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.
October 17, 2022
“‘We Should Bring Her Here’: On the Upward Redistribution of Resources in the Queer Academy”
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. Read more
This talk contributes to the understanding of queer studies as a class-based knowledge project. Brim traces the relationship between queer academia’s aspirational mood and the increasing extraction and relocation of queer faculty and students from working-class places to elitist ones. What do such simultaneous acts of community building and busting mean for the field? Brim suggests that within this complicated dynamic the need—and the opportunity— to bolster cross-class queer studies relationships comes into focus.
PAST QUEER THEORY LECTURES
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