Queering Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies

• International conference

This conference continues the project initiated with the colloquium "Queeriser le canon littéraire et artistique luso-brésilien", which took place at Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris in 2014, and also the conference "Queering Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies", which took place at the Dalarna University Falun, Sweden in 2016. It aims to embrace queer readings of both canonical and "minor" or neglected Portuguese, Brazilian and Lusophone African writers and artists from any historical period. It draws on the meaning of "queer" as that which evades the social and symbolic norm without acquiring any ontological solidity, as a sign of resistance to cultural homogenization and normativity, and more specifically, to heteronormativity and what Monique Wittig described as the "straight mind".

Venue: University of Birmingham

Call for papers

The organizers invite paper proposals exploring queer unsettlings of gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as deconstructions of the binaries of male/female, sex/gender, hetero/homo, normal/abnormal, and public/private, in Portuguese-language literature, cinema and visual arts. Papers drawing on the potential of queering perspectives to highlight intersectional articulation of multiple differences (rooted in sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and ability, among others) in social and cultural practices are particularly welcome.

Suggested themes:

1. "Gender trouble" (Butler) in literature, cinema and the arts.
2. Queering readings of canonical literary texts and artworks.
3. Analyses of the “technologies of gender” (de Lauretis) in literary and artistic products.
4. Deconstruction of gender roles and new forms of gender identity in Lusophone literature and art.
5. Exploration of style: kitsch, camp, queer, cyborg, melodrama, “arte bicha,” butch, excess, subversion.
6. Borderline perspectives and modes of existence.

Languages : Portuguese or English

Organising and programme committee

• Fernando Curopos (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
• Chatarina Edfeldt (Dalarna University, Sweden)
• Alda M. Lentina (Dalarna University, Sweden)
• Alberto da Silva (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
• Maria Araújo da Silva (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
• Paulo Pepe (University of Birmingham, UK)

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