Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group

Queer Studies

Since 2006, and with support from UM’s Center for the Humanities, the Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group has brought together scholars whose research and creative interests focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer studies. All participants maintain a commitment to interdisciplinarity and global perspectives. Faculty and graduate students from the University of Miami, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University, and other local institutions of higher learning take an active role in the group.

Departmental affiliations include Anthropology, Art History, English, History, Modern Languages and Literatures (including linguistics), Religious Studies, and Sociology. We also welcome members from other fields of the humanities, social sciences, health professions and STEM who are interested in humanistic approaches to the study of gender, sex, and sexuality, as well as advanced undergraduates. 

The group gathers approximately three times per semester to consider recent scholarship in queer and trans* studies. These discussions are complemented by visits from prominent academics in the field. One not need be a member of the Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group to attend these talks. 

If you would like your name added to the QSIRG listserv or if you'd like more information about readings from past meetings, please write to one of the co-conveners listed below.  

 

CALENDAR | 2025-2026

CO-CONVENERS

FALL 2025

MEETING 1 / Wednesday, September 10 / 12:15-1:30pm 

Queerness & Politics and Silence

  • Sections of Queer Silence, J Logan Smilges
  • 2-3 poems by Virgilio Piñera (in preparation for reading Quiroga next session) (TBA)

MEETING 2 / Wednesday, October 8 / 12:15-1:30pm 

José Quiroga (in preparation for MLL symposium on José Quiroga papers, newly donated to the Cuban Heritage Collection)

 [Prioritize reading the following two works]

  • José Quiroga, “Unpacking My Files: My Life as a Queer Brigadista”
  • José Quiroga, “Outing Silence as Code,” Tropics of Desire
  • Recommended: “The Mask of the Letter,” Tropics of Desire, Quiroga
  • Re read: 2-3 poems by Virgilio Piñera (in preparation for reading Quiroga next session)

Optional:

  • Suggested additional readings: Elizabeth Bishop letters
  • Suggested additional viewing: Bruno Barreto, Reaching for the Moon (2013)
  • Suggested additional viewing: Gentleman Jack (HBO series)
  • Suggested additional reading: Anne Lister’s diaries (selections)

MEETING 3 / Friday, November 7 - Sunday, November 9, 2025

Symposium on José Quiroga at the CHC. Special Event

MEETING 4 / Wednesday, November 12 / 12:15-1:30pm

Trans[ ]crip possibilities 

CO-CONVENER, FALL 2025

Micaela Donabella, Ph.D. Candidate in English and Creative Writing

Micaela Donabella (she/her/hers) focuses her research around the intersections of disability and technology, gender, and labor in twenty-first century literary and online cultures. Micaela is the Chair of UM’s English Graduate Organization and a 2025-2026 Dissertation Fellow with The Graduate School. Her article, “Wearable Tech and the Casualization of Biometric Surveillance in Wellness Culture,” is forthcoming in Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture.

CO-CONVENER, FALL 2025 

Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos, PhD candidate in English 

Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos specializes in early modern literature, gender studies, and the history of witchcraft. Her dissertation, “Race and Gender in Representations of Witches and Fairies in Early Modern English Literature”, examines how early modern demonological discourses overlapped with and was informed by premodern race notions. She is the 2025–26 Dean’s Dissertation Fellow at UM’s School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami. Her forthcoming article, “Talking Back: Women Join the Theological Debate about Witchcraft in 17th-Century England” on women’s theological interventions in witchcraft debates will appear in the next special issue of the journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.

CO-CONVENER, FALL 2025 

Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Associate Professor of Spanish, Michelle Bowman Underwood Department of Modern Languages & Literatures

Gema Pérez Sánchez and Brenna Munro of the English Department cofounded in Fall 2006 the Queer Studies IRG (back when it was called the Queer Studies Faculty and Graduate Students’ Reading Group) and has continued to co-convene the group at regular intervals. Her research focuses on contemporary Spanish peninsular culture; gender and sexuality studies with an emphasis on transnational LGBTQ+ activism; anti-racism; the culture of Afro-descendant Spaniards; films and literature on migration to Spain; and queer theory. She is the author of Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to la movida (SUNY Press 2007) and guest co-editor with Munro of S&F Online’s 2017 special issue on “Thinking Queer Activism Transnationally.” She is working on her next book, “Transnational Queer Affects and Activism: Literary and Visual Public Interventions in Spanish Culture (1970s-2000s),” in which she studies the intersection of epistolary, literary, visual, and activist discourses and transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and queer mobilizations in contemporary Spain. Gema holds a Ph.D. in Romance Studies from Cornell University (1998), an M.A. in English Literature from Bucknell University (1992), and a Título Superior de Flauta Travesera (BA in Music Performance) from the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid (1990).

 

Overview of Queer Studies IRG

Recent invited speakers of the Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Groupinclude Karen Jaime, Kadji Amin, Matt Brim, and Sofian Merabet. The Queer Studies IRG has recently organized two important symposia, one of which resulted in the publication of a special issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online on the topic of "Thinking Queer Activism Transnationally," guest edited by Brenna Munro and Gema Pérez-Sánchez.

Two or three faculty and graduate students from different departments across the humanities co-convene the group each semester. Co-conveners must hail from at least two different departments to assure the interdisciplinary nature of our inquiries. Although the faculty co-convener must be a University of Miami member, the other co-convener(s) may belong to another institution. We also encourage graduate students to co-convene—a task that involves choosing the readings for and leading discussion on one of the semester’s meeting days. Graduate student co-conveners usually serve only for one semester.

The UM faculty co-convener(s) arranges the schedule of meetings, helps to choose the readings for the semester in consultation with the QSIRG members, secures venues for meetings, and seeks co-sponsors for events. 

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