Inaugural Stephen O. Murray Symposium: LGBTQ Archives & Sexualities Studies
Mon, April 4, 2022 at Club Spartan (3rd Floor, Case Hall)
Join us for the Inaugural Stephen O. Murray Symposium hosted by James Madison College and led by 2022 Stephen O. Murray Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz. This event will bring together seven scholars who will provide an overview of the impact of the MSU Libraries Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections on sexualities studies from their research areas/focus, as well as disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Dr. Salvador-Ortiz will also provide an update about his findings and research while visiting the archives.
Click HERE to learn about Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and the Stephen O. Murray Scholar-in-Residence.
Agenda:
1:30 pm - Welcome, Dean Cameron Thies, James Madison College, MSU
1:45 pm - Welcome/Afternoon Framing, Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Murray Scholar-in-Residence
2:00 pm - LGBTQ Archives & Sexualities Studies: A Roundtable from Scholars’ Experiences
Six distinguished colleagues from the humanities and social sciences will talk about their experiences with archive research, or sexuality research. There wil be guided questions distributed to the roundtable panelists in advance. We wil have ample time to interact with those present.
3:45 - Break
4:00 pm - “Understanding the Contents of, and Considering the Possibilities, in Stephen O. Murray’s Archives.” Public Talk about the archives by Dr. Vidal-Ortiz.
Panelists:
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz – 2022 Stephen O. Murray Scholar-in-Residence & Symposium Moderator
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz is an Associate Professor of Sociology at American University. Dr. Vidal-Ortiz's scholarship cuts across racialization, sexuality, gender, migration and religion, and is interdisciplinary. He coedited two award winning books: The Sexuality of Migration, and Queer Brown Voices, co-authored a book with two former students, Brandon Andrew Robinson and Cristina Khan, titled Race and Sexuality, and is completing a book manuscript about race, gender and sexuality in Santería (an Afro-Cuban religion). Within the American Sociological Association (ASA), he has served as convener (and first non-elected Chair) of the Sociology of the Body and Embodiment section, is Past Chair of the Sexualities Section, and served as inaugural editorial board member for Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, from the Race and Ethnic Minorities section (where he was a Council member as well). In 2018, he served as tri-chair for ASA's Sexualities Section Pre-conference: Sexualities, Race, and Empire: Resistance in an Uncertain Time. He has also been an editorial board member for TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and recently edited a special issue of GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Studies Quarterly, on CuirAméricas as part of the Feminist and Cuir/Queer Américas Working Group.
Fernando Blanco
Fernando Blanco is an Associated Professor in the Department of Spanish and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Bucknell University. He specializes in 20th and 21st century Latin American literature, culture, and film. His research examines narratives of memory in the Southern Cone and Central America within the framework provided by Trauma and Holocaust Studies. In the field of Sexuality Studies, he focuses on textual representation of sexual minorities and analyzes the struggle for sexual citizenship in the Latin American region. He has served as Chair of the Southern Cone Studies Section at the Latin American Studies Association. His lastest book is La Vida Imitada. Narrativa, performance y visualidad en Pedro Lemebel (Iberomericana- Vervuert, 2020).
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Women’s and Gender Studies. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), Escenas transcaribeñas: Ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018), and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2021). Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010 and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens.
Marcia Ochoa
Marcia Ochoa is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Provost of Oakes College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ochoa is founding advisory board co-chair of El/La Para Translatinas, a transgender Latina social justice organization in San Francisco’s Mission District. An anthropologist specialized in the ethnography of media, Ochoa is the author of Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela (Duke 2014), and Co-Editor Ex Oficio of GLQ: a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2014-2020). Their current project, Ungrateful Citizenship, documents the work of El/La Para Translatinas and the terms on which transgender women from Latin America who live in the US and Europe participate in, belong to, and are recognized by society.
Susana Peña
Susana Peña is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies in Bowling Green State University’s School of Cultural and Critical Studies.She is author of Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), and her work has been published in journals including Gender & History and the Journal of the History of Sexuality. Dr. Peña’s currrent research focuses on sexual industries and cultures that existed in Cuba prior to the 1959 Cuban Revolution and their dynamic relationship to U.S. sexual cultures, regulations, and industries. From 2012 to 2021, Dr. Peña served as the founding Director of BGSU’s School of Cultural and Critical Studies which includes Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, American Culture Studies, and Popular Culture.
Cole Rizki
Cole Rizki is assistant professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. Rizki’s monograph in progress examines Argentine trans politics and aesthetics to bring the study of democracy and its illiberal correlates to the forefront of trans studies, offering an interpretation of trans politics as inextricably bound up with national histories of illiberal state violence and its archives. He is co-editor of TSQ special issue "Trans Studies en las Américas" and TSQ’s Translation Section editor. His work appears in TSQ, Radical History Review, and Journal of Visual Culture among others.
Maria Viteri
Maria Amelia Viteri holds an affiliation as a Research Associate with the Department of Anthropology at University of Maryland, College Park. Maria Amelia has published extensively, in English and Spanish, for academic audiences, the media, to inform public policy, and the international development field. Her work revolves around structural inequalities as mutually constitutive with gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Global South. She’s the author of Desbordes: Translating Racial, Ethnic, Sexual and Gender Identities across the Americas (SUNY Press, 2014). Her latest article is Untranslatable Wounds: on Colonialidad, Cisheteronormativity and Biculturalism (Gender and Language, 2021).