2nd Annual Queer Directions Symposium presents Queer Transnationalisms / Queer Diasporas Public Panel

Join us for the second annual Queer Directions Symposium! Queer Directions is an annual symposium whose primary goal is to offer a dynamic forum for discussion of the most recent and relevant issues in queer and sexuality studies. This year’s Symposium focuses on issues of Queer Transnationalisms/Queer Diasporas.

Date: Friday March 2, 2018  Time: 4:00PM – 6:00PM

Place: Jackman Law Building Bennet Lecture Hall RM. P120

Featuring panelists Include:

Gayatri Gopinath (Associate Professor, New York University)

Gayatri Gopinath is an Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and director of Asian/Pacific/American Studies at New York University. Her research interests include, queer studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Feminist Theory. Gopinath is perhaps best known for her book Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures.

Xavier Livermon (Assistant Professor, University of Texas)

Xavier Livermon’s research exists at the intersection of popular culture, gender, and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa and the African Diaspora. He is currently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled, Its About Time: Kwaito and the Performance of Freedom that examines post-apartheid youth culture as a series of performances enacted to test the limits of post-apartheid possibility.

Jafari Allen (Associate Professor, University of Miami)

Jafari Allen is the author of the critical ethnography of race, gender, sexuality and revolution, ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba; editor of Black/Queer/Diaspora– a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. He is currently working on a new book project– Black/Queer Here and There– which traces cultural and political circuits of transnational Black queer desire, in travel, tourism, art, and activism, in and between the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, and North America.

Helen Hok-Sze Leung (Professor, Simon Fraser University)

Helen Hok-Sze Leung is a Professor at Simon Fraser University. She has published widely on queer cinema and is the author of Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong and Farewell My Concubine: A Queer Film Classics. She is currently working on two research projects: Vancouver as Asian City, which examines transpacific connections in Vancouver’s film and culture industries; and The Sound of Queer Cinema, which explores queer cinema through sonic perspectives.