Conference | Queer Representation: Pasts, Presents, Futures

This conference examines 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 representation in order to trace how LGBTQ media comments on both the current state of queer rights, as well as the possibility of queer futurity.

The conference seeks 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. With our inclusive focus on transmedia representations of queerness, we aim to examine narratives of sex, identity, politics, family and gender across a broad range of contexts, mediums and artforms. We ask how queer representation has changed, what versions of queerness we remember today, and how that can manifest in our hopes or fears for the future. Through investigating which narratives of queerness persist, and how representational patterns have evolved, we hope we may learn about creative spaces in which queerness can thrive.