CFP: Queer Visualities Symposium (grad) (UK) (11/30/04; 4/17/05)

THEORISING QUEER VISUALITIES
POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
APRIL 17, 2005

On 17, April 2005, graduate students from across the globe will expand the
discourse surrounding queer theory and visual culture. Titled “Theorising
Queer Visualities,” this postgraduate symposium will be an extension and
continuation of a senior symposium in which postgraduate participants will
respond to the relevant subjects and issues. A full day of panels will be
organized from the proposals submitted for presentation.

The senior symposium, also titled “Theorising Queer Visualities,” will be
held from the 15th to the 16th of April 2004. This event will bring
together leading scholars and artists who are at the forefront of
rewriting the terminology of “queer.” Invited participants include
academics such as Gavin Butt, Michael Hatt, Amelia Jones, Jonathan Katz,
Peggy Phelan, Donald Preziosi, and Jose E. Munoz, and artists such as Nao
Bustamante, Vaginal Davis,
Sunil Gupta, and Isaac Julien. More information on the senior symposium
is available at http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ARTHIST/visualities/.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Theorising Queer Visualities Postgraduate Symposium will address broad
and diverse issues and subjects that will add to current queer concepts as
they connect to visuality. We are seeking proposals that rethink the
theories and practices relating to film, television, dance, performance,
painting, sculpture, installation, multi-media visual art, and other
aspects of visual culture. Some of the questions we hope participants
will address include:

· What exactly is queer visuality? Or, in what circumstances could
visuality be thought of as queer?

· Can queer visuality be discussed as existing in historical periods?
Does queer visuality disrupt the norm of qualified historical periods?

· Does queerness reveal itself in visual ways, and if so, how? Or, What
does it mean to create visual imagery or to visualize in a queer way?

· How can we discuss “queering” vis-à-vis “queer,” “queerness,” or
“queered.” In other words, what distinguished the use of the term “queer”
as a verb/action/doing from its use as a noun/thing/essence?

· What is a theory of visuality from a queer perspective? What is a queer
perspective?

· Can thinking about theories of the visual, visual culture, and practices
of all kinds (from painting to performance to the Internet and beyond) in
a queer way disrupt conventional structures of seeing, knowing, and being?

· Would queer visualities be considered radical in every instance? Or,
might they in some ways replicate existing hegemonic structures of vision
and subjectivity?

· How do queer visualities correspond to formations of gender, race,
ethnicity, and class? Have they in the past – do they in the present?

· How can queer visualities be understood in relation to modernity and/or
postmodernity and the structures of visibility and cultural value?

· What, if any, considerations need to be addressed when thinking about
queer visualities in the global field of contemporary art? Is queer
necessarily a Western concept?

· Is there an association or a relationship between queer visuality and
“racial” visuality?

· How do, and what comes about when, queer artists and/or historians
complicate the heteronormative narrative and presentation of children and
childhood – surfacing their sex and sexuality? How do queer artists
and/or historians challenge the simplistic notions of purity, innocence,
and asexuality with regard to children and childhood? On a similar note,
what comes about when queer artists insert/assert their own queer
childhood, and how does this inform/influence readings of their art and
artistic practice?

· How has homo- and hetero-sexuality been re-thought, re-worked,
re-imagined with the deployment of on-line websites dedicated to sex,
sexuality, and community?

· How has normative masculinity been re-imagined over the past thirty
years – after the rise of the gay and lesbian movement and feminism?

· What is post-gay? What is at stake in the use of this term?

The closing date for the submission of proposals from postgraduate
students is 30 November 2004. Notice of acceptance status will be sent
out on January 1, 2005. The submission deadline for the final draft of
selected papers is March 15, 2005.

Proposals (250 words) plus a brief CV should be sent to:
Robert.Summers_at_man.ac.uk.

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Received on Fri Sep 10 2004 - 12:59:34 EDT