Presenter biographies will be linked below as they become available. Final program subject to change.
Among other things, the queer critique of the marriage equality movement and the dismissal of gay marriage as a homonormative aspiration obscures the longstanding and highly productive relation that exists between homosexuality and the couple form. Since at least the 1930s, when the widespread acceptance of divorce first disturbed the ideological foundations of marriage, gays and lesbians have actively interrogated and reimagined the terms that undergird marriage as a sexual, social and domestic ideal. This proposed panel taps into that tradition by bringing together three scholars who are interested in the notion of enduring relationships, with all the ambivalence that phrase can muster.
Scott Herring: “Little Lives: Queer Friendship after Obergefell” (full abstract)
Heather Love: “To Last and To Burn: Maggie Nelson’s Queer Marriage Plot” (full abstract)
Lee Wallace: “The Queer Shunning of Marriage” (full abstract)