Gensler to Explore Queer Studies

The sixth annual Gensler Symposium will take place from April 14 through April 18 and will include a student-led discussion, a poetry workshop, and lectures by visiting scholars. Entitled “Sexual Straightjacket & Queer Escapes,” it will highlight the relevance of queer studies and queer scholarship in a liberal arts environment.

The Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context was established in 2008 by alumna Drue Cortell Gensler ’57. The annual conference focuses on transnational feminist issues in the new millennium. Previous Gensler events have analyzed the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, neoliberal capitalist formations, citizenship, language and body image through a feminist lens.

“This year’s theme is meant to highlight the relationship between feminist and queer studies in part because the Queer Studies House has been at Middlebury for over five years now and we wanted to mark that rather significant achievement,” said Associate Professor of Sociology, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Laurie Essig.

The weeklong symposium will begin with MiddQUEER, a student-led discussion about sexual/gender identity and sexuality at Middlebury.

Students will have the unique opportunity to engage in a poetry workshop with Sister Outsider, a duo of acclaimed female slam poets Denice Frohman and Dominique Christina. Their poetry is concerned with the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and culture. The workshop will be followed with a performance by Sister Outsider and student poets.

The symposium will include two outside speakers. Dr. Nikki Young of Bucknell University will give a talk titled “I am NOT that Hungry: Creative Resistance, Black Queers, and Family.” Dr. Young focuses on the role of capitalism in establishing a value system that oppresses black queers and their efforts of creative resistance.

Dr. Suzanna Walters of Northeastern University will give the symposium’s second lecture and will discuss the difference between tolerance, acceptance, and universal civil rights.

“Both of these scholars combine queer theory and feminist scholarship to provide us with deeper understandings of how our desires are molded by gender, race, class and citizenship,” said Essig.

Walters’ lecture will be followed by the opening of the Guerrilla Girls exhibition, with a performance by Guerilla Girl Frida Khalo.

This year’s Symposium was organized by Essig, Gender, Sexuality and Feminism Program Coordinator Madeleine Winterfalcon and Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Sujata Moorti. Co-sponsors for the event include the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity and The American Studies Spiegel Family Fund.