This conference – May 21st – 22nd 2020 – aims to examine how LGBTQ representation has changed through time, continues to evolve in the present, and what role it might play in the future.
It draws on recent developments in queer on-screen representation – ranging from the increased focus on transgender and queer of colour protagonists in series such as Pose (2018, FX-), Transparent (2014-2019, Amazon Prime), Vida (2018-, Starz) and Orange is the New Black (2013-2019, Netflix), to depictions of queer characters in children’s programmes such as Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe (2013-) – in order to trace how LGBTQ media comments on both the current state of queer rights, as well as the possibility of queer futurity (Edelman 2004; Muñoz 2009).
We invite presentations on queer art, film, television, and literature, as well as social media and digital scholarship. The conference will work to represent a multiplicity of queer experiences, spanning divergent historical and geographical areas of representation, as well as the plurality of ideas of what it means to identify as queer today, and what this identification might look like in the future.
We invite abstracts dealing with different examples of LGBTQ representation, as well as presentations which analyse the overall evolution of queer representation in specific mediums and contexts. Topics may include but are not limited to:
- the evolution of queer on-screen representation in film, television, literature, gaming, etc.
- different regional and national representations of queerness
- the past, present and future of queer intersectionality
- representations of queer histories and memory
- queer adaptation
- queerness and queering in media fandom
- queer representation in different countries and contexts
- different conceptualisations of what it means to represent queerness
- The evolutions of homonormativity and homonationalism
- queer futurity and the future of queer representation
- queer archives (physical and digital)
- queer online space and digital new media
To submit an abstract (200-300 words) and bionote, please contact us by March 20th 2020 at queerrep.conference@gmail.com.
