“Fitting In and Sticking Out” – UNC Asheville to Host Biennial Queer Studies Conference April 3-5

UNC Asheville’s biennial Queer Studies Conference, co-sponsored this year by Davidson College, will bring together scholars, artists and activists April 3-5, 2020, for workshops, presentations and exhibits. With keynote presentations by Wriply Bennet and Kay Ulanday Barrett, the conference will be based around the theme, Fitting In and Sticking Out – Queer [In]Visibilities and the Perils of Inclusion.

Bennet, an Ohio-born illustrator, has been active at the nexus of trans and racial issues. She began organizing work with the Trans Women of Color Collective and then traveled to Ferguson, Missouri to protest after the police killing of Michael Brown. She became known as one of the Black Pride Four – four people arrested for disrupting the Stonewall Columbus Pride Festival in 2017 as part of a demonstration with the stated aim of highlighting “violence against and erasure of black and brown queer and trans people, in particular the lack of space for black and brown people at pride festivals.” Bennet’s art has been part of online exhibitions and can be seen in the award-winning documentary Major! which profiles Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a black transgender elder and activist. In her keynote, Bennet will focus on divestment as a queer liberation strategy.

Philippinx-American poet Kay Ulanday Barrett, disabled and transgender, is the author of When The Chant Comes, and the forthcoming More Than Organs, slated for publication just weeks before the Queer Studies Conference begins. A performer and educator and Campus Pride Hot List artist as well as poet, Barrett has spoken at Princeton University; University of Pennsylvania; University of California, Berkeley; Musee Juste pour Rire (Just for Laughs – a museum dedicated to humor) in Montreal; Chicago Historical Society, and Brooklyn Museum. PBS NewsHour, Buzzfeed and Huffington Post are among the national media to have featured Barrett, whose keynote will be titled, When The Chant Comes: Poetry & Margins at the Center.

Times and locations of these keynote talks and other conference events will be posted closer to the date at queercon.wp.unca.edu, where a link to registration can be found. Online registration for the conference is open to everyone, with early registration prices available through March 1 for the three-day conference: $100 for full-time faculty and other professionals; $80 for graduate students, adjunct faculty and nonprofit employees; and $60 for undergraduate students, community members, the unemployed and underemployed.

UNC Asheville and Davidson College students and employees will be admitted free, and should register online in advance.

For more information, please contact the conference organizers, UNC Asheville Assistant Professor of Sociology Shawn Mendez (smendez@unca.edu) or Healthy Campus Liaison Jordan Perry (jperry2@unca.edu).