College Art Association Annual Conference
February 12-15, 2014 Chicago, IL
Queer Caucus for Art Panel CFP
Obsessive Occularity: Visualizing Queerness, Bodies, and Disability
Panel Chair - Stefanie Snider, PhD:
Snider.Stefanie@gmail.com The body has been taken up by both people with disabilities and queer people (and of course, queers with disabilities) as a contentious site of identity, empowerment, desire, and community. The rhetoric of embodiment has been considered both in terms of its limitations and its possibilities for numerous marginalized communities. In light of recent scholarship on disability, vision, and visuality by Rosemarie Garland Thomson in Staring: How We Look (Oxford University Press, USA, 2009) and queerness, sexuality, and disability by Robert McRuer in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (NYU Press, 2006) and Anna Mollow and Robert McCruer in Sex and Disability (Duke University Press, 2012), an increasingly concentrated effort to think about the ways in which visual representations by, for, and/or about how queer and disabled subjects intersect and inform one another seems worthwhile. In particular, how can visual representations of disability and queerness enrich our understandings of the intersections of race, class, gender, and citizenship status over the course of history in local, national, and international arenas?
This panel seeks to contemplate the ways in which visual representations can accentuate the connections between queer and disabled subjects. This panel calls for analyses of queer and/or disabled subjects in fine art, visual culture, and art historical texts in order to ask questions such as: How are embodied queer and disabled sexualities represented in our visual field? How might queer studies, disability studies, and visual studies productively inform each other as methods of research or approaches to pedagogy? How might representations of disability be queered and/or representations of queerness be “disabled”? How do we make the work of visual art production and art history ethical and socially just when they privilege visual information that is not available to a substantial part of the population? Perspectives that concentrate on specific artworks, artists, and/or texts from a variety of cultures and time periods are especially welcomed.
For more information on how to submit your abstract for consideration, please see the College Art Association website at
http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/2014callforparticipation Thank you for your interest!