Author: gqrg

 The Global Queer Research Group is proud to be hosting Ugandan LGBT activist  Val Kalende at UBC!

Val Kalende is an activist and writer on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer issues in Uganda and is on the board of Freedom and Roam Uganda and an activist in Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), one of the oldest LGBTQ activist group in Uganda. Since 2009, Val Kalende publicly opposed the Ugandan anti-homosexual bill that would impose life imprisonment and the death penalty on homosexuals. Val Kalende has written several articles and statements about the homophobia and violence in Uganda and the  anti-homosexual bill or the “kill the gays bill”, presented these issues concerning LGBTQ rights in Uganda at several venues around the world, and has been interviewed by the New York Times

For this special occasion, the GQRG has planned two events with Val Kalende. Please see the information below.

“Getting Out” Film Screening with Special Guest Val Kalende

February 14th, 7:00 – 9:00 PM

Liu Institute for Global Issues

Sponsored by the Global Queer Research Group, Critical Studies in Sexuality, and the Women and Gender Studies Department, UBC.

 Research and Activism Workshop with Val Kalende

February 16th, 11AM -2PM

3rd Floor Boardroom, Liu Institute

Sponsored by the Global Queer Research Group, Critical Studies in Sexuality, and the Women and Gender Studies Department, UBC.

Val Kalende has been invited to be a key discussant for a private workshop with scholars and activists around questions concerning research and activism on sexual and gender minorities. Participants are asked prior to the workshop to submit three to four questions that they would like to ask Val Kalende. This is a unique opportunity to speak with Val on her experiences as an activist and researcher on LGBT rights and anti-queer violence. The workshop is limited to twenty persons.

For those of you who would like to attend the workshop, please RSVP here:

http://valkalendeworkshop.eventbrite.com

For more information, please contact: Katherine Fobear at katherinefobear@gmail.com

October 13th, 4 PM
The Liu Institute for Global Issues
RM 121

This GQRG planning meeting will focus on:

1) Potential Events for the Upcoming Year
a) Hosting Scholars
b) Canadian Homonationalism Conference
c) Film screenings and Art shows
d) Research Workshops

2) Queer U events (February 13 – 17)
a) Possible events for GQRG to organize for Queer U

3) Website and Networking Ideas
a) Organization of the website
b) Working with local LGBT groups in Vancouver

All are welcomed to attend the planning meeting and are encouraged to put forward ideas and initiatives.

For more information please contact GQRG at:

globalqueer@gmail.com

Global Queer Research Group (GQRG)

Presents A Monthly Reading Group on

Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times
by Jasbir K. Puar (2007)

September 28
4:30-7pm
3rd Floor Board Room
Liu Institute for Global Issues

The GQRG is excited to present a monthly reading group on Jasbir K. Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times. In Terrorists Assemblages, Puar argues that configurations of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class , and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of securitization, counterterrorism and nationalism. In looking at this, Puar contends that heteronormative ideologies that the U.S. Nation-state has long relied on are now accompanied by homonormative ideologies that replicate narrow racial, class, gender, and national ideals. These “homonationalisms” are deployed to distinguish upright “properly hetero,” and now “properly homo,” U.S. patriots from perversely sexualized and racialized so called terrorists and “unwanted” foreigners.

Each month the GQRG reading group will read a chapter from Terrorist Assemblages and a selected academic article to discuss together. Everyone is welcome to attend, but please RSVP before hand.

This month’s readings will be

1. Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times.Durham: Duke University Press.

1. Preface: tactics, strategies, logisitics
2. Introduction: homonationalism and biopolitics

2. Morgensen, S. L. (2010) Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities. GLQ:Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1-2), pp. 105-131.

Excerpt from Abstract: This essay newly interprets the settler formation of U.S. queer modernities by inspiration of Jasbir Puar’s critique of homonationalism. Puar argues that homonationalism produces U.S. queers as regulatory over the racialized and sexualized populations targeted within the imperial biopolitics of the war on terror. I explain homonationalism as a quality of U.S. queer modernities having formed within a colonial biopolitics, in which the terrorizing sexual colonization of Native peoples produces modern sexuality as a function of settlement. This essay reinterprets historical accounts at the intersections of queer, Native, and colonial studies to show how a colonial biopolitics of modern sexuality relationally produces Native and settler sexual subjects…

If interested in attending please contact the GQRG:

globallgbtq@gmail.com

The Global Queer Research Group (GQRG) is a new research group initiative based at the Liu Institute

for Global Issues, UBC. The purpose of the GQRG is to connect scholars, activists, and community members around research and policy issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex communities, both locally and globally.  Areas of focus within the GQRG include (but are not limited to) homophobic violence and anti-homosexual legislation, global l/g/b/t/q/ i human rights issues, the rise of “homonationalism” in western Europe and North America, transitional justice for queer communities, queer migration and asylum issues, health issues like HIV/AIDS, and representations of queer experiences and identities.