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At the upcoming 6th Queer Studies Conference in Poland, 18-20 September 2005, we hope to focus on issues that unite and fracture the vital but still tenuous community of queer people. Ours is a highly differentiated community, dispersed across Europe and linked to like-minded people in other parts of the world. Opposing homophobia, variously experienced by queer people, holds this community together. But as we learned at the last conference in 2004, we cannot take the existence of community for granted, nor can we ignore the issues that divide us as men and women; as homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and heterosexuals; as subjects defined in terms of race, class, nationality, religion, political affiliation, age group, etc.; as gay and lesbian activists and queers. We therefore encourage participants to address the following questions:
- What is the position we speak from?
- Who is being silenced as we speak?
- How does the queer community imagine itself and its others?
- Who is absent from our community and how can we reach out to those excluded?
- How do various parameters of identity (gender, sexuality, race, class etc.) intersect?
- How does queer politics relate to race/class/gender politics?
The format of the 2005 conference will be different from that in previous years. There will be twelve 90-minute sessions over the course of three days, and a two-hour summing up discussion at the end of each day. We would like each of the 90-minute sessions to be hosted by individuals or teams ("session leaders") who will be responsible for the theme and form of the session, e.g. workshop, roundtable discussion, conventional panel, panel consisting of several short statements (or "postcards") followed by a discussion, or any other format.
We welcome 200-word proposals for whole 90-minute sessions or individual papers until June 15th, 2005. The proposals should be sent to:
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