Discussant: Paola Bacchetta (University of California, Berkeley) | Moderation: Júlia Garraio (CES)

Overview

In this webinar we will discuss the position of classical antiquity in contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) historiographies. Research has shown that the ideal of classical antiquity as racialised heritage has been deployed— historically and in the present—to support and reinforce the distinctiveness and superiority of the West over other cultural groups. It has thus legitimated Western colonial practices, cultural hegemony, and civilising mission. However, little attention has been paid to LGBTQ movements and the classical discourses, images, symbols, and representations they draw on. Acknowledging historiography as a political practice, this presentation seeks to examine how dominant Western-centric forms of historiography reinforce power dynamics that oppress and marginalise specific shares of LGBTQ populations (e.g. queers of colour) in order to counteract the violence that erases, silences, and imposes specific forms of knowing history. 

Bio notes

Angeliki Sifaki is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (CES-UC). Her new 3-year research project, titled HomoClassicisms - Dangerous Liaisons: Classical Antiquity and LGBTQ Movements in Greece, the UK, and the US, is a cooperation between CES-UC and the Department of Classics, Ohio State University, USA. Her previous 2-year research project, titled HomoPolitics - Greek Homonationalism: Entanglement of Sexual Politics with Issues of Race and Nationalism in the Case of Lesbian and Gay Movements and Queer Activist Groups in Greece, was again funded by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Scheme. In 2018, she earned her PhD from the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where she specialised in gender and sexuality studies, education and theories of nationalism. During her PhD studies, she conceived and developed her own research project, titled "Greek Lesbian Teachers: School, Nation, Family", the first of its kind and the only one at present to be undertaken within the Greek context. Additionally, so far, she has an extensive experience as a Principal Investigator in research projects dealing with ethnic and religious minorities and educational inequalities. In 2020, she was elected as the Chair of AtGender, a role in which she served until September 2023. Her most recent publication is the edited volume Homonationalism, Femonationalism and Ablenationalism: Critical Pedagogies Contextualised (Routledge, 2022).
 

Paola Bacchetta is Professor and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at University of California, Berkeley. She is also Director of the Institute for Gender and Sexuality Research. She was the first Chair of Berkeley’s Gender Consortium. She currently serves as Co-coordinator of Decolonizing Sexualities Network, a transnational convergence of scholars, artivists and activists. Her books include: Co-Motion: On Feminist and Queer Solidarities (Forthcoming Duke University Press); Fatima Mernissi For Our Times, co-edited with Minoo Moallem (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2023); Global Raciality: Empire, Postcoloniality, and Decoloniality, co-edited with Sunaina Maira, Howard Winant (New York: Routledge, 2019); Femminismi Queer Postcoloniali (co-edited with Laura Fantone, Verona, Italy: Ombre Corte, 2015); Gender in the Hindu Nation (India: Women Ink, 2004); Right-Wing Women (co-edited with Margaret Power, New York: Routledge, 2002). She has published over 70 articles and book chapters on: feminist queer decolonial theory; transnational feminist and queer theory; lesbian and queer of color theorie artivisms and activisms; decolonial feminist translating; gender, sexuality and right-wing movements (India, France, U.S., Brazil). She has translated multiple texts, including Fatima Mernissi’s only (co-authored) film project, The Lionesses (French to English, forthcoming in Fatima Mernissi For our Times which Bacchetta co-edited with Minoo Moalem, for Syracuse University Press). She recently oversaw the translation of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera : The New Mestiza into French (2022). She is the recipient of multiple awards: Harvard Divinity School, Fulbright, Mellon Foundation, State of Kerala Erudite Scholar Award, European Union funding awards, France-Berkeley Fund award, and more. For more information and access to many of her publications: https://berkeley.academia.edu/PaolaBacchetta

Webinar of series UnCoveR Webinars – Gender, Violence, Media and Arts in collaboration with GPS-CES | The Research Group on Sexualities

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This activity will be provided through Zoom platform and does not require registration. Participation is limited to the number of places available >> https://zoom.us/j/89645717381 | ID: 896 4571 7381 | Password: 402150

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