The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay

September 27-30, 2012, New York City

In celebration of the centennial of the birth of LGBT pioneer Harry Hay, CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies at CUNY) and the Harry Hay Centennial Committee invite proposals for a broad-reaching conference exploring key facets of LGBT life and their evolution over the last six decades.

Harry Hay’s life and his impact on LGBT history and culture were extraordinary, and the range of his activities was terrifically diverse. In the 1930s and ‘40s, his involvement in progressive politics, avant-garde art, and the Communist Party all shaped and influenced his formulation of the idea that LGBT people were a distinct “cultural minority” who needed to become conscious of themselves as a people and organize for their own liberation. With that insight, he co-founded the Mattachine Society in the 1950s and helped launch the modern LGBT liberation movement. He was an organizer of the first Radical Faerie gathering in 1979 and remained an active participant and inspirational figure in LGBT movements until his death in 2002. In addition, as a gay activist Hay committed himself to a larger progressive agenda, working in the anti-war movement, on behalf of Native Peoples, and within Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. As an intellectual, Hay devoted himself to anthropological and historical research about the origins and meaning of LGBT lives, social roles and consciousness. His research focused particular energy on two-spirit people among Native Americans and matrilineal cultures.

Given this rich array of interests, the conference organizers seek to gather scholars, public intellectuals, activists, students, and artists who will take inspiration from Hay’s life and ideas in order to think together about several strands of LGBT living. In particular, the conference will explore four central themes inspired by and reflective of Hay’s life and times: LGBT arts, political activism, spirituality and sexual identities.

We welcome proposals for full panels, individual research papers, artistic presentations, and “state of the debate” discussions. We are certainly interested in proposals about Hay’s life itself and any of its many facets. At the same time, we very much encourage proposals that explore and debate how the questions raised and confronted by Hay have continued to evolve. To that end, papers may be historical, theoretical, contemporary or future-oriented and may address, but need not be limited to, any of the following thematic topics:

LGBT POLITICS:
· Significance of Mattachine and homophile political groups, their evolution, and relation to gay liberation activism
· Importance (or not) of homophile and other LGBT political leaders
· Sexuality on the Left
· LGBT radicalism and separatism vs mainstream politics and assimilation
· Coalition-building vs single-issue politics
· Youth as a political constituency
· Assessing LGBT organizing strategies and utopian goals
· Mapping an LGBT agenda for the 21st-century

LGBT SPIRITUALITY
· Historical, cultural, and religious aspects of the Radical Faerie movement
· LGBT perspectives on religion, theology, and spirituality
· LGBT influence on, and conflicts with, mainstream and alternative religions
· Linking the spiritual and the sexual
· Politics of spirituality
· Connections to the natural world
· Queer mysticism, shamanism and spiritual practice
· Ancient roots of queer spirituality
· Native Peoples’ spiritualities

LGBT ARTS
· Harry Hay’s artistic world: John Cage, Will Geer, Lester Horton, Leftist theater, etc.
· Past/present fears of LGBT artistic power (e.g. 1950s “homintern”)
· Representations of LGBT lives in contemporary/historical popular culture
· Past/present uses of art as tool of LGBT political activism (e.g. Gran Fury)
· Role of folk & popular music for political organizing (e.g. People’s Song)
· LGBT contributions to 20th-century avant-garde and popular arts
· Defining a queer aesthetic sensibility
· Studies of specific significant queer artists

LGBT IDENTITIES
· The evolving identities of LGBT/Queer/Questioning/Hetero-flexible/Trans People and others
· The meaning of gender in the LGBT world
· Homophile – Gay – Queer: differences, overlaps, and relations
· Lesbians & Gay men: past/present/future alliances and cleavages
· Class and socioeconomic issues within LGBT organizing
· Transgender inclusions/exclusions
· Queer archetypes
· Meaning of “gay consciousness”
· Identity as “natural,” “historical,” or “learned”
· Two-spirit tradition and alternative gender roles in non-Western cultures
· The future of sexual identities

For each paper proposed, please submit a 300-word abstract and a 2-page CV for the presenter. If you wish to propose a 3- or 4- person panel, please submit a separate abstract & CV for each paper, and an additional abstract of the panel. All proposals should be sent to Daniel Hurewitz at daniel.hurewitz@hunter.cuny.edu by February 29, 2012 (DEADLINE EXTENDED),with “Hay Centennial” in the subject line.

We may have space to display/screen some artworks and present some performances along the thematic lines above: if that interests you, please email Daniel Hurewitz at the address above and submit a handful of images or performance selections either as a zip file, downloadable file, or DVD by February 29, 2012 (DEADLINE EXTENDED). If the latter, please send to Daniel Hurewitz, c/o CLAGS, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 7115, New York NY 10016.

An International Conference
February 2-4, 2012
Melbourne, Australia

Hosted by the Gender, Sexuality and Diversity Program at La Trobe University
In conjunction with the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives and Midsumma

Deadline: August 5, 2011

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Jeffrey Weeks, London Southbank University
Additional speakers to be confirmed

Forty years ago, a young Australian expat living in the USA synthesised the politics of the emerging gay liberation movement in a provocative book called Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation. Read the rest of this entry →

Deadline: February 15, 2011

I am putting together a panel for the 2012 AHA LGBT program that explores the intersection of LGBT identity, medicine, and health. The relationship between sexuality, health, and medicine is complex and includes topics such as AIDS, psychiatry, sex work, and pregnancy to name a few. This panel will examine how medicine shapes identity among sexual minorities over time and conversely, how sexual minorities inform medical practice and understandings of health in the 20th century. Depending on responses, I am open to including papers with a transnational focus.

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Deadline for abstracts: February 15, 2011
Deadline for final essays: June 15, 2011

Novels known collectively as “out gay pulp” — paperback originals published with accelerating frequency in the 1960s—have received increasing attention, from popular collections like John Preston’s Flesh and the Word, Michael Bronski’s Pulp Friction and Susan Stryker’s Queer Pulp to the circulation of pulp covers in postcards, address books, and posters. Scholarly attention to this phenomenon has been more sporadic; an excellent bibliography by Tom Norman, essays by David Bergman and John Howard, and those by the various contributors to The Golden Age of Gay Fiction haven’t yet spurred a deeper, more engaged critical interest. Sixties paperback originals have been seen as quirky cultural anomalies or even insignificant pornographic outpouring rather than a significant literary and cultural intervention.

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126th Annual Meeting
Chicago, IL
January 5-8, 2012

Deadline: February 15, 2011

The 126th annual meeting of the American Historical Association will be held January 5–8, 2012, in Chicago. The Program Committee welcomes proposals from all members (academic and nonacademic) of the Association, from affiliated societies, from historians working outside the United States, and from scholars in related disciplines. The theme for the meeting, described in greater detail here, is “Communities and Networks.” While seeking proposals for sessions that explore facets of this broad topic, we also welcome submissions on the histories of all places and time periods, on many different topics, and on the uses of varied sources and methods. We also invite members to employ and to analyze diverse strategies for representing the past, including fiction, poetry, film, music, and art. The AHA is a capacious organization, unique among learned societies in its devotion to the full range of historical scholarship and practice. Our program will reflect this strength, and we will seriously consider any proposal that advances the study, teaching, and public presentation of history.

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36th Annual Conference
Boston Park Plaza Hotel and Towers
November 17-21, 2011

Deadline: February 15, 2011

The SSHA is the leading interdisciplinary association for historical research in the U.S. and its members share a common concern for interdisciplinary approaches to historical problems. The organization’s long-standing interest in methodology also makes SSHA meetings exciting places to explore new solutions to historical problems.

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9th European Social Science History Conference
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
April 11-14, 2012

Deadline: May 1, 2011

The Sexuality Network of the European Social Science History Conference invites papers on the history of sexuality for inclusion in its programme of panels at this bi-annual conference. The ESSHC 2012 will take place in Glasgow, Scotland at Glasgow University.

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