[nativestudies-l] special double-issue of GLQ

[Angela P. Hudson]

Folks may be interested to know about this announcement.  I'm forwarding it
from another list so apologies for cross-postings.

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We are looking for essays for a special double-issue of GLQ entitled
"Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity: Rethinking the State at the
Intersection of Native American and Queer Studies."

In 2005, the Navajo Nation passed a statute banning same-sex marriage, a
measure that passed in spite of a veto by the Nation's president and public
objections by traditionalist elders. We were moved to ask how the complex
issues at play in this decision might be opened into a broader investigation
of the ways heteronormativity serves as part of dominant ideologies of
political identity and legitimacy. This effort to affirm Navajo straightness
suggests the importance and timeliness of bringing together many of the
questions being asked in Native American studies and queer studies about the
relationship between political and cultural formations.

Native and queer studies have, together and separately, worked to theorize
and defend various kinds of diversity as well as individual and collective
self-representation in the face of totalizing state legalities and
ideologies, and we want to explore the intersections of those sometimes
consonant, sometimes dissonant, interventions. We seek essays that consider
the ways putting these two areas of study in dialogue can contribute to our
understanding of the U.S. nation-state, Native polities and peoplehood, and
the complex role of culture(s) in the process of political expression and
identification. How can Native American and queer studies, especially as
informed by each other, complicate, challenge, and reconfigure available
ways of conceptualizing the state, national identity, and their multivalent
social influences in the U.S. and among Native peoples?

Essays may address any period in U.S. history and any Native group over whom
the U.S. extends political authority (including Native Hawaiians).  Topics
of interest might include the following:

- the usefulness and place of queer theories in Native
  American studies and vice versa;
- the heterosexism of the logic of blood quantum;
- efforts to recognize and/or reorganize Native kinship
   systems;
- the role of internationalism in queer and Indigenous
  critiques of the nation-state;
- defining and crossing U.S. national boundaries;
- the status or role of lgbtq identified Native people in
  their communities;
- the role of notions of civilization in defining "normal"
  sexual behavior;
- the ways public discourse around nonnormative sexuality (for
  and anti) deploys whiteness, monogamy, and the nuclear
  family;
- the reliance on notions of citizenship and the coherence of
  U.S. national space in lgbtq forms of identification.

We recognize that the question of representation is always at issue, so we
want to note that we are both non-Native, although we have longstanding
commitments to Native American and queer studies. We feel conveying that
fact is important in order to let potential contributors decide for
themselves what it means in terms of their desire to take part in the
project.

Please send complete essays, under 10,000 words, by July 1, 2008 to either
of the co-editors. We welcome preliminary inquiries, however decisions will
be made on the basis of full essays after the deadline.  We can be reached
at the following:

Bethany Schneider
bschneid_at_brynmawr.edu

or

Mark Rifkin
mrifkin_at_skidmore.edu