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Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar, 2009-10

“Homosexualities, from Antiquity to the Present: Worlds, Subjections, Visibilities”

“Homosexualities” is a year-long Mellon-funded Sawyer seminar that concentrates on approaches to the study of same-sex desire from antiquity to the present. The seminar program aims to appeal to the broad range of constituencies at both UCLA and nearby institutions that have an established interest in the roles that the humanities currently play in the study of homosexuality, especially within the flourishing field of LGBTS. The seminar program, which will bring together both emergent and established scholars, includes a postdoctoral fellowship and two dissertation fellowships.

Although the term “homosexuality” has its own problematic history, the plural version of the word focuses attention on the ways in which scholars analyze patterns of same-sex eroticism in a broad range of historical and theoretical contexts. The seminar program aims to generate dialogue between researchers whose work is based within and across many different humanities disciplines. Sessions will look at the distant past and the near present, as well as the local and the global. From October 2009 to June 2010, participants will have many opportunities to engage with the most pressing debates that affect the ever-growing LGBT field.

In order to achieve this goal, the seminar will devote each quarter to a large topic that allows historians, theorists, and cultural analysts to throw light on the methodological challenges that they face in their research. In fall 2009, the program will concentrate on “Worlds.” “Worlds” will enable colleagues to consider not only the disciplinary environments in which they study homosexuality but also the geo-political contexts that inform their intellectual work. In an era that increasingly addresses the need to study global sexualities, “Worlds” will provide the chance to consider the spatial imaginaries that relate to dissident, insubordinate, and stigmatized forms of desire.

During winter 2010, the Sawyer program will look at “Subjections.” As the title implies, this part of the seminar draws attention to the structures of power that have frequently subjected homosexual individuals and groups. The term, however, enables us to see how a subject can also be an agent that articulates itself within various grammars and syntax that express sexuality. Moreover, the topic of “Subjections” offers the opportunity for us to examine the kinds of internally and externally generated categories of identity that led, for example, to such linguistically hybrid formulations as “homosexuality.”

The spring quarter of 2010 is dedicated to “Visibilities.” This part of our program places an emphasis on the contexts in which types of same-sex desire become recognizable in different times and different places. “Visibilities” will enable seminar participants to explore the aesthetic and performative contexts in which struggles for individual and collective visibility continue to take place.          

Speakers who have so far agreed to participate include Daniel Boyarin, Anna Clark, Licia Fiol-Matta, Jody Greene, Theodora A. Jankowski, Mark Jordan, Rictor Norton, Tavia Nyong’o, Robert McRuer, Jose Muñoz, Leila Rupp, Martha Vicinus, and Jeffrey Weeks.

Sawyer seminar planning committee: Joseph Bristow (Director; English), Lowell Gallagher (English), Grace Hong (Asian-American Studies and Women’s Studies), Arthur Little (English), Amy Richlin (Classics), Juliet Williams (Women’s Studies), and Daniel Williford (Graduate Representative, English).

If you have a specific query about the seminar, please do not hesitate to contact the seminar director, Joseph Bristow, at jbristow@hument.ucla.edu, or the seminar program assistant, Irene Suico Soriano, at isoriano@english.ucla.edu.

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