WORKSHOP
Ethnography in and as Crosscurrents: A Workshop on “Situated Traveling Fieldwork” and Practice
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
5:00-7:00 pm
3rd Floor Board Room, Liu Institute, UBC, Coast Salish Territory
Please RSVP at katherinefobear@gmail.com or farrales@geog.ubc.ca. Spaces Limited.
Co-organized by the Philippine Studies Series and the Global Queer Research Group at UBC
How can we rethink and re-imagine ethnographic practice and writing in the 21st Century?
How do we keep ethnographic practice and writing relevant to contemporary social justice issues and debates?
Professor Fajardo’s innovative fieldwork that forms the basis of the book Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) spanned port cities, container ships, and the Northern Pacific Ocean. Informed by queer theory, feminist/queer ethnography, postmodern anthropology, postcolonial Philippine Studies, and transnational Filipino/a Studies and Asian American Studies, Fajardo’s research with Filipino migrant seamen who who work on industrial container ships throws into question homogenous, heterosexual and static notions of masculinity, inviting us to reconsider and decolonize the meanings of heterogenous Filipino masculinities and manhoods, while simultaneously critiquing neoliberal economic development policies promoted by the Philippine State, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
This workshop is for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students who are interested and are engaged in carrying out research with mobile and migrant subjects, to think through how one might do this kind of research given changing and fluid paradigms of meaning. This workshop will be a unique opportunity to explore questions on research design and sexual and cultural theory in transnational contexts.
LECTURE
Queering and Transing the Great Lakes: Filipino/a Tomboy Masculinities and Manhoods Across Waters
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
5:00-7:00 pm
Coach Room, Green College
University of British Columbia, Coast Salish Territory
6201 Cecil Green Park Road
This essay uses a Filipino/a queer, trans (transnational/transgender/transwaters), and postcolonial interdisciplinary approach to examine Nice Rodriguez’s semi-autobiographical fiction in his/her collection of short-stories, Throw it to the River (1993). Based in Toronto from 1988-2004, Rodriguez, a self-identified Filipino/a tomboy writer, addresses themes of migration/immigration, displacement, class/poverty, the U.S.-Marcos Dictatorship, queer desire, love, sexuality, tomboy masculinities in his/her book. In this essay, I address how the Great Lakes functions as a transnational water-based borderzone or crosscurrents space that links Filipino/a sites such as Duluth, Minnesota and Toronto, Ontario, and how these waters are also connected with waterscapes in the Philippines such as the Pasig River and Manila Bay. By engaging Rodriguez’s fiction, this essay also highlights heterogeneous Filipino/a tomboy masculinities and manhoods in the context of Canada and the Philippines. “Queering and Transing the Great Lakes” will be published in a special issue of Gay and Lesbian Studies Quarterly (GLQ, fall 2013 or winter 2014) entitled, “Queering the Middle, Race, Sexual Diasporas, and a Queer Midwest, ” edited by Siobhan Somerville, Martin F. Manalansan IV, Chantal Nadeau, and Ricky Rodriguez.
Events with Professor Fajardo are co-sponsored by:
Green College, UBC
Critical Studies in Sexuality, UBC
Liu Institute for Global Issues
Asian UBC Studies
Global Queer Research Group
Liu Migration Mentor Series
For more information, contact the UBC Philippine Studies Series at ubc.pss@gmail.com
