How can Queer Studies and Postcolonial Studies dialogue as fields of critical inquiry that are invoked in opposition to dominant ways of framing gender, sexuality, and the nation? Scholarship across these two disciplines have revealed fissures that persist as obstacles in this conversation. By accepting “queer” as always resistant, we risk equating it uncritically with the “modern” and “the progressive”. Likewise, Postcolonial Studies has been charged with insufficiently questioning heteronormative structures. This conference seeks to bring into focus both the collusions and the contradictions that erupt at the intersections of these two fields.

How does the category “queer” and the critical practice of “queering” translate, as it travels from its historical specificity in the US to other global, postcolonial contexts? Does the postcolonial get elided within discussions of Queer transnational and globalization studies? The conference showcases work that asks these questions, among others, and invites discussion on the possible complicity of the postcolonial and the queer with the normative.

Conference Organizers: Pashmina Murthy and Elakshi Kumar
Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities