Can’t believe it’s only occurred to me now to do this, but this site has taken on a new life on a different medium. If you’re on Instagram, please look me up at @queer_modernisms.
I’ve found it’s much more conducive to how I currently envision this project, and I’ve been really pleased with how it has been received. I might return here yet, but for now, all my focus will be directed there.
Thank you, as always, for your interest! And hope to see you there.
For nearly two years now(!) the “Queer Modernisms?” tab at the top of this blog has led to a blank page with “IN PROGRESS” listed at the top.
That situation has now changed–it’s definitely still a work in progress, but take a look!
Thought I would break this period of extended radio silence (*sigh*) to mention that I will be presenting some research from my thesis at this year’s annual PAMLA conference. It will be taking place in Portland, OR, from November 6-8, and I present on a panel during the first session on Saturday morning. If anybody reading this is also attending, please stop by and say hello!
Here’s the info and my presentation abstract. Additional information (including abstracts for the full panel), can be found here.
Cruising at the Intersection: The Queer Collaborative Authorship of The Young and Evil
Jesse Ataide, San Francisco State University
“What kind of discoveries are made possible when two gay men confront each other?” Christopher Hennessy asks, “with the acknowledgment of a shared sexual desire lurking there?” This paper considers how queer content in Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s 1933 novel The Young and Evil reflect a strategy of “cooperative discourse” that compels a reconsideration now only of the concept of authorship, but also how friendship, intimacy, and creative cooperation can function between queer men.”
My paper on Samuel M. Steward’s detective fiction was very well received at PAMLA 2013, and so I’m very much looking forward to presenting again this year!
As I obliquely alluded to in my last post, circumstances in my personal life have been undergoing a drastic transition as of late, and I’m happy to report that last week I returned the SFSU library, this time as a full time staff member instead of a student worker.
Perhaps not surprisingly, returning to an academic–and literary–setting has proved to be tremendously bracing and intellectually invigorating; I also am now able to realize the extent that the job that I held for the last seven months was a drain on my energy and inevitably imposed a severe block on my mindspace. Unfortunately, along with Queer Modernisms, progress on my thesis came to a grinding halt as well.
So over the last two weeks I’ve been getting back in touch with the things I’ve been missing in my life as of late: writing in my journal, reading, penning reviews, catching up on lapsed correspondence. Queer Modernisms is next up on the list.
Which is all to say that updates are to resume again soon, so watch this space.
Wishing I was in New York City this time next week: lectures and a screening is taking place at Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy Museum centering around issues of queerness in H.D. and Jean Epstein’s cinematic writing and filmmaking practice.
Here is an excerpt from the event’s webpage, which can be found in its entirety here:
H.D. and Jean Epstein: Queer Modernism, Spectatorship, and The Specimen
A lecture and screening with Mal Ahern and David A. Gerstner, presented by Amy Herzog
Date: Friday, May 16th
Time: 8:00 PM
Voluntary Donation: $8 (but tickets must be procured beforehand to present at door)Tonight, join us at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn to consider two queer film theorists alongside one another: the French filmmaker Jean Epstein, and the Anglo-American poet H.D. Both wrote prolifically about cinema in the interwar period, and both were filmmakers as well as critics. Both privileged the visual and tactile sensations that cinema offers its viewer. And, perhaps most interestingly, both evince a keen interest in the idea of cinema—as well as the cinematic spectator—as a specimen: a body subjected to a probing, scientific gaze.
In addition, see the event’s Facebook page and the Facebook page for the Morbid Anatomy Museum. The Museum seems to be opening in a new space this month–check out its website for more information. From the information provided, it reminds me of the wonderfully whimsical Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.
I addition, I am familiar with both Gerstner and Herzog’s work, and, frankly, I would attend this event just to hear them present even if I didn’t find the topics under discussion so fascinating in and of themselves.
Hope the proceedings from this event are made available after the fact for those of us on the wrong side of the country!
queer modernisms 