Panel at Lavender Languages and Linguistics 21

[Tommaso Milani]

The annual Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference will take place at the American University in Washington, DC on 14-16 February 2014. For more information, please see http://www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/lavender-languages/index.cfm

As part of the conference there will be a panel on language and intersectionality (see abstract below)

INTERSEXIONS: LANGUAGE & IDENTITY NEXUSES

Over the last few years, queer theory has gained considerable momentum as one of the main epistemological paradigms in contemporary scholarship on language and sexuality. Undoubtedly, such body of work has provided us with important insights into the ways in which gender and sexuality are "casually entangled in knots that must be undone" (Butler 1998: 225-226). Yet we still know too little about the ways in which gender and sexuality crucially intersect with other social categories giving rise to composite identity aggregates, which in turn are imbricated in complex relations of power.

With a view to unpacking such a Gordian knot of identity and power, this panel aims to re-cast the notion of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989, McCall 2005, Nash 2008, Levon 2010) as an important heuristic lens through which to understand how identities and power operate through language and other semiotic means. We welcome contributions of an empirical and/or theoretical nature that engage with the notion of intersectionality. Through detailed empirical analyses, papers may showcase the relationships between language, sexuality, gender, race, social class, age, and disability, or other identity categories as well as the work of such nexuses in (re)producing or contesting power arrangements. Papers may also offer theoretical critiques of the notion of intersectionality and its applicability to the study of language and sexuality in society.

Contact:
Tommaso M. Milani, University of the Witwatersrand, S. Africa
Tommaso.Milani at wits.ac.za<mailto:Tommaso.Milani at wits.ac.za>



Denis M. Provencher, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
provench at umbc.edu<mailto:provench at umbc.edu>


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