This talk traces the connections between Gopinath’s first book, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (2005), and her second book Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (2018). Impossible Desires laid the groundwork for what we now call queer diaspora studies, and focused predominantly on alternative sexualities and the South Asian diaspora. Unruly Visions continues and expands upon this framing of queer diaspora as it brings queer diaspora studies to bear on studies of visual culture. In so doing, Gopinath suggests new ways of theorizing, seeing, and sensing queerness and diaspora across different geographies and temporalities.
Gayatri Gopinath is a Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. She works at the intersection of transnational feminist and queer studies, postcolonial studies, and diaspora studies, and is the author of two monographs: Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Duke UP, 2005), and Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (Duke UP, 2018). She has published numerous essays on gender, sexuality, and queer diasporic cultural production in anthologies and journals such as Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, GLQ, and Social Text.
Dr. Gopinath’s lecture will be followed by a Q&A facilitated by cause to become curator Christina Hajjar.
Facilitated on Zoom and live-streamed on the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba YouTube channel.
