*** Please note that Queer(ing) New York will convene May 1, 8, 15, and 22 ***
Lgbtq people have formed and been formed by cities, so much so that literature scholar Julie Abraham has argued that homosexuals have become “models of the city itself” (2009, xix). Of all the cities where lgbtq people have flourished, historian Robert Aldrich has argued that “New York offered a prototype for American gay cultures” (2004, 1727). While lgbtq studies has begun to extend itself to look at rural and other non-urban environments, much of the urban still remains to be accounted for, particularly difference within the city.
To truly account for our difference, we must queer the city in the way it normalizes groups and spaces, and New York City is the exciting urban environment to begin within. In this Seminar in the City, we will read work that challenges and queers the normalized histories and spaces of lgbtq life. How can we queer the neighborhood, bar, streets, and bodies within it to tell stories of difference? These versions of lgbtq life often privilege certain places in the queer geographical imagination and thereby ignore the more complicated queer spaces and stories of our everyday lives. Such a normalizing focus on lgbtq spaces and places ignores the ways that lgbtq people produce their spaces through difference around sexual, gender, race, class, and ability identities. How can a queer reading of the spaces New York City more radically account for difference?
Drawing on work from queer theory and lgbtq studies in geography, sociology, anthropology, history, and literature studies, we will use the city as a lens and site for our reading and research. This course will include seminar discussions and site visits throughout the New York City area. Authors we will read include the following writers:
- John D’Emilio on the role of capitalism in forming gay identity;
- Lisa Duggan on the trends toward neoliberal homonormativity;
- Samuel Delany on the Disneyfication of Times Square;
- Amin Ghaziani on the demise of the neighborhood;
- Martin Manalansan on working class gay men’s cyclical experience of neighborhoods; and
- Joan Nestle’s on lesbian bars and beaches in the 1950s.
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No prior experience in theoretical readings or site analysis is needed; an open, imaginative, and inquisitive mind is mandatory. All readings will be provided.
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Schedule of the Course:
- May 1st: The City and the Bodies within It
- May 8th: The Bar, the Institution, and the Space Between
- May 15th: Street Life
- May 22nd: The Demise of the Gayborhood? The Rise of a Queered Neighborhood?
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Register at: http://jgieseking.org/CLAGSqNY/register/
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The hashtag for those following the course on Twitter is: #CLAGSqNY. The course site will be http://jgieseking.org/CLAGSqNY.
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Instructor Bio:
Jen Jack Gieseking, Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Research Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and hold a PhD in environmental psychology. Her work as an urban cultural geographer and environmental psychologist examines the everyday co-productions of space and identity support or inhibit social, spatial, and economic justice with a special focus on sexuality and gender. She is working on her first book, Queer New York: Lesbians’ and Queer Women’s Constellations of Social and Spatial Justice in New York City, 1983-2008.She has held fellowships with Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellow; The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics; The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies; and the Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellows Program. Jack is co-editor of People, Place, and Space: Key Readings Across the Disciplines, with William Mangold, Cindi Katz, Setha Low, and Susan Saegert which is forthcoming from Routledge in 2013, and is co-editing a book on key readings on gender and sexuality in geography with Gavin Brown, Kath Browne, Andrew Gorman-Murray, Lynda Johnston, and Jason Lim which is forthcoming in 2015. She has published in Area, Qualitative Inquiry, Journal of Urban Studies, and Journal of Social Issues. Jack serves as the Project Manager for JustPublics@365, a partnership between The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the Ford Foundation that rethinks scholarly communication in the digital era. She can be found at jgieseking.org and @jgieseking.
*** All CLAGS events are free and open to the public. ***
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