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.
