Organised by Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf, Research Area 1: "Competing Communities".

The conference seeks to discuss the role of literature in the construction of queer communities. What is the significance and the effect of shared texts or imagery in the process of affiliation or disaffiliation, inclusion or exclusion that define queer belonging and kinship? What do literary references, canons, iconic artworks, materialities, landmarks or tunes mean in this process?

Queer community building processes stimulate connectivity that transcends national, cultural, linguistic, spatial and temporal limits. The competitive dynamics of communities, non-normative temporalities, gender-centered performativities and materialities are seen as volatile aspects of transliterary, transcultural and transtemporal relationalities. Resistance to periodisation or linear futurity, as well as resistance to fixed ontologies of identity allow a discursive, literary and cultural negotiation of the complex links between the dynamics of competing sexualities, validity aspirations, intermedial flexibility and digital re-invention of connectivity. 

The conference aspires to understand constructed or embodied perceptions of belonging and queer in-betweenness (spatial, temporal, narratological, representational and performative). Furthermore, it aims to create a theoretical space of transnational and interdisciplinary scope for the discussion of literary and artistic pronunciations that challenge essentialism and heteronormativity.

Conference language: English

Programme

Thursday, 5 October 2023

09:30-10:00 | Arrival and Coffee

10:00-10:15 | Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Welcome & Introduction

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10:15-11:45 | Kara Keeling (University of Southern California): On Aesthetics and Governance

Pauline Westerbarkey (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): The Futures are Queer: Collective Speculations, Imaginations and Multiplications of Queer Futurity in Contemporary Speculative Fiction Anthologies

Moderation: Samira Spatzek (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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12:00-13:30 | Jasmin Wrobel (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): Un/Defining Lines-Queer Comics in Latin America

Hongwei Bao (University of Nottingham): Fabulating Identity and Desire in Verse - Queer Chinese Poetry in a Transnational Context

Moderation: Alexandra Ksenofontova (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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13:30-14:30 | Lunch

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14:30-16:00 | Till Kadritzke (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Queer Genre Practices - Observations on Non-Normative Forms of Film

Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine): Queer Fragments of Byzantium

Moderation: Caroline Kögler (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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16:15-17:45 | Sima Ehrentraut (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Failing Relations – On the Ambivalence of t4t Imaging

Apostolos Lampropoulos (Universitry of Bordeaux-Montaigne): Queer Weeping

Moderation: Aiden John (Berlin)

Friday, 6 October 2023

09:30-10:00 | Arrival and Coffee

10:00-11:30 | Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Wrestling Monsters and Entangled Periodisations - Beowulf’s Queer Temporalities

Luca L. Wirth (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Heteronormative Brotherhood or Queer Community? The "freyen Knaben" in Michael Lindener’s Schwanksammlung Katzipori (1558)

Moderation: Peter Löffelbein (Freie Universität Berlin)

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11:45 -13:15 | Matt Brim (College of Staten Island): An Escaped Slave and a Good Person

Bart Soethaert (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Entangling Communities of Care and Concern - ‘Saint Francis and the Man with AIDS’ as a Network of Mediations (1985–1988)

Moderation: Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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13:15 - 14:15 | Lunch

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14:15-15:45 | Jack Halberstam (Columbia University): Bewilderment and Other Strategies for Unbuilding Worlds

Cedric Essi (Universität Zürich): Creating Queer Kinship across the Color Line

Moderation: Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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16:00-17:30 | Jonas Nemela (Berlin): The Screenplay of ‘Adams’s Land’ - Finding a Queer Language for Cinema

Alexandra Ksenofontova: Das lila Lied: A Queer Anthem, 1920 to 2020

Moderation: Jasmin Veeh (Berlin)

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17:30-18:00 | Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf: Closing