Co-sponsored by Media@看片视频, , and the
Tuesday, October 11, 2011, at 5.30 pm
Stewart Biology Building
1205 Docteur-Penfield, S-103
Many accounts of queer studies date its emergence to the late 1980s, pointing to the mix of psychoanalysis, high theory, and close reading that informed several founding texts in the field. This talk traces an alternate genealogy, linking the pervasive concern with stigma and social marginality in the field to earlier formations in the social sciences, including Chicago School sociology, deviance studies, sexology, and urban studies. Love considers the coincidence between empirical and theoretical traditions in sexuality studies, focusing on mid-century accounts of the social construction of gender and sexuality, the dramaturgical self, and stigma as formative of both identity and community. A return to the framework of social problems can help to reanimate the stigma-centric politics of coalition which queer once named. Such an "underdog" politics is useful in mapping the rapidly shifting terrain of power and privilege in the era of gay normalization.
is R. Jean Brownlee Term Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania.
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