The Graduate Program in American Studies and the Women and Gender Studies Program will host the conference “Queering American Studies.” The conference will examine the possible ways that Queer Theory can reframe the disciplinary approaches of American Studies as well as discuss what access gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer people have to the public sphere of civic power.

The morning session features four guest speakers:

“ ‘Wounded Attachments’ and Redress: Undoing Filipina Victimhood Under Colonial Rule”
- Robert Diaz, Wayne State University

“Queer Relative: Audre Lorde, Joseph Beam and Diasporic Solidarity”
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Duke University

“The Diva Ends/The Diva’s Ends”
- Licia Fiol-Matta, Lehman College, City University of New York

“The Queer and the Cosmopolitan”
- Hiram Perez,Vassar College

For the afternoon session which begins at 1:30 p.m., “Standing in a Ditch: Queer Encounters with the Public” features a question and answer session with all four guest speakers, introduced and moderated by Aimee Cox, professor of African and African American Studies, Rutgers-Newark, and Taylor Black, a graduate student of the American Studies Ph.D. program, Rutgers-Newark.

For more information please visit the Institute’s website at: http://ethnicity.rutgers.edu/