Beyond Homophobia: Place Matters

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Deadline EXTENDED to October 31, 2023!

Date limite PROLONGÉE jusqu’au 31 octobre 2023!

¡Plazo AMPLIADO hasta el 31 de octubre de 2023!

Beyond Homophobia: Place Matters

Save the date! 

January 18-19, 2024

The University of the West Indies (UWI) 

Mona Campus, Jamaica

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Beyond Homophobia Planning Committee is pleased to announce that the 2024 conference will be held at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus.

The theme of this 3rd biennial conference is Place Matters. We understand place in its broadest terms: as a geographical reality, a political boundary, and/or an imagining. There are matters of place, and place indeed matters. Not just people, but power, money and ideas are all beholden to a politics of geography. With recent renewed challenges to rights and autonomy of LGBTQI communities in the United States, Uganda, and Kenya – to name but a few, this fact is more and more evident. The global context alongside the reality of asylum for LGBTQI individuals in countries outside the region raises issues. How does place function with regards to LGBTQI communities in the Caribbean? We want to stimulate discussions about the role of place in the lives of activists, artists, academics, and Caribbean LGBTQI people simply living their lives within and without the region.

We encourage contributions that engage with any of the following questions:

• How does where you are LGBTQI matter, whether within the Caribbean or outside of it?
• How are LGBTQI people taking up space and place across the region?
• What are the implications of leaving the place, as scholars, as asylum-seekers, as legal or illegal, long-term or temporary migrants, as the children of migrants, for example? Of returning to live or visit? Of the ways in which we live transterritorially?
• Who has imagined or is imagining the queer Caribbean, and how? How do we understand dominant narratives of the Caribbean as “unlivable” for LGBTQI people? For whom is the region livable, and how? How do these narratives shape identity?
• Where does the power to define the LGBTQI Caribbean reside? In law? In cultural imagination? In our “leadership” classes? At the grassroots? In Global North media? In Global South movements?
• Does boundary-crossing within the Caribbean have an impact on being LGBTQI? What are these boundaries? How are they created and by whom?
• How are LGBTQI engagements  (academic, political, activist, artistic, economic, travel, discursive, etc) across Caribbean boundaries (South-South, North-South, intraregionally, diaspora-to-Caribbean) navigated? What geopolitics and hegemonies are at play?
• How is place and residence in particular determined or affected by markers of identity and/or social status (i.e. race/colour, class, gender, migrant status, family, health, ability, etc.)?
• How is Caribbeanness experienced by LGBTQI people in the Caribbean’s diaspora? How do we identify, organise, play?
• Are there challenges associated with being in place? (i.e., “grounded” in place, or “stuck in place”?)
• Are there challenges associated with movement? (i.e., having the privilege to move, but also facing difficulties)
• How do LGBTQI communities/individuals deal with forced or coerced movement or migration?
• How has globalisation enabled and imperilled local LGBTQI movements in the Caribbean? Has it opened up ideas, optimism, solidarity and access to resources? Has it robbed us of autonomy and self-determination or trapped us in imposed ideas of Caribbean homophobia and Global North prescriptions for liberation? Has it emboldened global Religious Right movements to evangelise and recruit here?
• How do international development and its institutions engage with the Caribbean as a particular place? How is LGBTQI life imagined and engaged with and in global development practice?
• How are LGBTQI Caribbean citizens included (and how do we include ourselves) in the projects of building and governing our postcolonial nations, or engaged with power and participation in those nations of which we are colonies or outposts, or in which we find ourselves as migrants? How do we use involvement in domestic or transnational politics, parties, unions, international and civic/neighbourhood associations to shape the places in which we live?
• How have visions of Caribbean sovereignty engaged with LGBTQI and other sexual freedoms and gender justice? How are Caribbean LGBTQI politics and hopes for justice grounded in the power of other places to make change here, or on concepts of autonomy and nationalism?
• How do climate crises and political violence shape the sense of the Caribbean as a place to live?
• How do differently abled queer Caribbean people envisage and engage their lives in the region?
• How do indigenous Caribbean LGBTQI people negotiate their identity in this regional space?
• Other questions that engage geographic, political and imaginary place and Caribbean LGBTQI individuals and communities.

In keeping with our commitment to extending Beyond Homophobia’s remit beyond the academy, we emphasise that these and other questions can be answered in a variety of ways–scholarly research and theorisation engaging any academic discipline(s), artistic representations, applied research, activist reports–or a combination of any of these. Scholars and students (institutional and community-based), artists, activists, artivists, lawyers and judicial officers, policy makers, analysts and advocates, administrators, service providers and other interested persons are welcome.

Papers

Abstracts for individual papers should be no more than 250 words and should list title, presenter name, organisational affiliation (if any), email address and a maximum of 5 keywords. Presentations will be no more than 20 minutes long.

Panels

Panels should include 3-4 papers. An abstract of no more than 100 words for the panel should be provided, along with a title and a list of presenters. In addition, abstracts of no more than 250 words for each presentation, with title, presenter name, organisational affiliation (if any), email address and a maximum of 5 keywords, should be provided.

Roundtables

Roundtables should include 4 or more participants. An abstract of 250 words describing the roundtable, as well as a title and maximum 50-word description of each presentation, with presenter name, organisational affiliation (if any), email address, and a maximum of 5 keywords, should be provided.

Workshops

Proposals for workshops should be no more than 250 words and should include title, clear objectives, any materials needed, a list of participants, their organisational affiliation (if any), email addresses and a maximum of 5 keywords.

Artistic works

Proposals for artistic works should be no more than 250 words, include a title, presenter name, organisational affiliation (if any), email address, a maximum of 5 keywords, and state clearly the requirements for staging the work. Audiovisual submissions are welcome, with title, presenter name, organisational affiliation (if any) and email address.

Accessibility

Please note that Beyond Homophobia welcomes submissions from people living with disabilities and will make every effort to accommodate attendees’ needs.

Planning Committee

The Planning Committee comprises the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work and Institute of Caribbean Studies at The UWI Mona, Equality JA/ J-FLAG, and 360 Artists.

Assistance with travel expenses

Please note that Beyond Homophobia will be able to provide support for actual travel expenses based on need. If a presenter is able to cover part of the cost, depending on need, Beyond Homophobia will contribute to the remaining amount of actual expenses. However, support from a home institution or funder is not required to submit an abstract for the conference.

Special issue of Social and Economic Studies

Presenters will be invited to submit full articles for a special issue to be published in Social and Economic Studies (https://www.mona.uwi.edu/ses/about). The deadline for submission of full articles is February 18, 2024. Articles are to be submitted to beyondhomophobia@gmail.com for initial screening. After the initial screening, authors will be invited to submit via the Scholastica editorial management platform (https://www.mona.uwi.edu/ses/submission-guidelines). (Scholastica charges a US$10.00 submission fee that goes directly to them; SES does not charge any fees). Length of articles should be around 7,000–10,000 words including notes. The style for references is the Chicago Manual author-date system.Abstracts and proposals should be sent to beyondhomophobia@gmail.com by October 31, 2023.