How do we think with and about LGBTQIA+ subjects, communities, and histories?
The Pembroke Center's "LGBTQIA+ Thinking" initiative, led by Lynne Joyrich, professor of modern culture and media, is devoted to the active production of knowledge generated from and about sexual and gender minorities. Engaging with the subjectivities and socialities, differences and connections, histories and cultures of sexual and gender minorities, LGBTQIA+ Thinking pays close attention to how sexualities and gender identifications have been constructed; how they intersect with global and local formations of race, class, and generation; and how sexual and gender minorities have attempted to live and understand themselves outside, or in the interstices, of dominant sexual and gender norms.
"This initiative signals the importance of exploring sexual and gender formations, identities, and issues," Joyrich says, "recognizing that just as these can give us places from which to think, those places may shift, change, and invite re-thinking."
The LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative includes intellectual, pedagogical, and social components. Programming—ranging from lectures, presentations, and symposia to exhibitions, screenings, and performances—is designed to coordinate with other Pembroke initiatives (such as the Pembroke Seminar, the Black Feminist Theory Project, and the Feminist Theory Archives) and to further links with other units (such as the BAI, CSREA, CSSJ, the Cogut Institute, IBES, the School of Public Health, and the Watson Institute). Pedagogical aims include working with Gender and Sexuality Studies program leadership and faculty on course development, program coordination, and pedagogical collaboration. Finally, the initiative fosters community bonds via the connections made through LGBTQIA+ Thinking programs and events at Brown and beyond. In this way, the Pembroke Center can further foster thinking, learning, and acting for and with this vital and diverse community.
The rainbow pride flag was designed as a symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978, becoming a well-known international symbol of “gay pride.” Since that time, the rainbow flag has come to signify a broader, global LGBTQIA+ coalition, even as there have been proposals for changes to the rainbow flag (such as the addition of stripes or chevrons to signal racial inclusion and trans inclusion) and for the creation of additional flags, featuring their own unique color schemes to represent various groups in the wider LGBTQIA+ community. The popularization of the original flag, as well as these re-designs and additions, have been both lauded and critiqued, with commentators raising questions of aesthetics, politics, and performativity; the commercialization, commodification, and branding of queer identities; international homogenization and/or local heterogeneity; diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality; the recognition, representation, and/or reification of specific identities; and so on.
The Pembroke Center's LGBTQIA+ Thinking Initiative is co-sponsoring the Queering the Middle East and its Diasporas Lecture Series, supported by the Herbert H. Goldberger Lectureships Fund and presented by the Center for Middle East Studies.
