New Critical Frameworks for the Queer Caribbean

Session Submission Type: LASA Section Presentation

Abstract

Concepts of the local/global as well as those of nation/diaspora, along with that of (s)exile, have been central for apprehending queer Caribbean sexualities; yet, scholars have often found these insufficiently nuanced for approximating the ways Caribbean queer subjects’ movements across and belonging to various cultural contexts and have begun developing new critical-interpretative frameworks, including, for example, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes’ articulation of the “transloca” subject. This panel explores lived experiences and/or cultural representations of queer Caribbean subjects and how these, beyond the local and the global and nation/diaspora/exile, gesture to and demand new conceptual paradigms and critical frameworks for apprehending sexual alterities in the region.

Sub Track

• Section Presentation

Chair

• Maja Horn, Barnard College

Individual Presentations

• ‘La Montra’: Rita Indiana’s Queer Dominicaness - Karen Jaime, Cornell University

• Violating the Annals of the Empire: Archival Subversion in Sarduy's Maitreya - Carlos Riobó, City College of New York

• Marriage Equality and Non-Sovereignty: The Ambivalent Achievement of Gay Rights in the Dutch Caribbean, 2007-2012 - Chelsea A Schields, Graduate Center, CUNY

• Exclusiones homoeróticas de un canon precario - Claudia G Salazar, Sarah Lawrence College

Discussant

• Lawrence M La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan