“Desiring Categories:
Predicaments of Binaries, Boundaries, and Classifications in Sexuality Studies”
April 24-25, 2014
This interdisciplinary workshop probes the utility and consequences of sexual classification as a scholarly and popular practice. By grappling with the persistence and potency of categories, the social dynamics of sexual boundary-making, and the entrenched appeal of explanatory dualisms, we seek to illuminate the histories, politics, and futures of classification and its practical implications for the lives of those classified.
Keynote address: Thursday, April 24 at 5 pm, John Evans Alumni Center
“I Was Born a Baby: The Dynamic Development of Gender Variability”
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, Brown University
Co-Sponsored by the Science in Human Culture Program
Papers presentations and discussion: Friday, April 25, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm, followed by reception, in University Hall 201 (Hagstrum Room)
“The Sign of the Lesbian (In an Age of Queerness)”
Valerie Traub, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan
Session Chair: Jay Grossman
Graduate Student Commentators: Elizabeth Rodriguez and Lital Pascar
“From the Down Low to the First Gay Rapper, Tracing the Trajectory from Glass to Plastic”
C. Riley Snorton, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern
Session Chair: Jillana Enteen
Graduate Student Commentators: Clare Forstie and Meiver De la Cruz
“Sex in the Clinic: Challenges in DSD/ Intersex Classification and Care”
Vernon Rosario, Department of Psychiatry, UCLA
Session Chair: Cristina Traina
Graduate Student Commentators: Anna Terwiel and Savina Balasubramanian
“Bakla/ Gay Transgender: Animating Categories and Spectral Translations”
Martin Manalansan, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Session Chair: Ryan Dohoney
Graduate Student Commentators: Kareem Khubchandani and Elias Krell
