Queer Then and Now

Presented in partnership with Feminist Press we present Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures 2002 – 2020. Founded in 1992, the David R. Kessler lectures represent the foreground of queer studies in the US, featuring legendary thinkers such as Cherríe Moraga, Samuel Delaney, Barbara Smith, Judith Butler, and more. Queer Then and Now collects the speeches given from 2002 to 2020, as well as two scholarly roundtables, by some of the most influential scholars, artists, and activists of the last two decades, including Gayle Rubin, Cathy J. Cohen, Dean Spade, Sara Ahmed, Jasbir K. Puar, and the late Douglas Crimp and Adrienne Rich.

Diverse and dynamic, these intertextual conversations tackle some of today’s most important interventions from the margins—including the growth of trans studies, the synergy and disconnect between theory and activism, the role of LGBTQ+ art and media, the challenge of transnational and postcolonial theory, and more. Tracing the maturation of queer studies after its foundation in the 1990s, Queer Then and Now lays the groundwork for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Editors Debanuj DasGupta, Joseph Donica, and Margot Weiss will be joined in conversation by Amber Musser, a writer and thinker who has published widely on black feminisms and queer of color critique.

BIOS:

Margot Weiss is associate professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she established and directs the cluster in Queer Studies and is affiliated with Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the relationship between queer sexual cultures and US neoliberal capitalism.

Joseph Donica is associate professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY. His research and teaching focus on Arab-American literature, urban studies, the history of technology, the legal and ethical framework of US citizenship, and queer diasporic literatures of the Middle East and North Africa.

Debanuj DasGupta is assistant professor of feminist studies at University of California at Santa Barbara. Debanuj’s research and teaching focuses on racialized regulation of space, immigration detention, queer migrations and the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV.

Amber Jamilla Musser is professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on intersections of race, sexuality, and aesthetics. She has co-edited “Queer Form: A Special Issue of ASAP Journal,” Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, and “Care and Its Complexities: A Special Issue of Signs.” She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism; Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance; and the forthcoming Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined.