Queer Spatialities in Canada and Quebec
Panel organized by Domenico Beneventi
While gay/lesbian and, more recently, queer studies have developed significantly since the 1990s, there are very few studies on queer as a category of analysis and as an unstable and subversive form of social positioning that blurs fixed categories of identity. Interrogating space from a queer point of view first focused on the historical recovery of clandestine meeting places and material spaces of gay and lesbian sociability, so often invisible to hegemonic society (Duberman, 1993; Chauncy 1995; Warner, 1993 and 2002). Soya’s work on postmodern spatiality (1989), Harvey’s work on space and social class (2000), and Massey’s work on gendered spatiality (1994) allowed theorists such as Halbertam (2005) and Muñoz (2009) to explore queer spatiality while challenging the production of heteronormative and patriarchal hegemonic space. Queer space can be conceived as a desiring body-space that considers queer material, biological, and emotional specificities, as well as multiple and changing gender/sex/desire identifications, which are inseparable from material spaces and standard spatial practices. This session will focus on how private and public spaces are seen and experienced from a queer perspective, and on how space is linked to gender performance. We invite proposals that deal with queer spaces and queer spatiality, including but not limited to:
– Queer geographies
– Places of queer memory
– Space and queer corporality/sexuality
– Spaces of queer encounter
– Spatiality and subversive acts
– Heteronormative spatiality in queer narratives
– Border zones and queer subjectivity
– Queer subjects and migration, transnationalism, and globalization
– Spatiality and queer performance
– Virtual spaces, social media, and queer identities
– Insecure/safe spaces
– Racialized queer spatiality
– Queer domesticity
– Queer utopias/dystopias/heterotopias
– Representation of the city and/or the gay/queer village
For this session, we are accepting proposals for communications in French and English on literature and other cultural productions (such as film, theatre, and performance). Proposals up to 250 words in length must include the researcher’s name, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address. Proposals should be sent no later than 31 January 2021 by email to:
Domenico Beneventi, Université de Sherbrooke, domenico.beneventi@usherbrooke.ca
All paper proposals can be written in French or English. Those who propose papers must be members of the ACQL by 1 March 2021. See the ACQL website (https://alcq-acql.ca/members/) for membership and registration information.