Feminist Thinking Seminar Series 2023: LGB without the T

Feminist Thinking Seminar Series 2023: LGB without the T

Part of the Intersectional Humanities Programme events

Register here to watch online.

This panel seeks to address the emergence of trans-antagonistic LGB organisations such as the LGB Alliance, which formed in 2019 in protest against Stonewall’s support for transgender issues. We will explore whose interests are being served by such movements and consider how trans-exclusionary rhetoric inside the LGB community can be challenged.

Panelists:

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts at McMaster University. A Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator, Ware uses painting, installation, and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. His work has been shown widely across Canada in solo and group shows, and his performance works have been part of local and international festivals. He is part of the Performance Disability Art Collective and a cofounder of Black Lives Matter-Canada. Syrus is curator of the That’s So Gay show and a co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama. In addition to penning a variety of journals and articles, Syrus is the co-editor of the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada (URP, 2020).

Levi C. R. Hord is a writer, scholar, and public speaker based in Lenapehoking (New York City). They are currently a Ph.D. student at Columbia University. Under the supervision of Jack Halberstam, Levi’s research focuses on post-2010 shifts in gender identity claims, especially the flourishing uptake of “nonbinary”. Through their academic work, Levi aims to demystify cultural and legal anxieties surrounding this significant shift in mainstream gender politics, and turn this site of theorization into an opportunity for more effective political conversations. Outside of the university, Levi devotes their time to community-facing research roles and public speaking. Levi has been an invited speaker at venues including the Professional Institute of the Public Service Canada, TEDx, the Fierté Canada Pride National Conference, the Women of the World Festival, and the University of Oxford.

Desirée Leverenz desirée is an artist, a thinker, and a dreamer, who will never wash treaty 6 soil from beneath her feet. she exists to bring questions, and reveal stories and conversations, for artists and audiences alike, so that we can all dream of a better future together. desirée is attracted to epic stories: epic in content, in aesthetic, and in spirit. she’s received institutional education from the university of alberta (BA), and york university (MFA), and has directed in large institutions and quiet back alleys. desirée continues to seek how to decolonize art, teaching, and her self.

Moderators:

Sami Wymes (they/them). Sami is stardust, dreaming and building performance beyond binaries. Sami holds a BAH in stage and screen studies from queen’s university, canada and a MA in theatre and performance studies from york university, canada. They are currently enrolled in the MSt in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program at the university of oxford, uk, where their autoethnographic research explores nonbinary identity construction through performance practice. Sami creates and performs in theatre productions and performance art, and their recent research on settler homonationalism in canadian contexts will soon be found on the queer intersections oxford blog.

Mizy Judah Clifton (he/they). Mizy holds a BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and is currently enrolled in the MSt in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oxford. His research explores the contemporary notion of "genital preference", which he contends is a misnomer, more accurately described as a genital imperative. He engages with feminist interventions into so-called "consent culture" to sketch out a trans-inclusive mode of desiring that resists such foreclosures of bodily possibility.

For more information email intersectionalhumanities@torch.ox.ac.uk.

Intersectional Humanities, TORCH Programmes