Three years after the Transnationalizing LGBT project received a Chancellor’s Award, its members have held two conferences on the subject and are now working toward an even larger goal: the publication of a scholarly journal on the topic.

In 2009, Cantor called for proposals for three-year leadership projects. Among the proposals selected to receive a grant was a project known as Transnationalizing LGBT Studies, which aims to unite scholars, activists and artists across the globe in the education of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies.

‘As LGBT Studies grows, new questions and challenges emerge,’ said Roger Hallas, co-director of the LGBT Studies program, in an email. ‘One of the most important issues to emerge has been how to study and understand diverse sexualities in our globalized world, without flattening out complex dynamics of difference, specificity and connection, or simply imposing frameworks European and American to explain other cultures.’

The project is aimed toward creating a better understanding of LGBT communities across the world and also how to best teach students about these global issues and perceptions. It will also develop a new scholarship in LGBT studies to address the new transnational and globalized dynamics in sophisticated ways, Hallas said.

The creation of the journal came about at one of two Transnationalizing LGBT Studies conferences held in Madrid through the SU Abroad center in July and was inspired by keynote speaker Zackie Achmat, a South African AIDS activist and Nobel Prize nominee.

‘The focus of this new journal will be on trying to bring together scholarship and activism from all over the globe into a conversation similar to what we had in Madrid, where we’re trying to feel kinships and connections across interdisciplinary networks of scholars, activists and artists,’ said Andrew London, chair of the sociology department and co-director of the LGBT Studies program.

London said Achmat gave project members the idea for the journal with his calls for a ‘democratically accessible space for knowledge about diverse sexualities.’

The journal, to be titled ‘The Journal of Diverse Sexualities,’ will be released in early 2013 and published by Syracuse University Press, said Hallas, who will serve as editor of the journal.

The journal’s mission statement stresses that its free, open-access nature would allow for larger audiences beyond the academic realm, such as teachers, artists, activists and researchers, who were frequently denied access to the material.

The group aims to achieve these goals by further organizing conferences, similar to that in Madrid, in which keynote speakers, participants and attendees come from across the globe to openly discuss what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender in various countries.

Transnationalizing LGBT was first established with the goal of exploring the nature of understanding LGBT studies, life and culture around the world. Those involved in the project wanted to ensure that the perceptions of one country or community would not define the global view.

Benjamin Zender, senior administrator for SU’s Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute, has been involved in the project and thinks it’s important to improve the global view of the LGBT community.

Said Zender:

‘I think it’s really important to think about queerness more on a transnational level and stop inflicting our own ways we conceive of queerness and thinking that the entire world follows that kind of pattern.’

cffabris@syr.edu 

Published on January 24, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris