Queer Futures: reconsidering ethics, activism and the political

The Queer Studies Research Group, who form part of the Centre, are hosting a lunchtime research seminar on Friday March 8, 1.00-2.00pm in GE215 on the Clifton Campus. Dr. Elahe Haschemi Yekani (University of Innsbruck, Austria) and Dr. Beatrice Michaelis (Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany) will deliver a paper on 'Queer Futures: Reconsidering Ethics, Activism and the Political'.  Everyone is welcome but for further information and enquiries, please contact Dr. Hongwei Bao.

The speakers describe their paper as follows:

In our short input we will introduce two recent publications we co-edited: Queer Futures: Reconsidering Ethics, Activism and the Political (Ashgate 2013) and the special Isssue “The Queerness of Things Not Queer” of the German Journal Feministische Studien (2/2012).

We want to discuss in how far the turn to negativity and the more recent embrace of speculative philosophies in queer theory might be reconciled with the political impetus of queer activism and theorizing. How do affects and materialities shape queer thinking as a political pursuit, and how can these theoretical boundary crossings of time and space be reconciled with the geopolitical challenges of a global queer theory (and its ongoing US-American predominance).

About the speakers:

Elahe Haschemi Yekani is University Assistant (Postdoc) at the Department of English at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. . In 2012, she acted as the substitute for the Junior Professorship British Cultural Studies at the University of Potsdam, Germany and in 2011 she was a Guest Professor of Modern English Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She won the Britcult Award for The Privilege of Crisis. Narratives of Masculinities in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Photography and Film (Campus, 2011). Other publications include: Netzwerk Körper, ed. What Can a Body Do? Praktiken und Figurationen des Körpers in den Kulturwissenschaften (Campus, 2012).

Beatrice Michaelis is a post-doctoral researcher in German Medieval Studies and Head of Research Coordination at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she also teaches medieval German literature. She is the author of (Dis-)Artikulationen

von Begehren – Schweigeeffekte in wissenschaftlichen und literarischen Texten (De Gruyter, 2011) as well as the co-editor of the volumes Geschlecht als Tabu – Orte, Dynamiken und Funktionen (transcript, 2008), and Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften. Perspektiven der Queer Theory (Querverlag, 2005).

Together with Gabriele Dietze, they published the article: “‘Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.’ Queer Interdependencies as Corrective Methodologies.” In: Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality. Eds. Yvette Taylor, Sally Hines and Mark E. Casey. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 78-98.