Decolonizing and Globalizing LGBTQ+ Studies: Free 10-Week Online Seminar, Spring 2023
Hosted on Zoom – Register for link
Mondays
March 27 – June 5, 2023
11:00am-12:30pm Eastern Time
Description: This 10-week seminar is an interdisciplinary introduction to LGBTQ+ studies as they relate to the postcolonial Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as Post-communist Eastern Europe in the twenty-first century. Its aim is to decenter and globalize issues from queer studies on the complex cases of the Global South and the former Eastern Block, to question and enrich the contemporary westcentric LGBTQ+ studies and theory. Together with the participants, this seminar will explore nonheteronormative gender and sexuality in cross-cultural perspective in various legal, political and national frameworks outside the West, including developments that have emerged in light of indigenous, postcolonial, diasporic, racial and migration/exile approaches. This course also insists upon the relevance of gender and queer studies for considering conflicts of national and transnational consequence including neo-colonialism, citizenship, immigration, war, terrorism, and human rights on a planetary scale. Research and discussion of the historical, political, social, and economic conditions determining the oppression and emancipation of LGBTQ+ people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, considering colonial and totalitarian backgrounds and contemporary struggles for democracy, will be offered. The focus will be on local activism, the role of international human rights politics, and the artistic expression, to understanding the strategies of advocacy and resistance that queer social movements and individuals have developed in struggles for self-determination. To globalize LGBTQ+ studies, activism and art from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, will be highlighted. Discussions of particular national cases globally will be determined by the experiences of participating students. The interdisciplinary nature of the seminar makes it open and relevant to students, scholars and activists in the humanities, social sciences and direct involvement.
More Information:
Participants who attend at least 8 complete seminar sessions will receive a certificate of satisfactory completion from the Dean of The New School for Social Research. In order to obtain the certificate, participants must register and log in with the same email address each week.
Registration will remain open for the duration of the seminar. Registrants will receive a reminder email with the Zoom link each week.
The seminar sessions will be recorded and available to registrants on Vimeo the following week.
Seminar Leaders:
Dr. Paweł Leszkowicz
Paweł serves as an art historian and a freelance curator, specializing in transnational contemporary art-as-activism and LGBTQ+ studies. As researchers and/or lecturers, Pawel and Tomasz worked at universities in Germany, Finland, the U.K., the U.S., Japan and their native Poland; Pawel and Tomasz are a married couple.
Dr. Tomasz Kitliński
Tomasz is a political philosopher, queer feminist curator, and activist. As researchers and/or lecturers, Pawel and Tomasz worked at universities in Germany, Finland, the U.K., the U.S., Japan and their native Poland; Pawel and Tomasz are a married couple.
Week 1: March 27, 2023 – Introduction to Decolonizing and Globalizing Queer Approach to Gender and Sexuality
Suggested Reading
Further Reading
- Mark Gevisser, “A New Global Culture Wars?” in: Mark Gevisser, The Pink Line. The World’s Queer Frontiers, Profile Books, London 2021, pp. 70-86
Week 2: April 3, 2023 – The Role of LGBTQ+ Issues in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine; the Russian Politics of Homophobia and its Global Impact
Suggested Reading
- Emil Edenborg, Putin’s Anti Gay War on Ukraine
Further Reading
- Dan Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017, pp. 1-15.
Week 3: April 10, 2023 – Eastern European Perspective on Queer History and Emancipation
Suggested Reading
- Robert Kulpa and Joanna Mizielińska, “Introduction: Why Study Sexualities in Central and Eastern Europe?”, in De-centering Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives, ed. R. Kulpa and J. Mizielińska, Ashgate Publishing, 2011, pp. 1-23.
Further Readings
- Louis-Georges Tin, ed. The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008, pp. 158-163.
- Jennifer Rankin, Shaun Walker, EU launches legal action over LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary and Poland
April 17, 2023 – Session POSTPONED for New University in Exile Consortium’s 5th Annual Scholars’ Conference
Week 4: April 24, 2023 – Decolonializing African Nonheteronormative Sexualities
Suggested Reading
- “Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction”, in: Stephen O. Murray, Will Roscoe (ed.) Boy-Wives and Female Husbands. Studies in African Homosexualities, State University of New York Press, 2021, pp. 1-16.
Further Reading
- “Preface”, in: Stephen O. Murray, Will Roscoe (ed.) Boy-Wives and Female Husbands. Studies in African Homosexualities, State University of New York Press, 2021, pp. xxv-xxxvi
Week 5: May 1, 2023 – Case Studies of African LGBTQ+ Activism and Art
Suggested Readings
- “Activism in Africa South of the Sahara”, in: Chiang Howard (ed.) Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, Gale Cengage Reference, 2019.
- Dika Ofoma, As anti-LGBTQ+ crackdowns persist across Africa, these activists continue to fight
- Graeme Reid, Progress and Setbacks on LGBT Rights in Africa – An Overview of the Last Year
Further Readings
- Jake Naughton, Pride and Self-Love in the L.G.B.T.Q. African Diaspora
- Laura Cumming, Zanele Muholi review – portraiture as activism
Week 6: May 8, 2023 – LGBTQ+ Lives and Laws in the Middle East
Suggested Reading
Further Readings
- Brian Whitaker, “In Search of a Rainbow” in Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East, University of California Press, LA 2006.
- Louis-Georges Tin, ed. The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008, pp. 254-260.
Week 7: May 15, 2023 – Middle Eastern Queer Artists and Activists in the Diasporas
Suggested Readings
- Michael T. Luongo, Arab and Coming Out in Art That Speaks Up
- Ella Feldman, How 23 Artists Explore Queerness in the Arab World
- Nazanin Lankarani, Art Challenges Social Norms in the Arab World
Further Readings
- Alexis Stergakis, Portraits of Queer Love and Life in the Middle East
- FILM: Activism, the Arts, and LGBTQ+ Rights in the Middle East and North Africa Region
- FILM: The queer revolution in the Middle East: ‘One good song can do more than 5,000 protests’
Week 8: May 22, 2023 – Queer Asian Herstories and Histories
Suggested Reading
- Louis-Georges Tin, ed. The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008, pp. 84-86, pp.242-264, pp. 274-276
Week 9: May 29, 2023 – Chinese and Indian LGBTQ+ Culture and Activism in the 21st Century
Suggested Readings
- Kyle Knight, India’s Transgender Rights Law Isn’t Worth Celebrating
- Michael Safi, Campaigners celebrate as India decriminalises homosexuality
- Stephanie Yingyi Wang, Unfinished Revolution: An Overview of Three Decades of LGBT Activism in China
- Marjorie Perry, How Gay Art Survives in Beijing, as Censors Tighten Grip
Further Readings
- Brian Dillon, The Joy and Precariousness of Gay Life Through the Eyes of Sunil Gupta
- Alpesh Kantilal Patel, “The Art of Queering Asian Mythology”, in: Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, ed. Howard Chiang, Gale Cengage Company, 2019.
Week 10: June 5, 2023 – Indigenous Stories of Queer Love, Gender and Sexualities
Suggested Readings
- Interviews by Samuel Rutter and Caitlin Youngquist, 10 Queer Indigenous Artists on Where Their Inspirations Have Led Them
- Yuki Kihara Paradise Camp New Zealand Venice Biennale-2022
Further Reading
- Qwo-li Driskill, Chris Finley, Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature, The University of Arizona Press, 2011, pp. 1-15.