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Sexualities

CFP Mapping Desire – 25 years on: legacies, lessons, and lacunae (May & Sep 2020)

This is a call for papers (CFP) for CFP Mapping Desire – 25 years on: legacies, lessons, and lacunae (May & Sep 2020), part of the Conference of Irish Geographers (pre-conference symposium and conference 20-23rd May 2020, Dublin Ireland) and Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers (1st September-4th September 2020 London, England).

The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Mapping Desire edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine. This edited book was the first collection of geographical work on sexuality, and has long played and continues to play a key role in cohering and legitimizing the geographies of sexualities/queer geographies as a distinct subfield within the academic study of Geography (at least within the Anglophone countries of the Minority World).

We believe it is important to acknowledge this anniversary in order to celebrate this ground-breaking work, tracing its influence on subsequent work …

U.S. National Park Service Essays on LGBTQ History Released

WOOHOO! The LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History theme study has been released by the U.S. National Park Service of the Department of the Interior for National Coming Out Day! Happy coming out, National Parks!!!

Who made this happen? (Queen) Megan Springate is a kind, brilliant scholar who works on queer archaeology (that’s a thing! and it’s such a cool thing!) and she truly led the effort to bring this to life. There are dozens of authors involved. And what was my role? Besides serving as a peer reviewer for many, many essays, my own essay, “LGBTQ Spaces and Places,” is meant to be a really wide-ranging piece that allows those unfamiliar with LGBTQ geographies and pushing thinking beyond the notion that all “gay” people live and/or hang out in gay neighborhoods in cities, and just adoreeee bars. Amen. I account for the …

Publication: Area article finally in print!

48 (3): 262–70.

A year and two weeks ago, I posted the text of “Crossing Over into Territories of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders, and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City” — which is now published in print! Here’s the citation and abstract and you can check out their site to know more about the services that they offer apart from printing.

Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2016. “Crossing Over into Neighbourhoods of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City.” Area 48 (3): 262–270. doi:10.1111/area.12147.

The geopolitical focus on territory as a fixed and cohesive nation-state simultaneously conceals the ways territories form and are operationalized at other scales. At the same time, the fleeting ability of minority bodies to make and retain cohesive, property-owned territories overlooks the limited agency that marginalized groups possess while they continually reproduce social territories as they navigate their everyday lives. Lesbians, gay, …

Teaching Queer America

This spring I taught two incredibly exciting courses. The senior seminar, Queer America, was comprised of a small group of students, primarily from our American Studies program. This is my second senior seminar at Trinity College and my first full-semester lgbtq studies course. Of course, the latter is the more shocking of these components: all of this queering I’ve been up to and I’m only just achieving this beautiful moment. I taught Queer(ing) New York with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies with their Seminar in the Series course in 2013.

The course was framed around the following questions: What is queer about America? What can be and has been queered about America? What, if anything, is not queer about America?

I was really energized and excited to see what resonated with Trinity students. We began by diving into JSTimeline to map out key events in lgbtq history …

Appearing on the BBC World Services

I am honored to share that insights from my research were heard around the world for two minutes on August 23rd, 2016, in the BBC World Services “Beyond Binary” documentary. If you care to listen me especially, I am a minute 10. You can hear me speak about my new research on trans use of Tumblr. For about two years, I’ve been collecting data on the use of the #ftm hashtag and, for a shorter time, #mtf hashtag on Tumblr. I came upon the world of trans Tumblr, as I call it, in 2010 when I was choosing my own new name. I found a tightly-knit network of trans people who are otherwise unanchored through their geographic diaspora. You can click here to read more about that research project.

Here’s more on the “Beyond Binary” documentary from the BBC World Services website: In communities around the globe, non-binary …

New Research Project: Trans Tumblr

For about two years, I’ve been collecting data on the use of the #ftm hashtag and, for a shorter time, #mtf hashtag on Tumblr. These oft used trans hashtags, standing for female-to-male and male-to-female respectively, drew my attention as I was coming into my own trans identity. I came upon the world of trans Tumblr, as I call it, in 2010 when I was choosing my own new name. I found a tightly-knit network of trans people who are otherwise unanchored through their geographic diaspora. They were mostly very young, publicly sharing and connecting about the everyday violence and life milestones, accomplishments and losses that fuel life in general and trans life specifically. I was particularly struck by the small number of voices that dominated the conversation, as well as the suicide notes that would float to the surface and the resounding and instant response of those around them …

Why are all the queers sitting together at the conference? Or, reflections on AAG 2016

The American Association of Geographers and Sexuality & Space Pre-Conference meetings took place in San Francisco last week. I’ve been back in Hartford a week and still feel like I’m getting my sea legs back after six days of conferencing. The Sexuality & Space Pre-Conference served as a great kick-off for the week and allowed to catch up with or connect to geographers of sexualities on their research-in-process. I reflect on the great papers and ideas I heard throughout the week and, most importantly, the segregation and diversity of the meeting, and how we must come together even further to create truly rigorous and diverse scholarship.

I took part in four exciting sessions during the week. In the first two, “Dilemmas III: Institutionality, Queers, and City Exclusions and Negotiations” and “Queering code/space: difference, disorientation, and the digital,” I acted as discussant for papers from scholars ranging from Sarah Schulman to …

Speaking at Eulogy for the Dyke Bar in NYC

I’m in NYC again, walking around among the places where it seems everyone I knew over the last 16 years in this city used to be able to afford to live. What a perfect frame of loss and longing, transition and possibility in which to speak as part of the weekend long events on the Eulogy for the Dyke Bar (EFTDB) at PULSE today. EFTDB is an installation by artist and queer Macon Reed: a fully-immersive structure that revisits the legacies and physical spaces of dyke bars, an increasingly rare component of the contemporary queer cultural landscape. Made of simple materials and seductively saturated colors, Reed’s hand-made installation includes a full bar, pool table, jukebox, and wall-to-wall wood paneling.

I am honored to be part of that exhibit! I will be on a panel discussing the present moment of dyke bar closings at 1pm on 125 W 18th …

Slides from “Queering the Map” Talk

My slides from my Futures Initiative talk, “Queering the Map: Theoretical Reflections on Spatial Methods,” at the CUNY Graduate Center this Friday (October 2nd) can be found below, and the Storify, notes, and photos from the talk can be found here on the FI blog.

As is the usual (and never the norm, wrote the queer theorist) for my approach, I drew upon both feminist and queer approaches for this project. While this talk highlighted the queer aspects of my project, an earlier talk this year at SDSU. “Personal/Political/Feminist Maps,” focused on the feminist dynamics and those slides can be found here. A number of paper are forthcoming from the intersection of both talks, including the piece I am presently working on: “Size Matters to Lesbians Too: Feminist and Queer Contributions to the Scale of Big Data.”

My thanks …

Talk on 10/2: Queering the Map

I’m over the moon that 1) I do not have the flu as I did last February when I had to cancel this talk, and 2) I finally get to give this talk at my alma mater with the brilliant, wonderful people at the Futures Initiative. It will be great to share my thoughts on selecting the right tool to fit the right public humanities project, particularly in regards to multiple layers of data analysis and collaboration in my Queer Public Archives project. The detailed abstract is below.

WHERE: The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue
ROOM:   9204-9205
WHEN:   October 2, 2015, 2:00 PM-4:00 PM
CONTACT INFO: futuresinitiative [at] gc.cuny.edu; (212) 817-7201
WATCH ONLINE: http://bit.ly/futuresed-live
RSVP NOW
HASHTAG: #futuresED

In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau writes that “What the map cuts up, the story cuts across.” But what if the everyday stories you seek are already cut up …

About the Rainbow Heritage Network

In the last month while moving to Hartford and getting settled in my new office at Trinity, I am happy to share that I joined the founding Board of Directors of the Rainbow Heritage Network (RHN). RHN is a national organization for the recognition and preservation of LGBTQ+ sites, history, and heritage. While always one for conspiring with archivists, librarians, historians, and their various home turfs, my collaboration with preservationists and archaeologists is a new endeavor that emerged from my roll in the LGBTQ Monuments Advisory Council of Scholars of the US National Parks Service. I am particularly keen in observing and helping to support the truly wide-ranging and radical representations of LGBTQQTSTSIA life that exist within the US and in relation to the US. I am also devoted to working with the RHN to think about our preservation efforts play a roll in the gentrification and financialization of …

New Publication: “Urban Margins on the Move” in Berlin Blätter

My short reflection piece, “Urban Margins on the Move: Rethinking LGBTQ Inclusion by Queering the Place of the Gayborhood,” is now out in the Berlin Blätter with a focus on the shifting relationships between the center and margin, both material and metaphorical. I address this idea through the lens of LGBTQ neighborhoods, gentrification, and the work of feminist theorist bell hooks. The full text of the piece, as it is so short, is pasted below. Enjoy!

2015. Gieseking, J. Urban Margins on the Move: Rethinking LGBTQ Inclusion by Queering the Place of the Gayborhood. Berliner Blätter – Ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, 68, 43-35.

Urban Margins on the Move: Rethinking LGBTQ Inclusion by Queering the Place of the Gayborhood

Jen Jack Gieseking

We could enter that world but we could not live there. We had always to return to the margin, to cross the tracks to shacks and abandoned …

New Publication: “Useful In/Stability” in Radical History Review

I am delighted to announce the publication of “Useful Instability: the Queer Social and Spatial Production of the Lesbian Herstory Archives” in Radical History Review. The article is in the second of a two part special issue on “Queering Archives” titled “Queering Archives” Intimate Tracings,” both of which were edited by Daniel Marshall, Zeb Tortorici, and Kevin Murphy. The abstract and full citation are below, and a link to an open access version of this article is above. My thanks again to the Lesbian Herstory Archives for the work they do and place they keep that inspired this piece!

Queer theory’s embrace of instability paints stabilizing practices as normalizing and unjust. Rather than upholding a stance of opposition by championing instability alone, what can be gleaned for queer theory by examining the tension of the in/stability dialectic? This essay reflects on the author’s own embodied experience as researcher within …

Assistant Professor Gieseking Has Arrived

I am delighted to share that I am Assistant Professor of Public Humanities in the American Studies Program at Trinity College as of yesterday. Hurrah! I will be blogging soon about how I imagine and enact public humanities in my research, and how I frame it as part of my teaching. I applied for an received a competitive Community Learning Initiative grant to support my development of “The Digital Image of the City” course at Trinity with a focus on Hartford. I will also be teaching “Conflicts & Cultures American Society: the 1980s” through the lens of gender and sexuality in that period, from the Barnard conference to AIDS, from Reagan’s cowboy past to the neutered but vibrant Saturday morning cartoon characters. I am honored and excited to be a part of the Trinity faculty and community.

I am forever thankful to my colleagues at Bowdoin College for an incredible …

Updates to the Gender, Sexuality, & Space Reading List

Although I add readings to my Gender, Sexuality, and Space Reading List about every six months, it’s been a few years since I did a detailed review to include any and all possible cites. The list has been extended by about 200 sources as a result!

The Gender, Sexuality, and Space Reading List builds primarily from my experience as a geographer and an environmental psychologist. I welcome colleagues and visitors to recommend other works in the field below in any format (text, film, art, music, performance, etc.). This page is updated about twice a year with new literature.

I also recommend checking out the Gender and Geography Reading List which I help to support, a much longer term project.…

Full List of Readings for CLAGS Queer(ing) New York Course

In the spring of 2013, I taught Queer(ing) New York as a Seminar in the City course with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The focus of the course was as follows: While lgbtq studies has begun to extend itself to look at rural and other non-urban environments, much of the urban still remains to be accounted for, particularly difference within the city. To truly account for our difference, we must queer the city in the way it normalizes groups and spaces, and New York City is the exciting urban environment to begin within. In this Seminar in the City, we will read work that challenges and queers the normalized histories and spaces of lgbtq life. How can we queer the neighborhood, bar, streets, and bodies within it to tell stories of difference?

I often …

Sharing AERA Panel Video: “Toward What Justice?”

This session brings together compelling scholars within diverse intellectual traditions in educational research to discuss corresponding and sometimes competing definitions of justice. Each panelist will respond to a set of questions designed to reveal the salient points of convergence and difference between Indigenous studies, critical disabilities studies, critical race studies, immigration and border studies, and queer studies in education. A noted critical discussant will synthesize perspectives, offer ideas for future inquiry, and prompt further discussion between the panelists.

Why LGBTQ People Need to Care about the Gender Pay Gap

Today is Equal Pay Day, a day I much admire because it is 1/365th of the reminder we need as a society in the US that women are paid $.78 on the $1. My research and a great deal of other research on lesbian, bisexual, and queer urban spaces indicates that the limited number and limited tenure of these spaces with ever increasing property values–such as the likes of NYC–is greatly affected if not driven by women’s lesser income.

The constant conversation about the ever closing lesbian bar is a case in point, which younger LGBTQ people do now see as linked to patterns of gentrification as well as, I suggest, financialization. Yet this isn’t anything new. Research also shows that women drink less, go out less, and socialize less outdoors. WI suggest this is not only because of predatory behaviors against women in public spaces, but also because …