[Commlist] CFP worldmaking around the world: rethinking the intersections of popular media, translation and LGBTQ+ activism across cultures

WORLDMAKING AROUND THE WORLD: RETHINKING THE INTERSECTIONS OF POPULAR 
MEDIA, TRANSLATION AND LGBTQ+ ACTIVISM ACROSS CULTURES
BILL DOUGLAS CINEMA MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER. 17-18 APRIL 2020.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: JACK HALBERSTAM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
                                    RYAN POWELL, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
DVD images of queer films in Chinese

This conference aims to rethink the ways in which popular media, in the 
forms of film and TV, offer material for LGBTQ+ worldmaking through 
translation. Popular media have long been understood as a site that is 
negotiated by readers and viewers (Fiske 1989) and have been considered 
‘Goods to Think with’ (Martin 2017). Popular media therefore offer space 
for developing queer readings and for thinking queerness within texts 
that may themselves not be queer. Queer readings of popular cultural 
texts have read back into them gay, lesbian, bi and trans characters 
that have been previously overlooked or minimised (e.g. White 1999). In 
addition, there has been a massive growth in LGBT+ representation on TV 
and in the cinema in the Anglophone world since the 1990s (Mennel 2012: 
113-116; Schoonover and Galt 2016: 18). TV shows like Will and Grace, 
Queer as Folk (in both its British and American versions) and The L-Word 
featured out-gay and lesbian characters and were part of the development 
of a wider queer visibility in popular culture, although queer 
characters had been present in earlier TV and film, though seldom in 
central roles (e.g. the gay best friend).

Such changes in the visibility of LGBTQ+ characters remain limited, 
however, by forms of censorship in many countries. This has led, in some 
cases, to the formation of LGBTQ+ translation groups that are committed 
to subtitling and translating foreign queer materials. At the same time, 
international circulation of texts has increased in recent decades, due 
to forms of post-broadcast media such as DVDs, blu-rays and streaming, 
as well as through informal distribution via systems such as bittorrent. 
It’s now common to find South Asian, East Asian and European media 
throughout the Anglophone world, just as it’s common to find 
English-language media in the rest of the world.

This combination of official and unofficial circulation of media 
highlights the importance of intercultural transfer and translation in 
popular culture. However, with the global flows of queer media and the 
ideas about queerness and LGBTQ+ lifestyles inherent in them, there is a 
risk that local forms of LGBTQ+ cultures are erased or elided through 
the importation of foreign ideas and practices, or, in the Global North, 
that they become exotic materials for international consumption. How do 
forms of LGBTQ+ worldmaking avoid or negotiate these questions of 
cultural appropriation and encounter? How do forms of queer reading and 
translation differ in the Global North and Global South? Indeed, given 
the Anglophone origins and history of the term ‘queer’, recent research 
has questioned the appropriateness and use of this term in other 
cultures and contexts (Domínguez Ruvalcalba 2016, Schoonover and Galt 
2018) and analysing global practices related to concepts of the ‘queer’, 
especially in terms of the use of imported media, would help to decentre 
queer theory from its typical focus on USAmerican and Anglophone contexts.

The status of popular media has also been changing in recent decades, 
gaining more and more cultural capital and prestige. It has become 
easier to access older forms of popular media, through a combination of 
specialist TV channels like SyFy, home media releases and streaming. 
Once ephemeral texts are now archived, curated and translated by LGBTQ+ 
fans and/or activists around the world to understand the past and 
present of queer culture. This new availability of texts from across 
different locations and historical moments, however, has an effect of 
flattening out their historicity and cultural specificity, translating 
them into the present time and place. At such a juncture, it is 
imperative to reevaluate historical practices of worldmaking and LGBTQ+ 
community and the current trends through and within translation 
(understood in the sense of both linguistic and cultural translation), 
especially with regard to terms and concepts that would not be 
recognisable to ‘queer’ communities from other periods and locations.

The conference will explore, therefore, the intersections between global 
queer media flows (especially in relation to translation), popular film 
and TV, queer worldmaking and LGBTQ+ activism in order to question 
assumptions about the relationships between popular media, queer culture 
and the hegemonic position of current Anglophone cultures in reflections 
on queer practices.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Translation of/within queer media
Cultural appropriation in global queer media flows
The queer potential of popular film and TV
Queer Fandom and translation
Local sexual knowledges and global queer culture
Historical approaches to queer worldmaking
Queerness and popular media in the Global South
South-South and South-North queer dialogues and translation
Piracy and informal economies of queer media
Changing popular culture and transcultural queer readings
The queer popular archive across cultures
Censorship, queer media and queer activism
Translation and global queer culture
Neoliberalism and the commodification of queer culture

We welcome proposals for original papers of 20 minutes that address the 
themes of the conference from scholars working across a range of 
disciplines. Please submit abstracts of ca. 300 words and brief bionotes 
of ca. 50 words to the organisers. The deadline for proposals is 1 
December 2019.

Proposals and queries should be sent to the organisers, Ting Guo 
((t.guo /at/ exeter.ac.uk)) and Jonathan Evans ((jonathan.evans /at/ port.ac.uk)).


This conference is part of the AHRC funded project ‘Translating for Change’.

REFERENCES:
Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Héctor (2016) Translating the Queer: Body Politics 
and Transnational Conversations. London: Zed.

Fiske, John (1989) Understanding Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Martin, Fran (2017) ‘Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: BL as Goods to Think 
with in Taiwan’ in Boys’ Love, Cosplay and Androgynous Idols, ed. by 
Maud Lavin, Ling Yang and Jing Jamie Zhao. Hong Kong: Hong Kong 
University Press, pp. 195-221.

Mennel, Barbara (2012) Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay 
Cowboys. London: Wallflower.

Schoonover, Karl and Rosalind Galt (2016) Queer Cinema in the World. 
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

White, Patricia (1999) Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian 
Representability. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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