field of gerontology that this text seeks to problematize. At the outset of Ramirez-Valles's text, he questions what is the experience of being an older gay man; how gay men experience age; and how HIV, race, and a range of additional variables shape or inform this lived experience. The text begins with an introductory chapter, providing a rapid overview of the Gayby Boomer generation, existing frameworks for ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy by Eric
Darnell Pritchard (review)
- Abstract: What's love got to do with it' If the "it" is literacy, then love has everything to do with it. In his recent monograph, Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy, Eric Darnell Pritchard argues that the complex literacies of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people are linked to the self-and communal love practiced to combat normalizing discourses, historic erasure, discriminatory politics, and violent literacies. His central question, then, is how do Black LGBTQ people assign meaning to literacy through their everyday lives' To answer this question and develop his theories of Black Queer Literacies, Pritchard uses a grounded theory approach to analyze the life stories and ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare (review)
- Abstract: Since the 1999 publication of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, the transgender crip writer Eli Clare has become a fixture on scholarly and activist reading lists supporting LGBTQ, disability, anti-racist, and environmental justice work. In that book, he courageously and movingly explores his early life as a white, working-class, disabled butch in rural Oregon and his commitment to radical politics. Clare's latest book, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, both extends and expands that earlier project through a deep, sustained analysis of cure—a deceptively simple concept that encompasses healing, rehabilitation, restoration, treatment, and medical technology as well as the ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative by Amy L. Brandzel
(review)
- Abstract: The cover of Amy L. Brandzel's Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative bears a spray-painted image of the Statue of Liberty, head in hands and without the famous torch meant to enlighten the world. The cover captures Brandzel's argument against the promise represented by the Statue of Liberty to extend freedom to all citizens of the United States. After the Civil War, Lady Liberty was erected, standing on a broken chain, to symbolize that universal freedom could become a reality and oppression could be overcome. If book covers can communicate the tenor of a text, then Against Citizenship delivers on its promise to draw searing illustrations of U.S. citizenship built not on progressive waves of inclusion ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Queer Theory: The French Response by Bruno Perreau (review)
- Abstract: Generally conceptualized as a U.S. invention of the early 1990s, what political effect does queer theory have when it travels to other parts of the world' Bruno Perreau explores this question through Joan W. Scott's concept of a "fantasy echo," which points out that as theory travels its original sources are often obscured through cultural fantasies of history. Even though post-structuralist strands of queer theory emerge from French theories (7), in France today queer theory is considered primarily a U.S. project, evocative of gender theory and minority-based politics in the United States. This imported "U.S." quality of queer theory echoes the "enemy within" fear of French gay marriage opponents, in which ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00
Love in the Time of ACT UP: Reflections on AIDS Activism, Queer Family,
and Desire
- Abstract: On a warm night in Chicago, I went out dancing with Tim, Julia, and other friends at local gay clubs, first at Big Chicks, then Berlin. For two years, I had been conducting research on AIDS activism for my dissertation at Northwestern University.4 I had completed nearly fifty interviews with an array of AIDS activists in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. I conducted participant observation as a member of the direct-action AIDS activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)/Chicago's Prison Issues Committee, an organization that channeled anger over genocidal neglect in the face of HIV/AIDS into queer, campy protest.5 The vicious homophobia6 and attendant deaths of the AIDS crisis had ignited my ... Read More
  Keywords: Sexual minorities; Female-to-male transsexuals; Transgender people; Central America; Illegal aliens; Tate Britain (Gallery); British Museum,; British library; Cassils, Heather; Mexican American women; Literacy; Race relations; Queer theory; AIDS acti
  PubDate: 2018-06-02T00:00:00-05:00