Queer and Post-Colonial Approaches to Anthropology: A Roundtable Discussion

Type: 
Roundtable
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Faculty Tower
Room: 
Auditorium
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 7:00pm
Add to Calendar
Date: 
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Queer and Post-Colonial Approaches to Anthropology:

A Roundtable Discussion

Central European University - Budapest, Hungary

November 18th, 2014, 7:00 pm

Auditorium

The recent formation of a queer anthropology is pushing thinking about ways of viewing ethnographic methods and conducting fieldwork beyond simplistic ‘subject’ and ‘researcher’ positions. In a similar vein, postcolonial theory is challenging conceptions of the subject, re-envisioning the colony and metropole and the complex relations and travels between them, as well as opening up new critiques of power and imperialism. This work is being furthered by discussions about the dominance of heteronormativity within anthropology and ethnography, as well as debates that foreground the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender in imperialism’s modern formations. With all of this in mind, how can we see the intersections of postcolonial and queer theories as challenging imperial and heteronormative structures of power inherent to knowledge making on gender and sexuality? We invite you to join us for a roundtable discussion of these intersections and themes.

The roundtable is composed of: Paul Boyce, Sofian Merabet, Prem Kumar Rajaram, and will be moderated by Elissa Helms.  A small reception will follow.

Paul Boyce is Lecturer at University of Sussex School of Global Studies, whose research has predominantly focused on sexual and gendered subjectivities.   Paul aims to provide analytical connections between ethnographic practice, community work and anthropological theorization of gender, sexualities, health and socio-economic change and continuity.

Sofian Merabet is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Texas at Austin. Sofian has expertise in the modern Middle East (with a focus on Lebanon and Syria) and the wider Muslim world, including Muslim immigrant communities in Europe and the Arab Diaspora in South America (especially Argentina). His interdisciplinary research analyzes the human geography of queer identity formations and the social production of queer space as constitutive features of wider class, religious, and gender relations.

Prem Kumar Rajaram is Academic Director of CEU's Roma Graduate Preparation Program (RGPP) and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University. In his research, he is particularly interested in questions of marginality and depoliticization. His research has focused on the government of asylum-seekers, particularly those in detention in Europe and Australia, and on colonial histories of state making.

Elissa Helms (moderator) is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University. Her research interests cover the gendering of nationalism, NGO activism and donor aid, gender and ethnic violence, and the social dynamics of gender after significant ruptures such as war or the collapse of state-socialism.  Regionally, she focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, especially the successor states of socialist Yugoslavia.

Sponsored by CEU’s Gender Studies Department

Please send any inquiries to: ceusymposium2014@gmail.com