Date: Mar 06, 2012

Queer Rhetoric: The 5th Annual LGBT Studies Symposium

Presented by the LGBT Studies Program and the Hofstra Cultural Center, March 16-17, 2012

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … Hofstra’s LGBT Studies Program and the Hofstra Cultural Center are presenting the 5th Annual LGBT Studies Symposium on Queer Rhetoric, a relatively new field situated at the intersection of LGBT Studies, Queer Theory, Rhetoric and Cultural Studies. The conference will take place Friday and Saturday, March 16 and 17, 2012, at Hofstra University’s Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall, 10th Floor, Axinn Library, South Campus.
 
Queer Rhetoric seeks to uncover the symbolic and performative strategies whereby queer identities have been and continue to be constructed in different times and places. Scholars working in this field locate the heteronormative occlusion of queer voices within a given cultural and social context and describe how queer voices develop a battery of technologies that offer a means of resistant expression. This conference will be the first ever devoted entirely to the subject of Queer Rhetoric.
 
The conference features keynote addresses by Erik Gunderson, University of Toronto, Canada, who will give a presentation titled “The Reluctant Queerness of Ancient Rhetoric,” and Chuck E. Morris III, Boston College, whose presentation is titled “My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham LIncoln is Here, Queer, and Wants to Recruit You.” Both Dr. Gunderson and Dr. Morris are serving as the symposium’s Joseph G. Astman Distinguished Scholars.
 
Co-directors of this LGBT Studies Symposium are Hofstra University faculty members Steven D. Smith, associate professor of classics and comparative literature; and Matthew J. Sobnosky and Mary Anne Trasciatti, associate professors of speech communication, rhetoric and performance Studies.
 
Online registration for the symposium is available at www.hofstra.edu/culture (click on Events and then select “Conferences and Symposia.”). Or call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.
 
Schedule of Symposia Events and Speakers:
 
Friday, March 16, 2012
9 a.m.-5 p.m. REGISTRATION AND COFFEE
9:45 a.m. WELCOME
 
10-11 a.m. PANEL I: QUEER HISTORIES OF RHETORIC
Featuring Hofstra University’s Philip Dalton; Mary Marcel, Bentley College on The Nagging Wife of Athens; and Pamela Van Haitsma, University of Pittsburgh, on Rhetorical Pedagogies of Romance and Sexuality.

11:15 a.m.- 12:15 p.m. PANEL II: COMING OUT AND QUEER YOUTH
Featuring Hofstra University’s Judith S. Kaufman; Christopher Thomas, Wake Forest University, on It Gets Better (for Some): The Creation of Authentic Queerness in Coming Out Rhetoric for LGBT Bodies; and Erin J. Rand, Syracuse University, on Violence Foretold: Heteronormativity and the Rhetorical Production of the Suicidal Queer Teen.

1:45-2:45 p.m. PANEL III: WHERE QUEER AND RACE INTERSECT
Featuring Hofstra University’s Vicente Lledo-Guillem; Paul Casey, Occidental College, on Drag Ethnographies: Paris Is Burning; and Lisa Corrigan, University of Arkansas, on Orval Faubus and the Language of Segregation: Homonationalism, Sexualized Violence, and Racial Anxiety During the Little Rock Crisis.

3-4 p.m. PANEL IV: PSYCHIATRY AND THE BODY: QUEER CRITIQUES
Featuring Hofstra University’s Lisa Merrill; Thomas R. Dunn, University of Georgia, on Dr. H(omosexual) Anonymous and Gay Rights Activism at the American Psychiatric Association Conventions, 1970-1972; and Angela Leone, Williamette University, on Ta-tas, Boobies and the Top – Rhetoric of Mastectomies and Mastectomy Fundraising Campaigns.

4:45-5:45 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS by Erik Gunderson, University of Toronto, Canada on The Reluctant Queerness of Ancient Rhetoric.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

9-10:30 a.m. PANEL V: QUEER SPACES
Featuring Valeria Fabj, Lynn University; Jonathan Halsall, Kent State University, on Making a Moral Problem: How One United Church of Christ Congregation Metaphorically Problematizes Its Open and Affirming Covenant; Benjamin Joseph Nobile Kampler, New York University, on Straightening Space: Neoliberalism and Gay Public Sex; and Bruce Henderson, Ithaca College, Sex Panic in the Causeway: Russell Banks’ Queer Rhetoric(s) in Lost Memory of Skin.

11:15 a.m.- 12:15 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS by Chuck E. Morris III, Boston College, titled My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham Lincoln Is Here, Queer, and Wants to Recruit You.

3-5 p.m. WALKING TOUR OF NEW YORK’S WEST VILLAGE
Shuttle bus will transport those registered for the tour to the Mineola train station to take the LIRR to Penn Station.
 
5-7 p.m. GATHERING AT THE HISTORIC STONEWALL INN
53 Christopher Street, New York
 
Registration fees are $35, $20 for matriculated non-Hofstra students with ID. All on-campus symposium events, with the exception of meals, are free to members of the Hofstra community upon presentation of a current HofstraCard.
 
Hofstra University is a dynamic private institution where students can choose from about 140 undergraduate and more than 150 graduate programs in liberal arts and sciences, business; engineering; communication; education, health and human services; and honors studies, as well as a School of Law and the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine.

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Related Link: More About the LGBT Studies Symposium