Center for Gender & Sexuality Law | Columbia Law School
2010-2011 Academic Year
SPRING 2011
January 25, 2011
Kevin Ohi, English, Boston College - "‘My Spirit’s Posthumeity’ and the Sleeper’s Outflung Hand: Queer Transmission in Absalom, Absalom"
Commentator: Katherine Biers, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
February 8, 2011
Heather Love, English, University of Pennsylvania - "Underdogs: On the Minor in Queer Theory"
Heather Love's paper is available here.
Commentator: Marcellus Blount, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
February 22, 2011
Libby Adler, Law, Northeastern University - "Just The Facts: The Perils of Expert Testimony in Gay Rights Litigation"
Libby Adler's paper is available here.
Commentator: Ilan Meyer, Public Health, Columbia University
February 28, 2011
Outlaws: Brother Outsider Screening and Discussion
Outlaws presented Brother Outsider, a screening of a film about the life of civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in honor of African-American Heritage Month. Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington, served as a close advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was an openly gay black man as early as the 1940s in a time when discrimination against LGBT people in America was the norm. The film surveys life as a visionary strategist, an activist on a variety of causes, and one of the "unknown heroes" of the Civil Rights Movement. After the film, there will be a panel discussion with Walter Naegle, Bayard Rustin's life partner, Mridu Chandra, filmmaker and co-producer of Brother Outsider, Professor Kendall Thomas, the Nash Professor of Law and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, and Professor Marcellus Blount, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, specializing in African-American and gender studies, at Columbia University. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, the Center for Sexuality and Gender Law, the Black Law Students Association, the Civil Rights Society and Columbia Outlaws.
March 8, 2011
Joseph Fischel, Political Science, University of Chicago - "Transcendent Homosexuals and Dangerous Sex Offenders: Sexual Harm and Freedom in the Judicial Imaginary"
Joseph Fischel's paper is available here.
Commentator: Rebecca Jordan-Young, Women's Studies, Barnard
March 29, 2011
Workshop: David Halperin, English, University of Michigan - "Why Are the Drag Queens Laughing"
Commentator: Elizabeth Emens, Law, Columbia University
April 6, 2011
Maria Malmström, NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality Visiting Scholar - "Creating Proper Men: Masculinities, Embodiment and Agency in the West Bank"
Co-sponsored with the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. In this talk, Dr. Malmström discussed constructions of gender, embodiment, and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank through the prism of violence. She highlighted the importance of analyzing the body in such processes – both as agential and as victimized. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as ‘violent’ and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence.
The talk discussed constructions of masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved in this process, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body is actively involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.
Maria Malmström is a Swedish anthropologist and her areas of interest are the MENA region, gender, body, sexuality, politics, violence, and security. She received her PhD from the School of Global Studies, Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg. Her dissertation examined how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. The study explored how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. She is today involved in the interdisciplinary research project “Hamas between Sharia rule and Demo-Islam.” The study aims to investigate in what way Hamas will adopt to the new realities on the ground (together with Michael Schulz et al.). Additionally, Dr. Malmström is involved in ground research on sexual violence and armed conflict in a globalized world (together with Maria Stern and Maria Eriksson Baaz). Furthermore, she is a gender consultant (UNFPA and others), and member of several academic/policy networks, e.g. Think Tank for Arab Women.
April 11, 2011
Anne Bloom, Professor of Law, University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, and CGSL Fellow - "Life in Plastic: Law, Medicine & Aesthetics"
Anne Bloom's paper is available here. Anne Bloom is Professor of Law at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, where she teaches Torts, Jurisprudence, and Law and Politics. She has written widely on the relationship between law and culture. In the last few years, her work has focused on the relationship between tort law and cultural understandings of the body. Professor Bloom's current research is on plastic surgery litigation.
April 12, 2011
Kathryn Stockton, English, University of Utah - "Queer Theory, Queer Children, and Kid Orientalism: The Sexual Child in a Racialized World"
Kathryn Stockton's paper is available here.
Commentator: Julie Crawford, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
FALL 2010
October 18, 2011
CGSL Colloquium: Aeyal Gross, Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Law, "The Politics of GLBT Rights in Israel (and beyond): Between Queer Politics and Homonationalism"
September 20, 2011
CGSL Colloquium: Clare Huntington, University of Colorado Law School - "The Performative Family"
November 8, 2011
Dianne Otto, Professor of Law, Director, International Human Rights Law Programme, Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), Project Director Peacekeeping, Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law (APCML), Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, "Power and Danger: Feminist Engagement with International Law through the UN Security Council"
For a copy of her paper, please click here.
November 8, 2011
Cosponsored event with CCASD: Keywords: Interdisciplinary Roundtable Conversation" on the topic of Intersectionality
Discussion will feature Katherine Franke, Director, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Neferti Tadiar, Chair, Women's Studies Department, Barnard College, and Kendall Thomas, Director, Center for the Study of Law and Culture. Laura Ciolkowski, Associate Director, Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, will moderate.
November 15, 2011
CGSL Colloquium: Shaireen Rasheed, Long Island University, and Senior Fellow, Columbia Law School, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, "Sexualized Spaces in Public Places: Women, Islam and an Ethics of the Erotic"
December 9, 2011
Co-sponsored event with ISHR: Discussion with David Kuria Mbote, Executive Director of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya
Discussion featured David Kuria Mbote, Executive Director of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya. David was a part of a dedicated group of individuals who wanted to stand up against homophobia throughout Kenya. While there are still many daily threats against the LGBTI community of Kenya, GALCK has taken steps toward equality and fairness in the country. Choosing to be visible in a time and space where where he has been targeted and shamed, David has received international recognition both positive and negative. David was personally targeted by the US-based ProjectSEE, which distributed flyers to Kenyan churches with David’s picture and personal contact information on them. David also served on a panel in Vienna at the 2010 World AIDS conference. Through it all, David remains a vital voice in East Africa for LGBTI human rights. He visited New York on his way to an HIV/AIDS conference in Washington, DC.