Queer of Color Aesthetics in Late-Stage American Empire

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

Envisioned as a response to the 2023 ASA roundtable celebrating twenty years of Roderick Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black, we wish to extend the rich conversation about queer of color critique, methodology, and institutional transformation (as well as institutional retrenchment), to reconsider the multifaceted dimensions of queer of color aesthetics. What tensions arise in apprehending the legibility and representability of either what is “queer” or “of color” in contemporary art, performance and media? Does one tend to eclipse the other, and is there a disproportionate burden of meaning placed on queer of color aesthetic production? How will late-stage imperial efforts to eradicate queer and trans people of color from culture and the state incite certain styles of aesthetic and critical intervention or negativity?

Each of us will explore different entry points to queer of color aesthetics, from a negativity that says nothing about 'who' the queer of color is (Bobby Benedicto), to anecdotes and the incitement of critical aggression (Summer Kim Lee), to the efforts to mobilize different “queer” sensoria by “funkifying” artefacts like the sphinx and hieroglyphics (Amber Jamilla Musser), to bad cinematic objects and an accounting of cultural expressions and forms that don’t comply with what is aesthetically astute or transformative (Richard T. Rodriguez). Chaired and moderated by Karen Tongson and Tavia Nyong’o, who will guide the conversation, pose questions, and offer their own specific examples (from contemporary sapphism, to multiversal media and performance), the conversation will open into a general discussion with the audience about both queer of color aesthetics and its critical interventions at the twilight of the “American” experiment.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chairs

• Karen Tongson, University of Southern California

• Tavia Nyong'o, Yale University

Panelists

• Bobby Benedicto, McGill University, Canada

• Summer Kim Lee, University of California Los Angeles

• Amber J Musser, CUNY Graduate Center

• Richard T Rodriguez, University of California-Riverrside

Biographical Information

Bobby Benedicto is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene (University of Minnesota Press) and has published widely in journal such as differences, Postmodern Culture, GLQ, Society & Space, and Social Text, among others. He is currently completing his second monograph, Fatal Sex: Queer of Color Negativity and the Erotics of Death (Duke).

Summer Kim Lee is an assistant professor of English at UCLA. Her book, Spoiled: Asian American Hostility and the Damage of Repair is forthcoming from Duke University Press.

Amber Jamilla Musser is a professor of English and Africana Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research lies at the intersection of race, sexuality, and culture. Her books include: Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (2018) and most recently Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (2024).

Tavia Nyong’o is Chair and William Lampson Professor of Performance Studies; American Studies; African-American Studies; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Yale University. His books include The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (New York University Press, 2018). His current research interests include: the performative turn in museum curation; the racial reckoning in theater, dance, and performance; racial and sexual dissidence in art and culture; and the cultural history of the metaverse.

Richard T. Rodríguez is Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad (2022) and Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (2009), both published by Duke University Press. He is currently finishing a collection of poems, Exemplars and Accomplices, about his time living in Chicago, and a book on labor and cinematic representations of Latino male sexuality.

Karen Tongson is the author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (2023), Why Karen Carpenter Matters (one of Pitchfork’s best music books of 2019), and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (2011). In 2019, she was awarded Lambda Literary’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. She directs the Mellon-funded Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture at USC, where she is also Chair of gender & sexuality studies, and Professor of gender & sexuality studies, English, and American studies & ethnicity. She co-edited the award-winning book series, Postmillennial Pop with Henry Jenkins at NYU Press for ten years, and co-hosted the pop culture podcast Waiting to X-Hale with Wynter Mitchell-Rohrbaugh from 2019-2023. She now hosts the podcasts The Gaymazing Race with Nicole J. Georges, and The Art of Grief with Dr. Megan Auster-Rosen.