2020

This talk is sponsored by the Visual Activism series and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture.  Ajuan Mance is a Professor of English at Mills College and a lifelong artist and writer. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. In both her scholarly writing and her visual art, Ajuan explores the complexities of race, gender, and identity in the U.S. The creator of the 1001 Black Men online sketchbook, Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions as well as comic and zine fests, from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. Ajuan’s comics include the Gender Studies series, the comic strip Check All That Apply, and others. Her comics have appeared in several anthologies including, most recently,  Drawing Power from Abrams Press, winner of the 2020 Eisner award.

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About the Visual Activism series: How has visual culture played a role within the social movements of the last several decades, such as #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion? How, we might ask, is activism made visible; how does it erupt (or disappear) with collective fields of vision? Drawing upon Black South African queer photographer Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” as a flexible rubric that encompasses both formal practices and political strategies, this series interrogates visual cultures of dissent, resistance, and protest. Visual Activism is sponsored in part by a Creative Discovery Grant from UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative.  This talk will take place online Please check later for the link

Taking as its starting point several works that were published or released in 1997, the year of the Hong Kong Handover, this talk will use recent developments in queer theory to reexamine the implications of the Handover.

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University, and his research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies.

Registration required. Register at https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJclceGtqz8uH9bAnqzfOLwjo8EmCODYpl43. You will receive a confirmation email with instructions to join the meeting. If you prefer not to register, email us and we’ll send you the information.

*for access requests please contact cssc@berkeley.edu*

This event is cosponsored by English, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Center for Chinese Studies.\

This talk has been added to our youtube page.

 

#metoobehindbars: Queer/Trans Rebellion Across Prison Walls, a conversation with Alisa Bierria and Rojas

Rojas is a gender nonconforming, formerly imprisoned, survivor of violence. They organized against gender discrimination while serving a 15-year sentence at CCWF in California. They now organize with the Young Women’s Freedom Center, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and #MeTooBehindBars, a campaign to end gender-based and sexual violence inside all women’s prisons in California.

Alisa Bierria is an assistant professor of African American Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is also a co-founder of Survived & Punished, a national organization that challenges the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

 

This talk is sponsored by the Visual Activism series and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture. 

Devi Peacock is a sixteenth-generation storyteller; a comedy writer; co-organizer of the Liberated 23rd Ave. cultural land trust; and the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion, a Huichin (Ohlone land/Oakland) -based crew of queer and trans Black, Indigenous, people of color (QTBIPOC), named one of the “100 people, organizations and movements shaping the future of culture.” Devi is an advisor to the Resilience Archives and the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative and a member of the QTPOC4SHO arts collective. Devi was an organizer at the Queer Cultural Center, home of the National Queer Arts Festival; a cultural equity Fellow with Emerging Arts Professionals and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust; co-led Liberating Ourselves Locally, a QTBIPOC maker space; and serves on funding, curation, and speaking panels for groups including the Arts & Democracy Network, California Arts Council, Center for Cultural Innovation, Dance/USA, Grantmakers in the Arts, National Performance Network, National Queer Arts Festival, and the United States of Asian America Festival. Devi taught comedic arts at Stanford and, pre-COVID times, got paid to share shart jokes for social justice across North America.

Photo credit: Luna Merbruja.

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About the Visual Activism series: How has visual culture played a role within the social movements of the last several decades, such as #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion? How, we might ask, is activism made visible; how does it erupt (or disappear) with collective fields of vision? Drawing upon Black South African queer photographer Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” as a flexible rubric that encompasses both formal practices and political strategies, this series interrogates visual cultures of dissent, resistance, and protest.

Visual Activism is sponsored in part by a Creative Discovery Grant from UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative. 

This talk will take place online
Please check later for the link