2009-10 « Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender

Evelyn Blackwood: “Global sexualities, or are there really lesbians and gays everywhere?” – March 29, 2010

Dr. Evelyn Blackwood, author of the forthcoming book “Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia,” has conducted research on lesbian and transgender identities, histories and practices globally for over twenty-five years. Her talk explores the diversity of female same-sex relations across cultures, from women in Suriname to tombois in Indonesia. Blackwood proffers the view that sexuality is a social product dependent on cultural norms and beliefs. Despite the fact that we live in a globally connected world in which Western ideas seem to dominate, Blackwood demonstrates that the concept of sexual orientation does not hold up cross-culturally. Her discussion of the […]

David Linden: “Perception, Emotion and the Creation of Narrative in the Brain” – October 27, 2009

In this colloquium, neurobiologist David Linden will present the following argument: “The feeling that we have about our senses, that they are trustworthy and independent reporters, while overwhelming and pervasive, is simply not true. Our senses are not built to give us an “accurate” picture of the external world at all. Rather, through millions of years of evolutionary tinkering, they have been designed to detect and even exaggerate certain features and aspects of the sensory world and to ignore others. Our brains then blend this whole sensory stew together with emotion to create a seamless ongoing story of experience that makes […]

Charles Batson – “Queer/ing Québec” – November 12, 2009

Through a focus on the stage-play Being at Home with Claude by René-Daniel Dubois and its filmic adaptation by Jean Beaudin, Batson proposes a reading of Québec as a Queer space. In this Francophone province surrounded by hundreds of millions of Anglophones marked by cultural tensions even prior to calls for a “Québec libre,” notions of what constitutes minority and majority identities seem never fully fixed. Our look at the Queer as an allegory for Québec may well reveal a Québec that participates in making, creating, and nourishing (itself as) Queerness.

Philippe Dubois – “Why Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” – October 8, 2009

Real men don’t eat quiche. Or do they? When it comes to virility, attempts at measuring the potency of certain types of food or mysterious concoctions on performance often rely on unverified facts and entail a host of undesirable side-effects. A carefully prepared quiche awakens the senses just as well as the next blue pill. At least, that is the opinion the gastronome offered as subtle questions of masculine desire were cleverly folded within XIXth century gastronomic discourse—a take on what ‘real men’ eat that arguably continues to define our modern practices in the kitchen and in the bedroom.

Brian Martin – “Gays in the Military: Combat Companions and Soldier Lovers in France” – September 29, 2009

Long before contemporary debates on “Gays in the Military” and the United States Army’s policy of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” soldiers looked to one another for emotional comfort, physical intimacy, and mutual support. From Charlemagne to Charles de Gaulle, the French historical record is rich in tales of military camaraderie and friendship. Published in 1892, Émile Zola’s celebrated war novel The Debacle is a monumental account of the French resistance and defeat during the War of 1870, that inscribes soldiers into a literary tradition stretching back to the warrior lovers of The Iliad and prefigures the homosexual soldiers of Cocteau, […]

Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender

Archive for the 2009-10 Category

Evelyn Blackwood: “Global sexualities, or are there really lesbians and gays everywhere?” – March 29, 2010

David Linden: “Perception, Emotion and the Creation of Narrative in the Brain” – October 27, 2009

Charles Batson – “Queer/ing Québec” – November 12, 2009

Philippe Dubois – “Why Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” – October 8, 2009

Brian Martin – “Gays in the Military: Combat Companions and Soldier Lovers in France” – September 29, 2009

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