Transnational Sexualities

A year-long series coorganized by Women’s Studies
and the Program in the Study of Sexualities

FALL 2008 PROGRAM

Tuesday September 9, 5:00
Elisabeth Engebretsen lecture, “A queer sense of belonging: Intimate desires, conjugal ideals, and national identity among lalas (’lesbians’) in urban China.”

Engebretsen, PostDoc fellow in Women’s Studies for 2008-09, is completing her PhD in anthropology at LSE. East Duke Parlors, 4:15 pm, reception follows.

Thursday September 11, 5:00
Sahar Amer lecture, “Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women.”

Amer is Professor in Asian and International Studies at the Univesity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This talk draws from her new book, Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (University of Pennsylvania, 2008). East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows.

Thursday October 2, 5:00
Ann Stoler lecture, “Imperial Dispositions of Dis-Regard.”

Stoler is the Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the New School of Social Research. She is the author most recently of Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (forthcoming). Co-sponsored by Cultural Anthropology. East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows.

Wednesday October 22, 12:00
Wednesdays @ The Center, “Transnational Sexualities: New Directions in the Study of Sexuality.”

Panel discussion with Svati Shah (Women’s Studies Postdoc fellow), Elisabeth Engebretsen (Women’s Studies Postdoc fellow), and Ara Wilson (Director, Program in the Study of Sexualities). Moderated by Ranjana Khanna, Director of Women’s Studies. Lunch served beginning 11:45 am, Room 240, John Hope Franklin Center, Noon.

Thursday October 30
Everett Zhang lecture. “Flows between the Clinic and the Media: Desiring Production in Beijing.”

Zhang is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research examines how medical systems and media construct masculinity and sexuality in China and Taiwan. East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows.

Women’s Studies and the program in the study of sexualities at Duke continue a year-long project on transnational sexualities with a Spring 2009 series exploring sexual texts and gendered contexts in Asia, the Middle East, and North America.

Spring 2009 Program

Thursday January 22
Chris Berry lecture
“Queer Asian Film Studies: Gendered Consumption of East Asian Gay Cinema”
Berry is Professor of Film and Television Studies and Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China (Routledge, 2004) and coeditor of Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (Duke University Press, 2003). East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows

Tuesday January 27
Noor Al-Qasimi lecture
“The Emergence of the Boyah Identity in the United Arab Emirates”
Al-Qasimi is a Visiting Adjunct Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows

Friday February 13
India, Sexuality, and the Archive Colloquium
Anjali Arondekar (University of California-Santa Cruz); Shohini Ghosh (Jamia Millia Islamia University); Charu Gupta (Yale University); Patricia Uberoi (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi); Neel Ahuja (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill); Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke University); Anupama Rao (Barnard College and National Humanities Center); Robyn Wiegman (Duke University). East Duke Parlors, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, reception follows

Monday March 2
Svati Shah lecture
“Sex Work, Migration, and Labor in Mumbai: Reading Biopolitical Exceptionalism and Neoliberal Sovereignty Through India’s Gotham”
Shah (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) is a 2008-09 PostDoctoral fellow in Women’s Studies. East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows.

Thursday April 2
David Valentine lecture
“Mapping the ‘Sexual’: Transgender Bodies, Gay Bodies, and the Geography of Ontology”
Valentine is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and author of Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Duke University Press, 2007) East Duke Parlors, 5:00 pm, reception follows

Tuesday April 7
Lázaro Lima lecture
“U.S. Empire Building in Puerto Rico: Reproduction, Science and the Politics of Transgender Dissonance”
Lima is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latina/o Studies and co-coordinator of the Program in Gender and Sexuality at Bryn Mawr. He is the author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (New York University Press, 2007). Cosponsored with the UNC-CH Minor in Sexuality Studies with funding from the Robertson Scholars Collaboration Fund.  5:00 pm at UNC-Chapel Hill