International Workshop
QUEER NARRATIVES OF EXILE, TRAVEL, AND MOBILITY
Claudiana, 6 June 2024
© Ben Robbins and Jake Schneider, collage
We cordially invite colleagues, students, and guests to join us for this workshop focusing on the representation of LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups in literary and filmic works concerned with exile, migration, and transnational movement. Within this framework, the workshop will investigate the different social, legal, and historical pressures that have shaped the movements and mobility of oppressed and minority groups, as well as the diverse literary and filmic techniques that have been employed to represent these experiences. It will utilize transnational approaches, considering narratives that variously move across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
The workshop will feature three special guest presentations from Heather K. Love (University of Pennsylvania), Ralph J. Poole (University of Salzburg), and Robyn Warhol (Ohio State University), in addition to presentations from Antonio Salmeri and Benjamin Robbins from the University of Innsbruck. This event will bring together national and international scholars working across the related fields of queer theory, transnational literary and cultural studies, and intersectional narratology. There will also be a concluding roundtable on queer and narrative theory and a MA student poster exhibition on “Gender Experiments in Fiction.”
The workshop presentations will apply transcultural approaches to the subjects of migration, mobility, and the circulation of narrative forms and discourses across nations. The event will consider power relationships and social imbalances within processes of cultural transfer, in particular how the movements and mobilities of oppressed and marginalized groups shape narrative structures. It will also consider the networks of belonging that minority groups establish across borders that lead to the creation of new cultural forms. This workshop will additionally shed light on the intersections between migration, gender/sexuality, and culture that are so important to better understand the lives of displaced peoples.
Workshop program
You can download the preliminary workshop program as a single PDF here.
Speakers
Heather K. Love (University of Pennsylvania)
Ralph J. Poole (University of Salzburg)
Benjamin Robbins (University of Innsbruck)
Antonio Salmeri (University of Innsbruck)
Robyn Warhol (Ohio State University)
Registration for non-speakers
Due to limited room capacity, please register for the workshop as an attendee by emailing Amerikastudien@uibk.ac.at
The registration deadline is 22 May 2024.
Organization and information
This conference is organized by Benjamin Robbins with the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. It will take place on 6 June 2024 as an in-person event. There is no admission fee.
For further information about the event, please contact Benjamin.Robbins@uibk.ac.at
Venue
Herzog-Friedrich-Straße 3, 6020 Innsbruck
Networked Narratives
Department of American Studies
University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Tel: +43 (0)512 507 4171 (Secretary’s Office)
www.uibk.ac.at/amerikastudien/
This workshop is supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Land Tirol, Land Vorarlberg, and the University of Innsbruck's Faculty of Language, Literature and Culture, International Relations Office, the Research Area “Cultural Encounters – Cultural Conflicts,” and the Research Platform Center Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Innsbruck (CGI).