[Discussion] Queer community/ies, queer exclusion/s

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Queer community/ies, queer exclusion/s
Location:	Poland

At the upcoming 6th Queer Studies Conference in Poland we hope to focus on
issues that unite and fracture the vital but still tenuous community of 
queer
people. Ours is a highly differentiated community, dispersed across 
Europe and
linked to like-minded people in other parts of the world. Opposing 
homophobia,
variously experienced by queer people, holds this community together. 
But as we
learned at the last conference in 2004, we cannot take the existence of
community for granted, nor can we ignore the issues that divide us as 
men and
women; as homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and heterosexuals; as 
subjects
defined in terms of race, class, nationality, religion, political 
affiliation,
age group, etc.; as gay and lesbian activists and queers. We therefore 
encourage
participants to address the following questions:

     * What is the position we speak from?
     * Who is being silenced as we speak?
     * How does the queer community imagine itself and its others?
     * Who is absent from our community and how can we reach out to those
excluded?
     * How do various parameters of identity (gender, sexuality, race, class
etc.) intersect?
     * How does queer politics relate to race/class/gender politics?

The format of the 2005 conference will be different from that in 
previous years.
There will be twelve 90-minute sessions over the course of three days, and a
two-hour summing up discussion at the end of each day. We would like 
each of the
90-minute sessions to be hosted by individuals or teams ("session 
leaders") who
will be responsible for the theme and form of the session, e.g. workshop,
roundtable discussion, conventional panel, panel consisting of several short
statements (or "postcards") followed by a discussion, or any other format.

We welcome 200-word proposals for whole 90-minute sessions or individual 
papers
until June 15th, 2005. The proposals should be sent to:
	Tomasz Sikora
Department of English Cultures and Literatures
University of Bielsko-Biala
ul. Piastowska 44
43-300 Bielsko-Biala
tel./fax +48 33 8136590
Email: tsikora@us.edu.pl