Queer Faculty Symposium

Queer Faculty Symposium Series 2012

The purpose of the QFS Series is to highlight work that is furthering the visibility of queer issues in the academy as well as to showcase the work of queer and ally faculty across The Claremont Colleges. The QRC's 2012 Queer Faculty Symposium was a great sucess. Thank you to all who contributed their minds and their discussion to this earnest space of learning. Please be on the lookout for information about the 2013 QFS Series and in the mean time, check out some of what we looked at this year:

The QFS Series included four talks this year...

"The Bible & Homophobic Disgust"

Erin Runions, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Pomona College

Wednesday, April 18th 

Erin Runions, Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Pomona college, is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible, which she reads from the perspective of cultural studies and gender and sexuality studies. Her work brings together politics, culture and the reading of biblical text, with attention to the ways in which interpretations of the Bible come to  condition contemporary configurations of power. She pays special attention to the effect of the Bible—mediated through popular and scholarly biblical commentary, as well as film, literature, and political discourse—on debates over gender, sexuality, forms of democratic governance, the war on terror, racialization, and US imperialism.

Selected publications include: Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003);

*Part of Gaypril's Queer Faith Series

Reading and Exerpt

Laura Harris, Professor of English and World Literature and Africana Studies, Pitzer College

Wednesday, April 11th 4:30 - 5:30 PM 

Professor Harris will be reading selections from some of her recent publications, followed by a discussion/Q&A afterward. Professor Harris received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Research interests include: 20th century African American literature and culture, Feminist and Queer Theory, Harlem Renaissance Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and Performance Studies.

Recent Selected Publications:
“Hybrid Italians, Diasporic Africans: Who’s/Whose Meticcio?” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters, vol.31, no.2 (summer 2008).
“Confessions of the Pillow Queen: Sexual Receptivity & Queer Femininities,” in MaryMcAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan, eds., Tribades, Tommies, and Transgressives: Histories of Sexualities: Volume I.University College Dublin: Cambridge Scholars Press,2008.
“My Boy,” in G. Winston James, ed., Voices Rising: Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing. Washington, DC: RedBone Press, 2007.

Recent Selected Grants, Honors, and Awards:
Honor award for Faculty Contributions to 5 Colleges’ Queer Community, Lavender Graduation, Queer Resource Center, Pomona College, Spring 2007
Elected Faculty Marshall, Pitzer Graduation, Pitzer College, Spring 2003
Outstanding Queer Faculty Award, First Annual Lavender Graduation, Scripps College, Spring 2002
Notes From A Welfare Queen In The Ivory Tower: poetry, fiction, letters, and essays. Nominated for the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award, 2002.

"Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria"

Victor Silverman, Professor of History, Pomona College

Wednesday, March 28th 4:15 - 5:30 PM

SCREAMING QUEENS tells the little-known story of the first known act of collective, violent resistance to the social oppression of queer people in the United States--a 1966 riot in San Francisco’s impoverished tenderloin neighborhood, three years before the famous gay riot at New York's Stonewall Inn.

SCREAMING QUEENS introduces viewers to street queens, cops, and activist civil rights ministers who recall the riot, and paint a vivid portrait of the wild transgender scene in 1960s San Francisco.

SCREAMING QUEENS integrates the story of the riot into the broader fabric of American life--connecting it to urban renewal, anti-war activism, civil rights, and sexual liberation. It uses amazing archival footage and period music to bring an unknown story dramatically back to life.

Discussion with filmmaker Victor Silverman after the screening. 

"Figures in the Park:  Nudity and 20th Century Japanese Visual Culture"

Jonathan M. Hall, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College

Wednesday, March 7th 4:30 - 5:30 PM

Moving between film, photography, and flipbooks, this presentation considers the logic of publicly visible sex in a series of Japanese visual works with especial concern for the concept of sexual anonymity. In considering heterosexual and homosexual sex through the scopic regime of “the invisible hand,” I hope to provide some initial answers to interrelated questions: how does visual exposure sustain or betray the concept of sexual anonymity? how have Japanese avant-garde works figured heterosexual and homosexual nudity differently? at what points do the scopic and corporeal regimes of heterosexual and homosexual nudity coalesce? The works considered are all by male creators and range from the early 1960s to now.