Hinweis – Jack Halberstam zu Gast an der FAU (30.06.-02.07.2025)
The Chair for English Cultural and Literary Studies is pleased to announce Jack Halberstam as this semester’s Researcher in Residence.
The Researcher in Residence is a format designed as an opportunity for students and staff alike to form connections with internationally renowned researchers. The idea is to go beyond the regular formats for classes and to have the chance to get up close and personal with the researcher both on the topic(s) they are experts in and also their experience in academia in their field and country.
In the summer of 2025, we find ourselves facing political developments on both sides of the Atlantic that are threatening to undermine the foundations of what gender and queer theory have achieved in the past few decades. Jack Halberstam, Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University, has not only been one of the leading experts concerning the discourses around ideas of gender, sexuality and queerness, he is one of the pioneering thinkers in this field. Among other publications, his award-winning book Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998) offered groundbreaking considerations on constructions of masculinity in pop culture and contemporary society at large. Halberstam developed the idea of a categorically different temporal and spatial framework outside of heteronormativity in his work In a Queer Time and Place (Duke UP, 2005), situating transgender theory at the center of his research. At Columbia, he is director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality as well as the David Feinson Professor of Humanities. As a prolific writer, he has also published the notable monographs: Skin Shows (Duke UP, 1995), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), Gaga Feminism (Beacon Press, 2012), Trans* (University of California Press, 2018) and Wild Things (Duke UP, 2020). His work has earned him much academic recognition, such as being awarded the Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 and the Guggenheim Fellowship for Theatre Arts and Performance Studies in 2024. In short, Halberstam is undoubtably one of the most distinguished queer theorists working today and his residency at FAU will give our research community the opportunity to form a transatlantic connection based on highly pressing academic and political questions.
Halberstam will spend the week of June 30th to July 2nd at FAU and host or participate in various teaching and discussion formats: He will give an Open Lecture on “Broken Windows: The Art of Demolition” on Monday, June 30th . He will host a Masterclass on “Unworlding: Atopia, Dystopia, Queertopia” on Tuesday, July 1st. Lastly, on Wednesday, July 2nd, there will be an International Coffee open to all students and early career researchers. The International Coffee is an opportunity for students to ask Halberstam any and all questions they might have about his work, in terms of both content and context. You do not need to register for the Open Lecture. For the Masterclass or International Coffee, please register with Marlene Compton via e-mail (marlene.compton@fau.de). Students attending the Masterclass are expected to prepare with a reader provided to them after registration.
If you have any questions, please contact: Prof. Dr. Claudia Lillge (claudia.lillge@fau.de)
Open Lecture: “Broken Windows: The Art of Demolition”
Monday, 30.06.2025, 18-20, Alter Senatssaal Kollegienhaus
While New York City is a now thoroughly financialized and gentrified space, New York City in the mid-1970’s was the terrain for a competing set of relations to masonry, buildings, walls, glass and the business of art and architecture. Through a prismatic juxtaposition of artists who are rarely read in relation to one another, we can assess these competing visions of the city, some utopian and others dystopian, some committed to improvement, others to destitution. And while artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Beverly Buchanan, in very different ways, shared a love of decaying walls and crumbling brick and saw in them alternative forms of vitality, as we will see, businessman architect, Philip Johnson, entertained fascistic visions of social domination through architecture and of individual greatness through monumentality. A closer look at Johnson’s work demonstrates that there is a potentially sinister side to improvement, expansion, repair and shiny surfaces. This talk examines the dynamics of building and unbuilding in relation to queer community, aesthetic practice and discourses of urban renewal.
Masterclass: “Unworlding: Atopia, Dystopia, Queertopia”
Tuesday, 01.07.2025, 16-18, Hörsaal Kollegienhaus 2.018 (registration necessary)
How do we unmake the structures, ideologies, modes of thought, epistemologies and ways of seeing that, in a Euro-American tradition, we currently call “world”? What is the world? Who is the world? Who must necessarily be excluded in order for worlds to exist, to thrive, and possibly to die? We will explore the making, unmaking, and dismantling of worlds, and the relation between aesthetic practice and un/worlding. The seminar emerges out of an interest in the challenges and pleasures of collective thinking and critical theory: in questions of negativity and a/dystopia, Blackness, queerness, transness and ontology, desire and its itineraries.
International Coffee
Wednesday, 02.07.2025, 10-12, Raum C 601, Bismarckstraße 1 (registration necessary)
[Das Poster zu diesen Veranstaltungen finden Sie hier]