CFP: (Un)Making Queer Worlds: Transformations in Asia-Pacific Queer Cultures (Melbourne; 27 Apr; 22-23 June)

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(Un)Making Queer Worlds: Transformations in Asia-Pacific Queer Cultures
Roundtable Workshop for Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers

June 22-23, 2007
Graduate Centre, University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Call for Papers
Proposal deadline: April 27 2007
Since 2000, intellectual interest in Asia-Pacific queer cultures has surged. This surge responds partly to the new visibility of non-normative sexual and gendered subjectivities in the Asia-Pacific and its multiple diasporas. Along with the new thinking around Asian/Pacific sexualities and genders come various contestations: in particular, the fine distinction between understanding A/P sexual cultures as part of an emerging ‘queer globality’, and the tendency to subsume them under a developmental model that places the ‘West’ as the vanguard of, or bad example for, the ‘rest’. Collaborations between queer studies, post-colonial studies, and post-structuralist critiques have shed light on the contemporaneity and historicity of each local queer culture in the Asia-Pacific. But although such effort to carefully describe geographical or local queer particularities is invaluable, locality does not subsist in an insular manner, but is always relational. ‘Glocal’ queer theory marries the specificity of locality with the context of globality. Additionally, the economic processes of globalisation have been accompanied by—indeed, in some cases actively promoted—mass migration, warm body exports and brain drains, particularly from the Asia-Pacific regions, that have temporarily and permanently dislocated individuals and families from their homelands. In such instances the ability to locate ‘local sexualities’ is brought to the fore just as it proposes new difficulties for the analysis of sexuality along national, regional lines, particularly in Australia. And if sexualities and genders are ‘glocal’, then so is capital. Understanding the nexus between glocal capital and sexual subjectivities through their localised and diasporic trajectories is, at bottom, about the political stakes of queer survival in a neoliberal world.

(Un)Making Queer Worlds tackles these important questions directly by bringing together scholars for a two-day roundtable workshop at the University of Melbourne, Australia. The workshop is particularly interested in proposals from postgraduates and Early Career Researchers (ECRs).

What we’re looking for:
We seek participants investigating how various Asia-Pacific constituents are (un)making trajectories of queer world and globality. We encourage papers that employ interdisciplinary approaches. (Un)making Queer Worlds We hope that (Un)making Queer Worlds will contribute to the ongoing elucidation of constantly evolving Asia-Pacific queer cultures and their global articulations.

Format:
Featured participants will be asked to circulate their papers a week in advance of the workshop. Participants will be allocated a one-hour session to present a paper (20-30 minutes) and engage in discussion.

Important dates:
Proposals due: 27 April 2007
Speakers confirmed: Monday May 7
Deadline for papers to be submitted: Monday Jun 4
Papers circulated: Monday June 11
Workshop: Sat/Sun June 22-23

For more info, to register or to submit a paper proposal, email unmaking-worlds@unimelb.edu.au
(Un)Making Queer Worlds is a project within the Cultural Studies Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.