Gender, Sexuality Feminist StudiesQueer Theory lecture is an annual event to honor and celebrate one of queer theories most insightful scholars and foundational figures Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Sedgwick’s call for reparative work and for reading practices grounded in affect and performance have transformed our understandings of intimacy, identity, and politics. Sedgwick spent much of her career at Duke in the English department where she offered the Epistemology of the Closet in 1990 and Tendencies in 1993. Although she moved to the City University of New York in 1997 where she taught until her passing in 2009, she left an indelible mark on the Duke community. Her work helped establish Duke as an intellectual leader in the critical study of sexuality. We host this event every year as a tribute to Sedgwick and as a continuation of her legacy. Over the last decade the Sedgwick lecture has featured leading scholars in queer theory including Lauren Berlant, José Muñoz, Tim Dean, and many more as listed below.
These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction
November 8, 2023 @5:00 pm EST
Lecture and Interactive Exhibit
East Duke Bldg. Duke Univ. Pink Parlor
***Livestream link***
Speaker: Lynne Huffer
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. She is the author of a trilogy on Foucault’s ethics of eros: Foucault’s Strange Eros (2020); Are the Lips a Grave?: A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex (2013); and Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory (2010). She is also the author of Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures: Nostalgia, Ethics, and the Question of Difference (1998) and Another Colette: The Question of Gendered Writing (1992). She has published academic articles on feminist theory, queer theory, Foucault, ethics, autotheory, and the Anthropocene, as well as personal essays, creative nonfiction, and opinion pieces in mass media venues. She is also the author, with Jennifer Yorke, of Wading Pool, a collaborative artists book, available at Vamp and Tramp. Her current experimental book-length text-image project, under review, is These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction.
REGISTER HERE for in-person and livestream attendance
PAST QUEER THEORY LECTURES
‘We Should Bring Her Here’: On the Upward Redistribution of Resources in the Queer Academy - October 2022
VIDEO RECORDING
Speaker: Matt Brim
Professor of Queer Studies in the English department at CSI, with a faculty appointment at the Graduate Center in the Women's and Gender Studies M.A. Program.
Queer Theory Killed Venus Xtravaganza: What's Trans About Queer Studies Now? - October 2021
VIDEO RECORDING
Speaker: Jules Gill-Peterson
Research Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University
Love Will Never Do (Without You): Queer Love and Loss - April 2021
VIDEO RECORDING
Speaker: Joshua Chambers-Letson
Professor of Performance Studies, Northwestern University
Biopolitics, Portraiture, and the Poetics of Puta Life - February 2020
Speaker: Juana María Rodríguez
Professor and Chair of Ethics Studies at UC Berkeley and Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies
Birthday and Conversation - April 2019
Speaker: Samuel R. Delany
Award-Winning Science Fiction Novelist and Critic
WHAT TRANSPIRES NOW: TRANSGENDER HISTORY AND THE FUTURE WE NEED - February 2018
Speaker: Susan Stryker
Award-Winning Scholar, Filmmaker, Historical Researcher and Theoretical Writer.
(GAY) PANIC ATTACK - February 2017
Speaker: David L. Eng
Graduate Chair and Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania
WHAT MADE SLOW CONSTITUTION? - April 2016
Speaker: Mel Y. Chen
Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California at Berkeley
THERE IS NO FREEDOM TO ENJOY - March 2015
Speaker: Lee Edelman
Fletcher Professor of English Literature at Tufts University
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF QUEER - April 2014
Speaker: Heather Love
R. Jean Brownlee Term Associate Professor, Associate Chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania
Sacramental Criticism the Program in the Sexualities - April 2013
Speaker: Elizabeth Freeman
Professor of English at the University of California-Davis