Queer Suicide: An Introduction to the Teach-In

eng-beng lim

With so much affect percolating in the public discourse around the recent spate of gay teen suicides, what can an academic teach-in offer vis-à-vis these events? This Periscope dossier features an eclectic collection of essays, blogs, position papers, and op-eds from a multidisciplinary group of scholars zeroing in on a spectrum of issues, from gay rage and new technologies of sexuality to anti-bullying legislation. It organizes a kind of online teach-in, a portal to the multiple conversations and action happening around the country about gay teen suicide.

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It Gets Worse…

jack halberstam

  At bullybloggers, the blogging site that Lisa Duggan, Jose Munoz and Tavia Nyong’o and I sometimes call our internet home, we believe in bullies. No, not those kinds of bullies, not Tennessee Williams’s no-necked monsters, the brutish boys who … Continue reading “It Gets Worse…”

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Gay Rage

joon oluchi lee

  Suicide is an act of violence. Most of the recent spate of suicides committed by young gay men have been attributed to homophobic bullying. But killing oneself is not necessarily an act of fear and escape. The one who … Continue reading “Gay Rage”

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No Kid Play

eng-beng lim

  Of the many questions raised in the academy as well as the blogosphere, one stands out for its poignancy and compassion: are we as a society capable of loving queer kids? Artist David Wojnarowicz’s 1990 image, Untitled (One Day … Continue reading “No Kid Play”

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HBO's postcolonial melancholic

Tavia Nyong'o

Season Three of HBO’s therapy verite series is now airing, so of course I am glued to the tube. This season’s analysands — whose sessions grants us a fly-on-the-wall view of — are especially engrossing. Jesse, the promiscuous, talented gay teen; Frances, the narcissistic mid-career actress; and Sunil, the postcolonial melancholic.

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Social Text Special Issue 104: Introduction

Social Text Collective

The cover article and accompanying special report in the September 9, 2010 issue of The Economist, “A Latin American Decade?” somewhat tentatively hail renewed ties between the region and the “developed” world after attempts to foster national industries and intraregional integration “have stagnated or fallen apart.” Not surprisingly, the ties that matter to the magazine derive from market-oriented reforms and commodity-driven booms that are “starting to attract increased interest from outsiders.” Despite a pattern of similar claims about foreign interest that began around 1492, The Economist knows what it sees: the transnational moment has arrived.

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