About Seminars in the City
Current Seminar
Past Seminars

2/11, 3/10, 4/14, 5/12
Megan Jenkins, CUNY Graduate Center
LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street, Room 101
6-8 PM

What is it about opera that gay men and lesbians love? Much ink has been spilled addressing this question, and this series of seminars will try to find some answers, both exploring some of the literature that claims opera as a distinctly queer art form and analyzing the operas themselves. We'll be looking at and listening to a variety of operas, possibly including (but not limited to) Le Nozze di Figaro, Peter Grimes, Un Ballo in Maschera, and Der Rosenkavalier. We'll be reading leading scholars in the field of queer opera studies such as Wayne Koestenbaum, Elizabeth Wood, Philip Brett, and Susan McClary. Seminar meetings themselves will combine discussion of assigned readings and music, watching scenes from selected operas, investigating queer interpretations of opera, and coming up with our own approaches to understanding how and why opera evokes such dedication from queer audiences.

The free reading group will meet at the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, in room 101 from 6 to 8 PM on the second Monday of each month from February to May. To RSVP and obtain a course reading packet contact CLAGS by phone (212-817-1955) or by email (clags@gc.cuny.edu). CLAGS strives to make all of its events accessible to our members. ASL interpretation can be provided for any CLAGS event if requested 10 or more working days prior to the event. If you have other accessibility needs, please contact the CLAGS office, with a relay operator when necessary.

Seminars in the City is supported by the New York Council for the Humanities.

In a partnership with The Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, the monthly series offers an informal but intellectually charged environment for addressing major works of LGTBQ studies. The aim is to make complex and often abstruse ideas engaging for nonacademic readers. Previous Seminars leaders, themselves CLAGS board members, have found the Seminars experience "a delight." Anne Pellegrini, who taught "Introduction to Queer Theory" in the fall of 1998 recalls that, "the experience was a powerful and pleasurable reminder of the vital links possible between the academy and the streets, theory and living."

Elizabeth Freeman, who is a former CLAGS Board Member and the first organizer of the series, is proud of its success so far. Freeman says that the many semesters have generated a great deal of excitement, and the conversations in the seminars have been provocative, spirited, and insightful. "The success has already given us a sense of the intellectual, political, and artistic energy that thinkers outside the academy contribute to our shared inquiry," says Freeman. Each semester centers around a particular theme and is led by a CLAGS Board member with an expertise in the field.

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