Paper short abstract:

To reveal heteronormativity in museums, we will visualize queer aspects in the exhibition of the "Museum Europäischer Kulturen", Berlin. With background information, the awareness on 'queer' should be raised for visitors and museum professionals when collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting objects.

Paper long abstract:

In the scope of our research, 'queer' stands for everything that is outside the social norm and is connected to gender, sex, and sexuality. An obvious problem with this approach is the almost inevitable danger of 'othering' because 'queer' has not yet been fully socially acknowledged in Germany and maybe needs more emphasis to be noticed at all. There are only few German museums that have already addressed 'queer' in temporary exhibitions. In this respect however, the "Schwules Museum", Berlin, serves as an outstanding exception because of its focus on LGBTTIQ issues only.

Our aim is to visualize 'queer' in the permanent exhibition of the "Museum Europäischer Kulturen", Berlin. Using multimedia tools, our goal is to open-up a multi-dimensional approach to different objects and offer queer stories. For this, we selected four objects which are either already part of the exhibition or of the museum's mission of collecting the present. These objects and the stories behind them should introduce visitors to queer aspects in the MEK's exhibition and collection and give people a new perspective to look on other museums as well. Museum professionals at the MEK have already included 'queer' in the process of collecting objects. In order to pursue this, they also should include 'queer' when interpreting objects which are already part of the collection. Additionally, the MEK should reflect its own narrative with respect to Queer Theory in order to raise awareness on 'queer' as part of society.

Paper short abstract:

Our presentation is dedicated to the analysis of the life story and creative work of Baltjancis, a secluded countryside enthusiast and activist of Latvian gay movement. Remaining a closeted homosexual for mainstream audience, he secretly continues his projects already for twenty years.

Paper long abstract:

Baltjancis is a secluded activist of Latvian gay movement who has tried to establish a one-man gay subculture living in the countryside of eastern Latvia, approximately 300 kilometres from Riga. In the early 1990s, when homosexuality was decriminalized in Latvia, he established contacts with gay organizations and individuals in different countries, unofficially traded imported porn movies and other goods to his Latvian clients, published an underground magazine, organized a gay pop band with his partner, and finally started a career as a writer of self-published poetry collections and his life story.

Speaking to mainstream audiences, he tries to avoid explicitly gay subjects and conceals parts of his life story in order to protect himself from homophobic comments. However, accusations of dilettantism still pursue his efforts. Creativity in its various manifestations is a crucial part of Baltjancis personality. He refers to himself as a multi-talented person whose ideal in art is Soviet Russian pop singer Alla Pugacheva -- her songs, personal style, and in particular her unwillingness to reveal her personal life to mass audience. In his poetry he uses the style and imagery of Latvian widespread amateurish poetry that concentrates on sentimental feelings, beauty of one's homeland and promulgates optimism and sincerity. At the same time he occasionally tries to use this style as a medium for expressing his gay sensibility and his personal experience in a veiled way. Our research contains material from field work at Baltjancis home in 2013 and analysis of his creative work.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the attitude towards gay men in Iceland, focusing on the period 1940 -1947 when Iceland was occupied by the British and US Army.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the attitude towards gay men in Iceland, focusing on the period 1940-1947 when Iceland was occupied by the British and US Army. The lives of these "hidden people" can be accessed through oral legends, along with rare newspaper articles from that time. Icelandic men who had lived in isolation due to their sexuality had for the first time the opportunity to accept their sexuality in the company of the British and American soldiers without risking discovery.

So far, stories of these men have largely been contained within their own group. By drawing attention to these hitherto hidden narratives, the paper aims to highlight the experiences of these men as well as the attitude towards gays in Iceland focussing both past and present. It will also highlight the impact the occupation had on gay men's lives in Iceland and the public discourse after the American soldiers left Iceland.

The purpose of my contribution is to shed light on a community in which homosexuality was carefully suppressed and give a glimpse into the world of those who belonged to the margins of society and had no place in the official view of history.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyse sex work in a non-heteronormative way through the comparison of Portuguese and English websites, on which migrant trans women offer their services.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on data collected within the ERC funded project "TRANSRIGHTS" (transrightseurope.wordpress.com), I will analyse sex work websites from Portugal and the United Kingdom, on which migrant trans women offer their services. By focusing on the specificities of migrant trans women's sex work, my aim is to contribute to the analysis of a subject within Anthropology which is under-researched so far. An ethnographic and visual methodology will be used to describe the way migrant trans women sex workers present themselves to potential clients by very detailed descriptions of their body sizes, physical attributes, personal characteristics, and lovemaking skills. A comparison between websites in the two countries will enrich the discussion as it will show whether embodied visual presentations follow cultural and national patterns of desire so as to respond to the demands of each sex market. Considering that migrants are the largest group of trans women sex workers in both countries (TAMPEP, 2009), I will also highlight how they negotiate their own national origins within a European sex work context that eroticises and exoticises their physical, sexual, and 'racialised' attributes. Therefore, through the analysis of sex work websites it will be 'read' how trans women negotiate gender, nationality, 'race', and sexuality in relation to the cultural and socio-economic demands of the market. My aim is to understand sex work in a non-heteronormative way, complicating the analysis of gendered identities and embodiments of trans women sex workers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the asylum-seeking processes of Syrian LGBTs at the UNHCR in Turkey. It critically approaches both the (un)institutionalized UNHCR practices and the emerging narratives and techniques invented and exercised by Syrian queer refugees as resistance strategies.

Paper long abstract:

Within the larger context of transnational sexual and gender politics, refugee protection and migration management, and based on ethnographic research in Istanbul, this paper examines the asylum-seeking procedures and experiences of queer Syrian refugees. While the UNHCR is allegedly not accepting any more applications from Syrians based on war, Syrians seeking asylum based on "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" are still allowed to apply. The paper argues that a rising discourse of "queer exceptionalism" is gaining ground whereby an international-universal, abstract "queerness" overrides citizenship/war as reasons for seeking asylum. In this sense, the paper propounds sexuality/gender identity/citizenship/refugee/migrant status as convergent modalities employed by local NGOs, IGOs, and the UNHCR and demonstrates how these organizations do not only become functional in managing migration under the guise of refugee protection, but also instrumentalize sexuality as an affective tool of constructing and producing a Syrian queer refugee population as "exceptional" recipients of humanitarian benevolence, while simultaneously employing this very sexual "exceptionalism" as a valid strategy for further control and discipline of the very subjects it produces. Furthermore, the paper aims to examine how this very affective instrumentalization has also intensified resistance and generated creative methods and tools of eschewing control on the part of the Syrian queer subjects, as well as allowed for the emergence of contingent subjectivities, bodily practices and queer narratives that deterritorialize both the UNHCR's exceptionalist queer discourses and methods of knowledge production on matters queer within the Middle East and North Africa.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the discursive legacies we are left with today when researching rural non-normative sexualities and gender identities beyond the western progress-oriented identity categories through mapping ethnographic and popular culture imaginaries of cultural, gender, and class identities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the discursive legacies that we are left with today when researching rural non-normative sexualities and gender identities beyond the western progress-oriented heterosexual/LGBTI systematizations through a mapping of both local and foreign ethnographic and popular culture imaginaries of the cultural, gender, and class identities in Croatia. While it has been argued that contemporary urban sexual and gender identities reflect global trends of identification, rural sexualities and gender identities are potentially more resistant to processes of "westernization" and less caught within transnational circulations of discourses of sexuality and gender.

Following the claim that sexualities at the periphery and farther from centres of regulation and representation are "less stable" or potentially resistant to regimes of control (Phillips and Watt 2000), we will explore how rural non-normative sexualities and gender practices potentially evade the conceptual frameworks used in western and urban cultural spaces and discourses, shift the boundaries of normative and non-normative identities and perhaps offer contemporary scholars alternative insights into the lived experience of social spaces in the Balkans beyond the western heterosexual/LGBTI systematizations. Reflecting on the legacies of historical discourses on Croatian and regional cultural identities, which have appeared in a variety of texts ranging from foreign travellers' to local ethnographers' accounts of sexualities and gender practices in the Balkan region, we will examine how lived experiences of non-normative sexual/gender practices have been shaped by and are shaping understandings of rural space and contribute to and subvert discourses of "progress" and queer western, urban utopias.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from Freud's idea that human understanding reaches only as far as its anthropomorphism, this paper sheds light on the 'heterosexual' relationship between men and technical apparatuses by the example of the attachment of male locomotive personnel to steam engines from a queer perspective.

Paper long abstract:

"Central to men's valorisation of 'work' is", as is claimed in the International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities (2007), "a close identification with machinery and technology", and Judy Wajcman (1991) stated that "machines can evoke clearly powerful emotions and sensual delight for men". From a male perspective, technical apparatuses, it seems, are more than just soulless tools which are used for rational purposes - they are objects to fall in love with and to maintain long-term relationships. This is especially true for the relationship between engineers and steam locomotives. As we found during our research in some of the last places where steam engines are still in daily operation, these locomotives are not only anthropomorphized, but also imagined as some kind of female human being. From a 'queer' perspective, this feminine anthropomorphization is both an outcome of a heteronormative society and a means of reproduction of heteronormativity.

Starting from Freud's idea that human understanding reaches only as far as its anthropomorphism, we aim to shed light on the 'heterosexual' relationship between men and technical apparatuses by the example of the attachment of male locomotive personnel and their steam engines. Our paper draws on fieldwork we have conducted 2013 in the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways (Germany) and in the locomotive depot of PKP Cargo in Wolsztyn (Poland).