The Third Annual
Bodies of Knowledge Symposium
University of South Carolina Upstate
March 18 - 19, 2010
This spring the 3rd Annual Bodies of Knowledge Symposium will be hosted by the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, S.C. This year will see the symposium expand to include a scholarly conference in addition to the usual LGBTQ lectures by star quality scholars, artists, and activists. The organizers invite paper and panel proposals for presentations relating to the broad umbrella category of Queer Epistemologies and Phenomenologies.
We take ‘queer’ to include the lived experience, situated knowledge, and bodily horizons of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, intersex, polyamorous, and asexual individuals, as well as those who are curious, questioning, straight with a twist, or friends, family, and supporters of the LGBTQQIA community. While acknowledging the controversies around other applications of ‘queer,’ we also invoke the term as a denotation of anti-normative, sub-cultural, anti-bias, oppositional, and marginalized epistemologies and phenomenologies. This theme should be interpreted as interdisciplinary, using concepts specific to philosophy to generate presentations that range widely across the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Proposals are welcome from established scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate students. Papers that incorporate works by the keynote speakers will be of special interest.
Keynote Speakers
- Laura Alexandra Harris
- S. Bear Bergman
- Robert McRuer
The conference will open on the evening of March 18 with a screening of the documentary Pick Up the Mic on the QueerHop/TransHop movement. Concurrent sessions of panels will be scheduled for the morning of March 19. Keynote lectures will take place that afternoon and evening, with a dinner break between the second and third speakers. Information will be provided about local accommodations and amenities.
All attendees must register online for the symposium, even if you do not plan to attend every presentation.