Sager Symposium 2006 Schedule
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 - Sunday, March 26th, 2006.
: Sunday, March 19th :
10pm > Paces Takeover with QUEER QUIZZO!, Paces
Kick off the week with a night of food, fun, and most importnatly, prizes! Join your hosts Emily and Harris for an evening of queer and sexy trivia with prizes to get you ready for the Genderfuck Party! Paces will also be serving sexy foods and delivering your favorite gay music videos. (Quizzo starts at 10pm, but the takeover's the whole night!)
: Wednesday, March 22nd :
5 pm > Student Art Show: EROTICA, opening reception, Kitao Art Gallery
Join the Kitao Gallery Board for a sexy student- created and curated art show, featuring drawing and painting, photography, installations, and more!
Gallery Hours: Wednesday 5-7pm, Thursday and Friday 2-5pm, Saturday 10am-noon.
10pm > SQU meeting: Download This!, Intercultural Center
Join the Swarthmore Queer Union as we go deep into an often unexamined genre -- queer porn. We'll screen clips, talk about what turns us on (and off), and perhaps engage in some (intellectual) masturbation. This even is OPEN to students of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Feel free to BYOP.
: Thursday, March 23rd :
8pm > mini queer Film Festival, featuring Gay Sex in the 70's (Joseph Lovitt) and Who's the Top? (Jennie Livingston), Science Center 101
>> Gay Sex in the 70's (Joseph Lovitt, 2005, 72min) >> During the twelve years from the Stonewall Rebellion (1969) to the first reported cases of AIDS (1981) there was a search for a definition of what it meant to be gay. Today, most people - even young gay men - have no idea of what life was like in the streets of New York at
that time. There are few left alive to tell them of the astounding sexual freedom and sexual excitement of day-to-day life. Considerable attention has been given to Stonewall itself and to the 80s in terms of HIV and AIDS, but much less notice has been given to the period of time between the two. This film provides that "hidden history" in a frank and thoughtful way, raising questions about how far the gay liberation movement has come and how acceptance of sexuality can affect sexual behavior, promiscuity, and the sometimes murky relationship between liberation and integration. Documentary producer/director Joseph Lovett (producer of the first in-depth AIDS investigations for national television at ABC News' "20/20") focuses his lens on the unbridled sexual passion and exploration that marked those twelve years. With access to a filmic and photographic treasure trove of erotic life on New York's West Side Piers, trucks, bars, dance clubs, bathhouses and beaches, Lovett's cast of storytellers (including Larry Kramer, Scott Bromley, Barton Benes, Rodger McFarlane, and others) takes us from the remarkably repressed pre-Stonewall period to an era of sexual liberation unparalleled since ancient Rome.
>> Who's the Top? (Jennie Livingston, 2005, 22 min) >> Jennie Livingston (director of the acclaimed Paris is Burning!) is back with a spanking hot new musical
short, that's sure to put spice into everyone's lives. Alixe (Marin Hinkle) enjoys a semi-happy, stable relationship with her partner Gwen (Brigitte Bako), but has an itch to explore kinky new territory ---- sexual and, she later discovers, emotional, as she finds herself being choreographed and all tied up by Shelly Mars, Steve Buscemi, Reno, and dozens of Busby Berkeley dancers. Livingston looks past questions of homo- or hetero-, and peers directly at sexuality itself: the role it plays in all our lives, the way it can be an escape, an adventure, or the point of a new and unexpected discovery. Once again, Livingston offers a movie that is both probing (physically and intellectually) and, thanks to the black-and-white sexual fantasy musical numbers (choreographed by Urinetown's John Carrafa), highly entertaining.
: Friday, March 24th :
4:30pm > "Anal Pleasure 101," workshop with Tristan Taormino, Intercultural Center
In her most popular workshop, one she has taught around the world for over 7 years, Tristan introduces you to the world of anal pleasure. In this funny, education class, she covers a wide variety of topics, including: myths about anal sex; anal anatomy, the G-spot, and the prostate; basic preparation and hygiene; lubes, anal toys, and safer sex; anal penetration for beginners, and much more!
Tristan will also give a lecture on Saturday - see below for details and a biography.
7pm > "Queering Love and Unqueering Sex," a conversation with Laura Kipnis, Admissions Lounge (Parrish Hall)
Can sexuality ever subvert dominant social norms or does it invariably end up
reproducing them? And if love, that most utopian impulse, gets transformed into something resembling a police state in modern coupledom--as Laura Kipnis argues in her book Against Love: A Polemic --then what's a young queer to do?
Laura Kipnis is a cultural critic, theorist, and a professor of media and and cultural studies at Northwestern University. Her upcoming book is entitled The Female Thing . She is also former video artist whose work has been shown and distributed internationally, including screenings at MOMA, the Whitney Museum, and the American Film Institute.
9pm > "Beware the Holy Whore ," performance by Vaginal Davis , Upper Tarble
Join us for an intimate evening of wisdom, words and wildness from the legendary doyenne of queer punk rock drag and outsider art, Ms. Vaginal Davis, who will
introduce a shameless and steamy interactive selection of her trespass cinema ouvre plus other shocking, not-ready-for-white-middle-classism surprises.
Vaginal Davis is a "terrorist drag queen" who has been a prolific producer of club performance, video and Xerox-produced Zines, and other forms of antagonistic low-cost, high-impact work. A self-labeled "sexual repulsive," Ms Davis consistently refuses to ease conservative tactics within gay and black politics, employing punk music, invented biography, insults, self-mockery, and repeated incitements to group sexual revolt -- all to hilarious and devastating effect. Her body a car-crash of excessive significations, she stages a clash of identifications within and against both heterosexual and queer cultures, and Black and Hispanic identities.
: Saturday, March 25th :
12 noon > "All in the Family: Respectability, Nationalism, and Queer Politics within the Black Community," lecture by Siobhan Brooks, Scheuer Room (Kohlberg Hall)
How are Black LGBT peopled defined in and outside of Black families and communities? Is the identity of Black LGBT people constantly shifting depending on where we are?
Are Black queer issues different from the mainstream queer movement? Do Black queer people need autonomy within the larger Black community? Brooks' talk will examine these questions by looking at the changing role of Black identity politics post-Civil Rights era vis-à-vis sexuality and queerness, which challenge narrorw notions of nationalism, activism, and identity in black communtities, especially with regards to issues like HIV/AIDS and sex work.
Siobhan Brooks is a PhD student in Sociology at the New School University in New York, a former organizer at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, an an expert writer on issues facing women of color in the sex industry.
2pm > "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism," lecture by Lisa Duggan, Lang Concert Hall
Lisa Duggan will discuss how, during the past decade, organized gay politics in the U.S. and Europe have moved rightward. Diverging from its varied roots in progressive to left social movements, mainstream gay rights politics now constitute, not a resistance, but an arm of neoliberalism--one of the centers for the production of neoliberal
"equality" politics. This is especially apparent as the pressures to dismantle post World War II welfare states build--and gay rights organizations climb onto the privatization band wagon rather than press a critique in the realm of political economy. In the realm of culture and "lifestyle" politics, the organized gay movements have begun to promote a new homonormativity--a public image of prosperous monogamous couples devoted to domestic consumerism. A critical queer politics exists alongside this neoliberal homonormative front, but its social forms are currently mostly localized and relatively isolated. Much of academic queer theory meanwhile continues to rework abstract theorizations unconnected to the current conjuncture, but some new work is emerging to theorize the new homonormativity, and the political economy of corporate globalization in which it is embedded. This lecture will review these emergent political and theoretical critiques.
Lisa Duggan is Associate Professor of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her most recent book is entitled Twlight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy . She is glad to return to speak at the Sager Symposium, having joined us already in 1995.
4pm > "Queer Sex Now!," lecture by Tristan Taormino, Lang Concert Hall
As Series Editor of Best Lesbian Erotica and former Editor of On Our Backs , Tristan Taormino has had her finger on the pulse of queer sexuality for more than a decade. She'll discuss current erotic trends, including the explosion of queer porn, the
Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator. She is perhaps most famous for her book The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women , as well as for her editing of lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs and popular anthology series of Best Lesbian Erotica , and for her contributions to such publications as New York's The Village Voice .
>> 6pm > Symposium Reception, Bond Hall
details TBA soon!
>> 10pm - 2am > Genderfuck Party!: Pleasure & Pain, Olde Club and the Women's Resource Center
details TBA soon!
Recently held SAGER Events:
: Wednesday, March 1st
8pm > Sex Workers Art Show (a pre-symposium event!), Frear Ensemble Theatre (Lang Performing Arts Center)This national tour (in its third consecutive year), is known for bringing audiences a blend of spoken word, music, burlesque, and multimedia performance art; as well as a visual art display that travels with the show. The artwork, talks, and performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex work, from celebration of prostitution and sex-positivity to views from the darker sides of the industry. The performance includes people from all areas of the sex industry: strippers, prostitutes, dommes, film stars, phone sex operators, internet models, etc. It smashes traditional stereotypes and moves beyond "positive" and "negative" into a fuller articulation of the complicated ways sex workers experience their jobs and their lives. It entertains, arouses, and amazes while simultaneously offering scathing and insightful commentary on notions of class, gender, labor, and sexuality! It features a mix of ten renowned and up-and-coming artists, writers, and activists - Michelle Tea , Simone de la Getto , Julie Atlas Muz , Scarlot Harlot , Tralala Farsi Sentiamo , Juba Kalamka , Annie Oakley, Bridget Irish, Teresa Dulce, and Ana Voog - including a 2000 Lambda Literary Award winner, a 2004 Whitney Biennial artist, a nationally-acclaimed hip hop performer, the woman with the longest-running web-cam, the coiner of the term "sex work," and numerous conference organizers, activists, and artists who gracefully balance between the grassroots and cutting edge. www.sexworkersartshow.com
We would like to thank our list of co-sponsors: the William J. Cooper Serendipity Fund; Forum for Free Speech; the Intercultural Center and its Speaker Series on Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality; the Swarthmore Queer Union, Queer-Straight Alliance, COLORS, and the Women's Resource Center; Paces Cafe and the Kaori Kitao Gallery; the Offices of Multicultural Affairs, Alumni Affairs, and Gender Education, and the President's Office; the Worth Health Center; and the Departments of Film & Media Studies, Women's Studies, Black Studies, Theatre Studies, History, and Sociology & Anthropology. And of course, the generous Sager Fund!