Archives for July 2007

“Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Diversions, and Connections"

A special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

Edited by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez and Jonathan Alexander, PhD, University of California, Irvine

This special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality invites scholarly and research-oriented essays that explore potential theoretically or empirically understood connections and intersections between bisexuality and queer theory.

Queer Theory has emerged in the West as one of the most provocative analytical tools in the humanities and social sciences.  Scholars in fields as diverse as literary studies and anthropology to women's studies, gender studies, and legal studies have benefited greatly from queer theory's call to scrutinize identity and social structures as they are...

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“Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Diversions, and Connections”

 A special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

Edited by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

 and Jonathan Alexander, PhD, University of California, Irvine

This special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality invites scholarly and research-oriented essays that explore potential theoretically or empirically understood connections and intersections between bisexuality and queer theory.

Queer Theory has emerged in the West as one of the most provocative analytical tools in the humanities and social sciences.  Scholars in fields as diverse as literary studies and anthropology to women's studies, gender studies, and legal studies have benefited greatly from queer theory's call to scrutinize identity and social structures as they are organized by heteronormative relations and suppositions.  At the same time, queer theory has its own blindspots in its examination of sexualities, sexual cultures, and the movement of the erotic between and among people.  In particular, queer theory has been quite silent about bisexuality.  This elision strikes us as odd given the many ways in which bisexuality has been mobilized in literature,...

“The Future of Bisexuality”

A special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

 Edited by Jonathan Alexander, PhD, University of California, Irvine

This special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality will explore the future of bisexuality—as an identity, as a community grouping, as a flash point for activism, as a critical way to interrogate and understand hetero- and mono-sexualities, and as an erotic inspiration for a variety of art projects.  The editor, Dr. Jonathan Alexander, invites scholarly, personal, and experimental articles that explore what the future of bisexuality might be in shifting cultural, social, and political climates.  Collectively, articles in this special double issue, whatever form they take, will trace how bisexuality has emerged as a marker of identity, community, and politics as a way of grounding a discussion of where bisexuality may take us—and the larger culture—as an identity, a community, and a politics.   Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How has the emergence of bisexuality in specific communities, in the mass media, in the public sphere affected larger discourses about sex and sexuality?  What are some long-term ramifications of such effects?
• How do bisexuals and bisexual communities affect social spaces—and how might such...

Jennifer Moorman and Maria San Filippo of UCLA are organizing a panel, "(Re)Constructing Bisexual Spaces" for the 2008 conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.  Conference info is posted on the SCMS website.

Here's info for scholars and graduate students who may wish to submit a proposal:

Summary:

In concert with the conference theme "Architectures of the Moving Image," this

panel aims to redress bisexual invisibility in visual media and associated academic discourses by surveying "bisexual spaces" throughout the visual

mediascape. We invite case studies and theoretical interventions that explore

sites (spatio-temporal locations) and sights (ways of seeing) between/beyond

heteronormativity and monosexuality.

We intend this panel to serve as a launching pad for a planned anthology on bisexualities and visual media, the first of its kind.

Please send abstracts (200-300 words) with short bio as a Word attachment via email to both organizers (jmoorman@ucla.edu, mariasf@ucla.edu) no later than August 10. (Please consult the SCMS guidelines before you submit.)  Click "view full" to see list of possible...

I recently applied for a renewal of my ethics review approval.  At my school an ethics approval is required whenever one works with human beings, particularly if the work may have negative consequences.  Although the stage where I actively interview women is completed, the ethics review committee considers the study ongoing until I've published the report (in my case, my dissertation). It seems odd to have to get an ethics approval for what is essentially now me sitting at my computer or going to the library. 

On the other hand, the idea that contact, responsibility, or study ends completely at some point seems to be based on the idea that you're an outsider interviewing insiders - people you will likely never see again after the study.  When you're studying your own community, the line seems less clear. I'll be seeing these women all the time; many of them are my friends.

I find it interesting that we're expected to apply for the review without having training in what makes for ethical research.  Part of this is that many people would view my project as a sociology project.  I assume that were I a sociology student ethical research methods would have been covered during an undergraduate degree.  None of this is done in theology, which is geared towards preparing people either for ministry or (as in my case) the academic study of religion....

Bringing together activists, artists, independent scholars, faculty, practitioners, and students from a broad range of disciplines and fields, this conference aims to address issues of sexual desire and pleasure, cultural activism, black-brown dialogues and coalition-building, creating and performing sexual identities, human rights and social justice, and citizenship, among other topics.  The conference venue presents a unique opportunity for the participants to examine critically the state of empirically grounded, historicized, and theoretically informed inquiries and practices around Black and Latina/o bodies and sexualities. 

Please submit abstracts (as well as any queries) to RACESEXPOWER2008@DEPAUL.EDU.   The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 15, 2007.

RACE, SEX, POWER:

New Movements in Black & Latina/o Sexualities