CLAGS strives to make its events accessible. ASL interpretation can be provided for any CLAGS event if requested 10 or more working days prior to the event. All events in the Graduate Center are wheelchair accessible. We ask that attendees refrain from wearing scented products so that everyone can participate comfortably. If you have other accessibility needs, please contact the CLAGS office, with a relay operator when necessary, at (212) 817-1955 or email us at clags@gc.cuny.edu.  

Tuesday, September 16
Igniting the Soul

LGBTQ STUDIES Spoken Word Performance

Performers Holiday Simmons, Ignacio Rivera and YaliniDream bust the forces that colonize body, desire, mind, and spirit through drag kinging, humor, movement, performance art, and spoken word. They will present and discuss portions of their work.

Holiday Simmons believes it is imperative for people of color, especially those who are woman-identified, trans-identified, or gender non-conforming to engage in radical explorations of their sexualities and sensualities. Holiday (LiquidXun: The Flaming Stud) challenges all isms, and massages the concepts of humor, sexiness, and political statements.

Sick of bouncing between in betweens, YaliniDream lives in the borderlands where poetry is theater is love is movement is song is prayer is rebellion. She looks to reshape reality seeking peace through justice in the lands of earth, psyche, spirit, and dream.

Ignacio Rivera’s poetry exudes the consciousness of political activism with a mixture of soulful flavor. They honestly and powerfully unveil issues of discrimination, sexual abuse, sex and gender—with a dash of Spanglish.

Room 9105
7-9 PM

Thursday, September 18
PUZZLES (a work-in-process)

LGBTQ STUDIES FILM SCREENING
US, 60 min

In 2006, in the post-industrial city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, 18 year-old Jake Robida enters a local gay bar named Puzzles Lounge, and attacks its patrons with a hatchet and gun. As a result, two very different communities are threatened. The loose circle of disaffected white youth that made up Jake’s world seems torn between making him a martyr and confronting the hate and despair that drove him to violence. The world of Puzzles, a vibrant but fragile oasis for drag performers and closeted working class gay men, is initially paralyzed by fear and grief, but the attack comes to galvanize them into public activism and a new vision of community that transcends the bar. PUZZLES charts these divergent journeys as they unfold, and along the way, meditates on an underlying quality that both worlds share: the abiding need for family.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion including David Pavlosky (Producer, Director), Tal McThenia (Associate Producer, Writer) and Harry Kafka (Editor). Please note this is a rough-cut screening. The filmmakers are very interested in hearing from the audience in order to improve the work.

Segal Theatre
7-9 PM

Tuesday, September 23
CLAGS BACK-TO-SCHOOL-MIXER

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies invites you to a back-to-school mixer. Come share a glass of wine with fellow Grad Center students, meet our staff, pick up information on our fellowships, awards, prizes, events, and carry the conversation over to the nearest bar.

Please RSVP to CLAGS@gc.cuny.edu by Friday, September 19

CLAGS Office (Room 7115), Graduate Center, 6-8 PM

(POSTPONED TIL SPRING 09)
Thursday, October 2
Love in the Time of Citizenship: Caste, Conjugality and the Making Global India

CLAGS Colloquium: Series in LGBTQ Studies

Marriage advertisements are central features of news and communication in India, represented both through print as well as the internet. These advertisements, termed ‘matrimonials,’ address an imagined community of ‘Indians’ and boldly encode hierarchies of caste, class, skin colour, citizenship and mobility. In this talk I examine the history of such matrimonials in the Indian diaspora, from 1830-2007. Does the chronology of the matrimonial in the Indian diaspora disrupt hegemonic narratives of origin? How might we learn about the movement of capital, property and sexual power through the tightly phrased matrimonial advertisement? What can we glean about the compulsory alignment of heterosexuality, caste, and memory in the Indian diaspora? Does an interdisciplinary and anti-heteronormative theorization of an Indian imperial formation enable us to look beyond disciplinary bound models of modern imperialism?

Shefali Chandra
Gender & Women’s Studies Program
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Room 9206, Graduate Center, 7-9 PM

Tuesday, October 7
SEXUALITY, HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Panel Discussion

Join the authors to celebrate the publication of their new book – Sexuality, Health and Human Rights (Routledge, London and New York, August 2008). This ground breaking work provides a critical analysis of shifting theoretical perspectives and activist strategies regarding sexual politics and their larger geopolitical context in the twenty-first century. Long in the making, the book surveys the "Global 'Sex' Wars" in the shadow of both religious resurgence and political conservatism; new research agendas in the face of biomedical discourses and HIV/AIDS; and "The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights," both from within international LGBTQI and feminist human rights activism and beyond. Copies will be available for purchase and signing.

Sonia Corrêa
Coordinator of Sexuality Policy Watch
Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association, Rio de Janeiro

Richard Parker
Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University

Rosalind Petchesky
Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY

Skylight Room (Room 9100), Graduate Center, 7-9 PM

All events on this page are open to the public. With the exception of major conferences as noted, all CLAGS events are free of charge. Pre-registration is not required unless otherwise stated in the event description.

All events at The Graduate Center are co-sponsored by Continuing Education & Public Programs, The Graduate Center, CUNY.   

All events in the Graduate Center are wheelchair accessible. Please contact the security office at the Graduate Center at 212-817-7777 for further details.

Please call the CLAGS office at (212) 817-1955 for additional information or arrangements.

CLAGS Event Archives

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