For Immediate Release:  March 6, 2007
Contact:  Marsha Nishi Mullan    
610-328-8535     
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/

 

19th Annual Sager Symposium in Gay and Lesbian Studies
to Be Held at Swarthmore March 23-24

The 19th annual Sager Symposium in Gay and Lesbian Studies will be held at Swarthmore College from Friday, March 23, through Saturday, March 24. This year's symposium, "The Norming and Transforming of Queer Activism," will feature talks by leading academics, authors, and activists including U.S.C. Professors David Roman and Karen Tongson, Dartmouth Professor Sonu Bedi, filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons, and Harvard Law Teaching Fellow Dean Spade, and a performance and workshop by Philadelphia drag king troupe, The Diablos. The symposium is free and open to the public.

"This year the symposium will explore the radical and the domestic in queer theory and practice," says Kathryn Van Winkle '07, a symposium co-chair.

According to organizers, the symposium aims to focus on the potential for radical transformation at a time when the gay rights agenda has focused energy and public attention on issues that would integrate lesbian, gay, and transgendered individuals and communities into heteronormative societies.

"In turn, how can these utopian visions enlarge and further the goals of public activism?" adds co-chair Matthew Armstead '08. "At the symposium, scholars, activists, and artists will engage these questions from the perspective of their own disciplines, hopes, and desires."

For more information, registration details, and a full schedule, please visit the symposium web site at http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/sager/  or write the Sager Committee at sager@swarthmore.edu .

The Sager Fund of Swarthmore College was established in 1988 by Richard Sager '73. The symposium is designed to combat homophobia and related forms of discrimination.

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