On Queer Institutionalization

Lauded queer performance artist Holly Hughes joins theatre scholar Jill Dolan to discuss the genealogy of her politics and aesthetics as a queer artist in New York, informed by her experiences at venues like the WOW Café, to the development of her pedagogy as a professor at the University of Michigan. Many artists like Hughes have transitioned into the university in order to sustain their work as queer performers. How is the lived experience of collective queer artistic communities transferred to the institutional atmosphere and how does queerness translate into pedagogy and remain transgressive? How do we deal with the taboo of a faculty member as a sexual creature? Can queerness be translated through teaching and/or training in a way that students can experience queerness outside of the community for which it was intended? What is it mean to teach LGBT history by asking your students to embody lesbians and lesbian desire? An excerpt from The Well of Horniness will be performed by Hughes' current and former students in addition to the talk.

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Performing Que(e)ries takes place over the 2012/13 academic year and explores LGBTQ performance in the 21st century, particularly the ways in which contemporary queer performance is tied to past, present, and future explorations of queer identity. The series includes performers, scholars, and writers of diverse backgrounds and styles coming together to discuss their work in multiple formats, including roundtables, interviews, discussions, lectures, readings, and/or performances. Performances and discussions will track the legacy of queer performance onstage and off, querying the efficacy and vitality of live performance in the age of media-based and digitized communication.