This event brings together international scholars to consider the aesthetics and politics of queer cinema in a global context. Speakers include David Eng (University of Pennsylvania), Patricia White (Swarthmore College), Gayatri Gopinath (New York University), Song Hwee Lim (University of Exeter), Catherine Grant (University of Sussex), Michael Lawrence (University of Sussex), Shamira Meghani (University of Leeds) and Cüneyt Çakirlar (UCL). The organisers are Karl Schoonover (University of Warwick) and Rosalind Galt (University of Sussex).

The symposium’s format is participatory and aims to generate debate and analysis. Our speakers will show short clips from queer film or other moving image media and present informal analyses. Questions we aim to address include:

• What is rendered visible by placing these three terms together: ‘global’, ‘queer’ and ‘cinema? What tensions are revealed, what rhetorics engaged?
• How do presiding visions of the global depend upon the inclusion or exclusion of queer lives?
• How do the politics of neoliberalism and human rights discourse intersect with queer lives?How does contemporary queer film and media practice engage and refuse these tensions?How can we think about queer visual aesthetics, and how do questions of form, style and genre coalesce in contemporary queer politics?
• What kinds of global communities are produced (or precluded) by the histories of the queer film festival, or of other modes of queer media consumption?
• How can we theorise the role of popular cinema, art film, the avant-garde, community and activist media in these political landscapes? Are these distinctions necessary critical tools?

This event is part of an AHRC funded research network in the Translating Cultures scheme, and is located in the School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex.