SOAS University of London

Colonialism, Empire and International Law

Queer Perspectives on Law: Sharing Reflections

THIS EVENT IS ARCHIVED
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Various Speakers

Date: 13 May 2011Time: 9:00 AM

Finishes: 13 May 2011Time: 5:30 PM

Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: G3

Type of Event: Workshop

Interest in engaging queer theory in the context of law, domestically and internationally, has grown in recent years despite, or perhaps in response to, an intensification of hostility to critical legal thinking in a world dominated by crisis law-making and governance. While the imperatives and dilemmas associated with recognizing diverse and fluid gender identities and sexual orientations in human rights law have dominated these scholarly developments, there is an emerging body of critical legal scholarship that is using queer theory to re-examine the orthodoxies and assumptions that underpin the law, and to open new imaginaries aimed at producing global conditions that are less crisis-driven and more egalitarian, cooperative, democratic and free. The workshop provides an opportunity for participants to share reflections on these hopeful developments and to strengthen their own contributions to this field through discussion and networking.

TimeEvent
09.00-09.30Registration and Coffee
09.30-09.45Welcome
Matt Craven (SOAS Dean, Co-Director CCEIL)
Catriona Drew (Director, CCEIL)
Nadje Al-Ali (Chair, SOAS Centre for Gender Studies)
09.45-11.15

Panel I: Resisting Hegemonies - Local and Transnational Encounters
Chair: Akhil Katyal (SOAS)

  • Vanja Hamzić (King's College London) – '(Sub)alternative Muslim Perceptions of Law and Justice: Beyond Politics of Fiqh and Inadequacy of Human Rights Discourse'
  • Rahul Rao (SOAS) – 'The location of homophobia: notes from Uganda'
  • Eddie Bruce-Jones (Birkbeck) – 'Queering Culture: Some notes on transnational LGBTI legal work'
  • Maria Federica Moscati (SOAS) – 'Use of Anthropology for Queer Culture and Marriage Debate'
11.15-11:30Break
11.30-13.00

Panel II: 'Homonationalisms': Reading the Effects of Progressive Legal Reforms
Chair: Nadje Al-Ali (SOAS)

  • Arturo Sanchez Garcia (Kent) – 'Mexico City is wonderland!; The new sexual politics in the Mexican state(s)'
  • Suhraiya Jivraj (Oxford Brookes) – 'The Dutch homo-emancipation policy and its silencing effects on queer Muslim organizing'
  • Akshay Khanna (Sussex) – 'Three hundred and seventy seven ways of being – Sexualness and the Indian self'
13.00-14.00Lunch
14:00-15.30

Panel III: What Queer Legal Theory Might 'Do' Beyond Rights
Chair: Prabha Kotiswaran (SOAS)

  • Daniel Monk (Birkbeck) – 'Reading Wills Queerly: Beyond Rights'
  • Emily Grabham (Kent) – 'Queer Times: Critical Perspectives on Law's Temporalities'
  • Les Moran (Birkbeck) – 'Legal Queeries – Past, Present Future'
  • Elena Loizidou (Birkbeck) – '"To Have and Have Not" : No strings attached'
15.30-15.45Break
15.45-17.15

Panel IV: Queering International Law
Chair: Caroline Osella

  • Teemu Ruskola (Emory) – 'Law of the Queer Nations'
  • Gina Heathcote (SOAS) – 'The Retrosexuality of International Law'
  • Aeyal Gross (Tel Aviv/SOAS) - 'Does each person have a sexual orientation?'
  • Dianne Otto (Melbourne/SOAS) – 'Transnational Homo-Assemblages: contesting "gender" in counter-terrorism discourses'
17.15-17.30

Conclusions

  • Aeyal Gross (Tel-Aviv/SOAS)
  • Dianne Otto (Melbourne/SOAS)

Organiser: Professors Aeyal Gross (Tel-Aviv/SOAS) & Dianne Otto (Melbourne/SOAS)

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Workshop Programme, Abstracts and Biographies

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