Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group

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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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October 2019 Event with Kadji Amin, Director fo Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.  Photo by Sean Black.
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. Recent invited speakers include Kadji Amin and Matt Brim. In Spring 2021, Sofian Merabet will give a lecture to the group. We have also organized two important symposia, the most recent 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. 

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 / FALL 2024

CONVENERS

FALL 2024

MEETING 1

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 @12—1:30pm / Richter Library, Third Floor, Faculty Exploratory

 

MEETING 2

Wednesday. October 23, 2024 @12—1:30pm / Richter Library, Center for the Humanities Conference Room

 

MEETING 3

Tuesday, November 5, 2024: Special Virtual Event already Scheduled for Zoom

 

MEETING 4 (TBD)

 

SPRING 2025 

To be announced...

FALL 2023

QSIRG LUNCHTIME MEETING 1

Center for the Humanities Conference Room, Richter Library, Suite 100

November 17 (Friday), 12:00 to 1:30pm

Readings to Discuss:

"The straight mind", by Monique Wittig along with the comment on her work "Are Lesbians Women?", by Jacob Hale.

SPRING 2024

MEETING 1

February 21 (Wednesday), @ 12:15 pm

Topic: Reviewing Judith Butler's Heterosexual Matrix Through a Critique of the Imperial Effect

 

MEETING 2

March 20, (Wednesday), @ 12:15 pm

Topic: Introduction to the Work of Diana Torres

 

MEETING 3 

April 17, (Wednesday), @ 12:15 pm

Topic: TBD with Social Meeting to follow on April 19, 2024 @ 5 pm

 

 

Elizabeth Cornick, Ph.D. Student in English

Elizabeth is a second-year graduate student in the English Ph.D. program at the University of Miami with a M.A. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. Her fields of interest include 20th-century American literature, queer studies, and digital humanities. She loves exchanging ideas with others and writing. 

Ra Bacchus, Ph.D. Student in English

Ra is a second-year graduate student in the English Ph.D. program at the University of Miami. He holds an M.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University. His fields of specialization are the medical humanities, the digital humanities, and Caribbean Studies. Ra is also a recreational DJ and enjoys recombining media through a scholarly art practice called “literary DJing.”

Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Professor, Modern Languages & Literatures

Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel specializes in colonial, postcolonial Latin American, and Caribbean literature. She teaches courses on critical theory, comparative coloniality, gender and sexuality studies, and Latinx, Latin American, and Caribbean studies. She has taught at Princeton University (1997-2000), Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (2000-2003; 2008-2017), and the University of Pennsylvania (2003-2008). She recently co-edited two volumes: (with Michelle Stephens) Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020).

 

CALENDAR: SPRING 2023

CONVENERS

Jointly convened meetings for the QSIRG and Animal Studies & Environmental Humanities Research Group

QSIRG LUNCHTIME MEETING 1

Center for the Humanities Conference Room, Richter Library, Suite 100

February 17 (Friday), 12:30 to 1:45

  • Morton, Timothy. 2010. Guest Column: Queer Ecology. PMLA 125(2):273-282
  • See, Sam. 2020. Excerpts from Queer Natures, Queer Mythologies. Fordham University Press (available as an eBook through the UM library’s website)
  • Mortimer-Sandilands,  Catroina. 2010. “Melancholy Natures, Queer Ecologies.” In Queer Ecologies, ed.  by C. Mortimer-Sandilands and B. Erickson, pp. 331-58. Indiana University Press
  • Seymour, Nicole. 2020. “Good Animals.” In Transecology, ed. by D. Vakoch. Routledge

QSIRG LUNCHTIME MEETING 2

Center for the Humanities Conference Room, Richter Library, Suite 100

April 12 (Wednesday), 12:30 TO 1:45

  • Davis, Heather. 2022. “Queer Kin” in Plastic Matter. Duke University Press
  • Excerpts from Ecologies of Gender, edited by Susanne Lettow and Sabine Nessel (2022, Routledge); Nicole Seymour ("Plastic Ambivalence,” pp. 71-88) and Sven Bergmann (“Speculative Ecologies: Salmon Farming and Marine Microplastics as Slow Disasters,” pp. 206-226)
  • Seymour, Nicole. 2022. Excerpts from Glitter. Bloomsbury Academic.

 

Pamela Geller, Associate Professor of Anthropology

 

 

Gabriel das Chagas, Ph.D. Student, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

 

 

CALENDAR: FALL 2022

CONVENERS

Meeting 1. Readings: Selections from: 

— Riley Snorton. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (U of Minnesota P, 2017) 

— Jules Gill-Peterson. Histories of the Transgender Child (U of Minnesota P, 2018)

Via Zoom: Friday, September 23, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.

 

Meeting 2. Readings: Selections from: TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, special issue on “Trans-Exclusionary Feminisms and the Global New Right,” vol. 9, num. 3 (August 2022).

Via Zoom: Thursday, October 20, from 12:15 to 1:45 p.m.

 

Meeting 3. Readings:  Selections from Marquis Bey. Black Trans Studies (Duke UP, 2022)

Via Zoom: Wednesday, November 9, from 1:15 to 3:45 p.m. 

All readings are available electronically via Richter library’s on-line catalog. If you do not have access to Richter Library, please contact Brenna Munro to receive a copy of the readings. 



Meeting 4: Queer Studies IRG Invited Speaker's Talk: Dr. MARQUIS BEY

In person: Thursday, December 1 at 6 p.m.  Richter Library, 3rd floor conference room. Co-sponsored by UM’s Center for the Humanities, Dept. of English, and Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; and by FIU’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies.

Friday, December 2, 2022 @ 3:00pm. GSS Colloquium: "A Conversation on Black Trans Feminism with Dr. Marquis Bey." University of Miami's Coral Gables Campus, Merrick Building 214.

Brenna Munro, Associate Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies

 

 

Marcia Fanti Negri, Ph.D. candidate, Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Studies (Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures)

 

 

FALL 2022

 

Marquis Bey, "Black Trans Feminism." Thursday, December 1, 2022 @ 6:00pm. University of Miami's Coral Gables Campus, Richter Library, 3rd Floor Conference Room.

Dr. Marquis Bey (they/them, or any pronoun) is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University.

The communities of the University of Miami and Florida International University are invited to attend this program with Dr. Marquis Bey, co-sponsored by the University of Miami's Center for the Humanities' Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group; the Department of English; the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; and Florida International University's Center for Women's and Gender Studies.

 for additional information.

 

GSS Colloquium: "A Conversation on Black Trans Feminism with Dr. Marquis Bey." Friday, December 2, 2022 @ 3:00pm. University of Miami's Coral Gables Campus, Merrick Building 214.

 

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