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12th Annual Queertopia Conference Call for Abstracts

On March 2, 2019, the Northwestern University Queer Pride Graduate Student Association (QPGSA) will host its 12th annual Queertopia Conference. Queertopia is an event that offers graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, activists, organizers, artists, and community practitioners the opportunity to build intellectual community and interrogate questions about gender and sexuality through art practice and performance, popular and academic research, and community engagement. QPGSA invite submissions by January 4, 2019 of graduate, postgraduate, and practitioner research across disciplines around this year’s theme of LGBTQ+ Media Cultures.

This conference invites scholarship from a wide range of disciplines on the topic of LGBTQ+ media, communication, and technology. Topics QPGSA aims to explore include LGBTQ+ representation across media platforms, the role of media in social change, queer technologies, the role of media and communication in health and development, and learning with new media. QPGSA asks:
  • What is the role of queer media, expansively conceived, in LGBTQ+ activism?
  • How might LGBTQ+ media open up new ways of engaging with queer feelings, affects, and embodiments?
  • What are the historical and contemporary benefits and paradoxes of visibility and representation across media platforms for LGBTQ+ people?
  • How can traditional and emergent social media platforms shape identity development, learning, and community formation among LGBTQ+ individuals?
  • How can media and digital communication be used to address social inequities experienced by LGBTQ+ community members across medical, educational, and legal institutions?
  • How might queer uses of social media and digital platforms create new ways of thinking about queer spaces, and queer publics?
  • What can queer media (especially media made by LGBTQ+ individuals) do for re-Contextualizing and reclaiming queer histories and notions of queer personhood?
  • How might visual, auditory, or interactive media allow for different ways of thinking about gender and gender expansiveness, especially in relationship to trans and non-binary individuals?
Submission: Please submit an abstract (up to 300 words), a 75-word bio, and contact information for a presenter to NUQPGSA@gmail.com by January 4, 2019. The subject line of the email should be ‘QUEERTOPIA 2019 (your name)’. Please specify any audio or visual needs or other requests you may have. You will receive a response confirming receipt of your submission within three days. Panel chairs and discussants will be selected by conference organizers and announced by mid-January.

A note on submissions: Just as Queertopia invites submissions that address a broad range of questions and topics pertaining to LGBTQ+ media cultures, QPGSA also welcomes submissions that expansively approach the format (talks, panels, etc.) of presented sessions. QPGSA therefore asks that prospective presenters describe the format of their sessions in their submissions.

Click here to download a PDF of this information. 

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