Fierceness is a term that's generally used to compliment a person's style—it's the go-to, sassy way of describing a job well-done. But fierceness isn't always about compliment. In queer communities, and queer of color communities in particular, fierceness is an expression of creativity as well as the labor of that creativity. ON FIERCENESS addresses the critical and creative implications of "fierceness"—what fierceness is, what it does, and how it opens up alternative possibilities of identification.

Madison Moore recently obtained his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. His interests are varied and include electronic dance music, nightlife culture, black queer studies, and alternative subcultures. madison is a pop scholar and his writing has appeared in Art in America, Interview, Thought Catalog, Splice Today, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. A 2006 Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral scholar, madison's research has been received from outside of academia, and he has been profiled in the popular media in places such as Color Lines, NYU Local, Black Book magazine, "Page Six" of the New York Post, and he recently appeared in a front-page profile in The New York Observer. This year madison is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA.

RSVP required: rsvp@clags.org.