Sites Queer: Technologies, Spaces and Otherness

Much of queer theory, history, art and performance have been discussed from Anglo American and European perspectives. Sites Queer is an international, interdisciplinary three-day conference exploring the multiple ways in which LGBTQ+ spaces and identities get reconfigured, performed and contested through the technologies and spatial politics of diverse ethnic cultures. Although we welcome submissions from all cultural backgrounds, we are particularly interested in inviting research projects rooted in Latin American, Asian, Aboriginal and African cultures.

From within the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, Sites Queer will be a space to discuss, foreground and analyze divergent queer histories, narratives and spatial practices. Subsequently, playing off the word 'site' as a physical locale as well as a digital space, the conference will problematize the ways the Internet, digital technologies, mobile apps and social networks are informing, changing, shaping or contesting queerness for ethnic minorities at urban and rural levels.

The outcome of the conference will be to create a book proposal acting as a critical, cultural memory; a written and visual record; and a speculative, spatial cartography of queer spaces for ethnic minorities, drawing them out from their Otherness and situating them within contemporary sociopolitical debates—which are fundamentally about the politics of space, citizenship and democracy.

Potential themes and sub-themes of the conference include but are not limited to:

-Autoethnography, Autobiography and Performance

-Non-normative Relationship Structures

-Intimacy and Romance

-Chem-sex

-Digital Economies and Transactions

-Distance and Proximity

-Postcodes and Addresses

-Urban Infrastructures

-Ephemerality, Transcience and Permanence

-Nighttime Culture and Economies

-Migration

-Bias and Marginalization

-Resistance and Activism

-Looking for Others

-Politics of Space

-Citizenship and Otherness

-Tourism and Mobility

Sites Queer is part of Dr. Regner Ramos’s larger research project at the University of Puerto Rico, funded by Fondos Institucionales Para la Investigación.

We are inviting research papers, performances, workshop sessions, roundtable sessions and pre-constituted panels to participate. Please send 250-word abstracts and a 150-word biography to regner.ramosupr.edu . In the case of group submissions, please provide biographies for each individual.

Submission Deadline: 31 August 2018

We are delighted to have Dr. Sharif Mowlabocus as Sites Queer's keynote speaker. Dr Mowlabocus is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Digital Media, based within the School of Media, Film and Music at University of Sussex. His research focuses on gay and queer sexualities in media culture, and has authored a variety of articles and books on the subject.