Queer and Now

27 October 2023

Prof. Rory Critten, UNIL

Prof. Glenn Burger, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, US

Topic, speaker, and scope: This workshop will offer PhD students in English the opportunity to take stock of recent developments in queer studies and to brainstorm future directions for research. The invited speaker, Prof. Glenn Burger, is Distinguished Professor of English at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. As a medievalist, he is famous for being amongst the first scholars to apply queer theoretical approaches to readings of Chaucer and his contemporaries (in e.g. his Chaucer's Queer Nation, 2002). Prof. Burger has remained at the cutting edges of both medieval studies and gender studies; his most recent book treats the invention of wifehood in the long fourteenth century (Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages, 2020). Prof. Burger has agreed to lead a workshop aimed at students of English working across all periods (medieval, early modern, modern) and media (literature, film, online culture). His arguments may begin with medieval materials-one of the aims of the day will be to demonstrate the centrality of the Middle Ages to historical understandings of gender-but his goal will be to include all English PhD students with an interest in gender studies. Possible topics for discussion include: the development of the field and its institutional purchase; intersections between queer studies and other branches of gender studies (e.g. feminism and transgender and intersex studies); and intersections between queer studies and critical race studies. Description: The day will comprise, in the morning, 1) a lecture from Prof. Burger and 2) a workshop that he will lead. In the afternoon, PhD students in English Studies with an interest in gender will present work in progress. Prof. Burger is an expert in queer approaches to the Middle Ages but has interests in queer theory and culture that range more widely. He will thus be able to provide informed feedback across a number of possible topics. There will be a group meal (lunch), coffee in the morning, an apéro in the afternoon, and an evening meal for the speaker and organizers.

UNIL

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