Davies Forum Events Spring 2007
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Tuesday, February 27, 1:30-3:30 p.m., LM 365
Straight Eye for the Queer Guy: Reality Television, Shopping, and the New Gay Visibility.
Josh Gamson - University of San Francisco
Josh Gamson, USF Professor of Sociology, is the author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994); Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998); and The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The Seventies in San Francisco (Henry Holt, 2005) as well as many articles and essays on sexualities, culture and media.
Tuesday, March 6, 1:30-4:15 p.m., LM 365
New Gay Visibility on Television: Business or Politics?
Dr. Katherine Sender - Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Sender, author of Business, Not Politics. The Making of the Gay Market (2005), Columbia University Press, and producer of Off the Straight and Narrow (1998), will screen and discuss her new documentary, Further Off the Straight and Narrow, New Gay Visibility on Television, 1998-2006, about the representation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in current television. What is the meaning of the new LGBT visibility in popular culture? Sender investigates the politics and media economics of LGBT representation.
Monday, March 19, 6:30-9:00 p.m., HRN 232
Performing Gender
Sean Dorsey and Shawna Virago, Fresh Meat Productions
Sean Dorsey. Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, is a San Francisco based choreographer whose work is carving new space for transgender and queer bodies and stories in modern dance. His work is a powerful fusion of modern dance, text, storytelling and theater. It focuses on aspects of coming out and living as transgender and queer. Dorsey and Virago will talk about their work with Fresh Meat and show video clips from recent productions. Dorsey was recently awarded a 2006 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Ensemble Performance of his groundbreaking choreography and the 2006 Goldie Award for Performance. Dorsey is the first transgender artist to receive a SFAC Individual Artist Commission and was recently awarded a prestigious Wallace Alexander Gerbode Choreographer's Commission. Co-sponsored by: McCarthy Center, Gender and Sexualities Studies, Latin American Studies, Media Studies, Performance and Social Justice, Politics Department, Psychology, Department of Sociology, and the Department of Visual Arts.
Monday, April 2, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Maraschi Room, Fromm Hall
Animating Revolt/Revolting Animation: Penguin Love, Doll Sex and the Spectacle of the Queer Non-Human
Dr. Judith Halberstam – University of Southern California
Judith Halberstam, Professor of English, Director of The Center for Feminist Research at USC, and cultural critic, will talk about queerness in children’s animation. Many animated features for kids – Halberstam calls them “Pixarvolt” films -- focus on gender and sexualities thematics which would never appear in adult films but which are central to the success and emotional impact of the Pixar narrative. In this presentation Halberstam explores ideas about humanness, alterity, and alternative imaginaries in relation to two odd pieces of animation, one that presents itself as a nature film, and the other which features animated dolls. Halberstam is the author of In a Queer Time and Place (2005, New York University Press), Female Masculininty (1998, Duke University Press), The Drag King Book (1999, Serpents Tail), and Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and The Technology of Monsters (Duke University Press, 1995), as well as many essays and articles on gender, sexualities and culture.
Tuesday, April 10, 1:30-4:15 p.m., LM 365
Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture
Andi Zeisler (Founder) and Rachel Fudge (Editor) of Bitch Magazine
“It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s a magazine…Bitch is a print magazine that provides commentary on our media-driven world.” Andi Zeisler and Rachel Fudge will talk about how they created Bitch Magazine in 1996, its rationale and goals, its stories, writers and audience. They will answer questions and discuss the need for, and possibilities of, feminist media in contemporary culture. More about Bitch at: http://www.bitchmagazine.com/
Monday, April 16, 6:30-9:00 p.m., HRN 232
(H)Errata, Woman, Art and Revolution.
Lynn Hershman - Feminist film maker/new media artist
Lynn Hershman Leeson, San Francisco film maker and new media artist, will talk about feminist film art and about her own work, culminating in a screening of portions of her work-in-progress, (H)Errata, Woman, Art and Revolution, a film about feminist art. Hershman Leeson has worked in film, video, photography, and net based media art. Her work has won many awards and accolades including a tribute and retrospective from the San Francisco Film Festival (1994), the ZKM/Seimens Media Art Award (1995), a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellowship (1998), the Flintridge Foundation Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (1998), the golden Nica in Interactive Arts from Ars Electronica (1999), and the World Technology Network Award for Innovation in the Visual Arts (2002), among others. She recently received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for a forthcoming documentary film on the history of feminist art. She will show portions of this work at USF. See examples of Hershman’s art at: http://lynnhershman.com/
Monday April 23, 6:30-9:00 p.m. HRN 232
SheWrite: A Documentary Screening and Discussion with the Directors
Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar - Center for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. For Kuttirevathi, a Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Malathy Maitri, who lives in Pondicherry, has been a Dalit and Marxist activist. Sukirtharani, a schoolteacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centered discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence. SheWrite has won several awards, including Best documentary, Three Continents International Documentary Festival, Venezuela, 2005, and the Indian Documentary Producers Association award for sound design and cinematography, 2005. The film has also played at several film festivals including the 12th International Women’s Film Festival, Turin, 2005; Film South Asia, Katmandu 2005; Platforma 2005, Athens, and the Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, Canada. Co-sponsored by Global Women’s Rights Forum, and Gender and Sexualities Studies.
Tuesday April 24, 2:00-4:00 p.m., LM 365
Arts and Activism
Valentin Aguirre – San Francisco LGBT activist and video maker
Aguirre is a long time Latino LGBTQ activist in San Francisco, with many years experience working in arts, HIV, social justice and social service organizations. He is currently serving as Development Associate at LYRIC (Lavender Youth Recreation & Information Center). Aguirre is also a video maker and his film, Someday God, screened at Frameline Film Festival. He serves as Producer for Juana, an opera in development by Carla Lucero that focuses on the persecution of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz during the Spanish Inquisition. Aguirre will show examples of his video work and discuss its connections to LGBT politics.
More information at http://artsci.usfca.edu/daviesforum or contact Erin Smith (emsmith2@usfca.edu)
