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- Convenors:
-
Cory Thorne Gutiérrez
(Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Guillermo De Los Reyes (University of Houston)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Intersectionality
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Queer intersectionalities is the premise that the discipline of folklore must learn to better address issues of sexuality and gender diversity throughout our scholarship. Queer theory both strengthens and is strengthened by folklore research methods and analytical frameworks.
Long Abstract:
Queer intersectionalities is the premise that the discipline of folklore must learn to better address issues of sexuality and gender diversity throughout our scholarship. Likewise, it is the contention that queer theory can be strengthened and better nuanced through folklore research methods and analytical frameworks.
In order to encourage scholarship on LGBTQI+ folkloristics, we are seeking papers that address the intersections of folkloristics and queer theory, including but not limited to queer intersectionalities (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc), queer geographies, queer temporalities, queer spiritualties, and queer methodologies. We likewise welcome material on two-spirited/transgender studies, marginality, post-coloniality, transnationalism, and translocality, hemispheric studies among other relevant themes within a queer folkloristics lens.
This discussion will be continued via a forthcoming special issue (2022) of the Journal of Folklore Research, likewise titled "Queer Intersectionalities in Folklore Studies"
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The Millennial Dolls are an interracial Houston based Drag Queen troop who perform at different gay and straight spaces in Houston promoting gender and racial inclusivity through queer performances.
Paper long abstract:
The Millennial Dolls are an interracial Houston based Drag Queen troop who perform at different gay and straight spaces in Houston promoting gender and racial inclusivity through queer performances. I argue that the camp and diverse performances by the Millennial Dolls have aided them to develop community and kinship among themselves and at the same time their different intersectionalites promote a sense of understanding and inclusivity among their spectators. The main question this presentation addresses is: What can sexual practices and gender performance tell us about the ways in which gender, sexuality, age, class and ethnicity are regarded and configured in the Montrose District in Houston?This exploration focuses on the gendered social and intersectional performances of the Millennial Dolls and other drag groups in Houston.
Paper short abstract:
Queer temporalities recast the musical, social, and political activities of a women’s chorus during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lack of shared musical time and the performance of lesbian and feminist histories reveal the sexual politics at the heart of the chorus’ musical and social disjunctures.
Paper long abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has queerly rearranged time, rendering traditional markers of time passing irrelevant. Instead, we sense time through other markers, such as lengths of exposure, quarantine, epidemic waves, or through the senses in the stiffness of inactive muscles, the absence of another’s touch, or the quiet of a city on lockdown. In my ethnographic research with Sistrum, a women’s chorus from the Midwestern U.S., queer temporalities recast the fundamental musical, social, and identity-forming activities of the chorus as it attempts to remain active during the pandemic. In this paper, I explore how the undoing of time reveals the innerworkings of lesbian and feminist identities and politics in the chorus’ musical activities. During rehearsals, each member sings alone at her computer but always muted in Zoom. Though we sing together, there is no sense of shared time connecting our voices and bodies. Drawing on Elizabeth Freeman’s concepts of chrononormativity and temporal drag (2010), I examine how the lack of communal time affects the sociality of the group and in turn the temporal maneuvers that restructure the social history of the group, e.g. centering liberal feminist politics over radical lesbian origins. This paper builds on queer folklore scholarship that examines worldview through the folkloric structures of a group. Singing during the pandemic reveals the sexual politics at the intersection of time, identity, and performance.
Paper short abstract:
The current paper focuses on children as active hero(ine) in Ukrainian wonder tales. Related to children Ukrainian beliefs and customs give premises to distinguish the third, androgynous gender as the one which exists out of commonplace social order and binary gender system.
Paper long abstract:
Gender distinction, patterns and performance are supposed to be clear in folk wonder tales.Thus, gender studies on wonder tales discuss the opposition of sexes that is based on a binary gender system and leads to marriage as a marker for gender performativity. The binary gender system works based on gender stereotypes that are imposed on the hero(ine) socially and historically, and following which the hero(ine) should accomplish gender performance and related reaffirming tasks. Following the binary sex-gender system, one would overlook the specifics of unsexed heroes and heroines – children.
The current paper focuses on Ukrainian wonder tales with an active hero or heroine who considers as children and who does not gain marriage as a reward. Even though the sex of hero(ine) is defined in the tales, one’s gender is unclear or to be precise – of another meaning. The assumption of the third gender – androgynous one – is based on Ukrainian beliefs and rites related to children. Besides the belief system, the social involvement and social order are going to be examined. If one considers that gender is a social construct, it fulfils a social order. But what is the social order for children? If there is a distinction between coming of age hero(ine) and children as hero(ine), will it be reflected in language? Disclosing of the meaning of the androgynous gender out of the binary system, this paper is based on customary and social premises for gender assignment.
Paper short abstract:
On this paper, I want to discuss the changes on gender expression among male straight strippers that dance for gay men. Those changes may express certain kind of queerness on their masculine expression derived from their involvement with gay business culture and gay culture.
Paper long abstract:
Straight male masculinities are considered to be related to patriarchy and heterosexuality. However, as gender is malleable, in some cases, straight men perform certain queerness in their gender expression, in order to be able to be part of a group or as requirement of their economic activities, as is the case of male strippers that strip for a gay male audience.
In this paper, I describe these phenomena observed during a postdoctoral research that involved straight male strippers that work in gay bars. I wanted to identify changes in male dancers’ masculinity expression and how that was a result of the business and the clients’ expectation. Business culture and gay culture impulse them to make changes in the gender expression in order answer clients and business requirements.
The hypothesis that will guide this work is the following: As men’s gender is fluid it can be molded, in order to maintain their privilege status while at the same time they can disrupt some of the marks associated to heteronormativity without receiving any kind of social punishment.