Events

Minorities Within Minorities: The Black Gay Experience

Beyond Arizona

“(DISCO) is hosting a symposium on contemporary immigration debates and their relevance to our fields. OSU faculty and graduate students associated with African American and African Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Comparative Ethnic and American Studies, Disability Studies, Latino/a Studies, Sexuality Studies, and Women’s Studies will engage this fraught and contentious issue by expanding the conversation beyond the particularities of the Arizona bill and discuss how these dynamics have appeared historically across various academic areas and activist arenas. The symposium aims to explore in particular the ways that the policing of national borders is intimately linked to the policing of desirable and undesirable bodies.”

Getting Beyond Bullying: Challenging Queerphobia

“Over the past few months, a number of queer youth and college students from across the country have died by suicide, and these deaths have typically been attributed to various forms of bullying. Though the harassment and death of people who do not conform to gender and sexual norms is nothing new, the enormous media attention given to bullying and suicide, and the well-publicized responses to those “epidemics,” are trends to be reckoned with.

This forum addresses these issues by considering the ways that these problems and solutions have been represented and framed. How has the media remembered the deaths of queer people? What are the implications of focusing on “bullying” as the primary problem? What is taking place in the legal realm to deter anti-queer discrimination? What are the pros and cons of the “It Gets Better” video project, endorsed not only by high profile celebrities but by the President of the United States? How might the scholarly field of queer studies contribute to the conversation? What other resources exist for preventing queerphobia and suicide, and for promoting queer life?”

What is Asian American Studies: and Why Should You Care?